Former Baltimore police officers become lawyers and launch their own

(This article was originally published in The Daily Record, Baltimore, another Dolan Media publication.)

When three race filed two $2 million lawsuits this summer alleging they were controled to unnecessary force at the 2004 Sowebo Arts Festival by dint of members of the Baltimore Police Department, they chose Timothy M Dixon and Neal M Janey Jr to exhibit them.

In March the Catonsville, Md.-based lawyers filed a $20 million lawsuit upon behalf of a Baltimore police officer who accused at least four of his comrade officers of using a search warrant obtained with a perjur affidavit to split into his home and clinch him and his wife at gunpoint.

And in February, Dixon and Janey won a $1 million jury award in Baltimore City Circuit Court for an somewhat advanced in life man who was arrested and exhausted 28 hours at the Central Booking and Intake Facility after reporting his van stolen.

Dixon and Janey are themselves former Baltimore police officers. the pair finished college while patrolling the ways of Baltimore, went to law academy while still working for the force and then joined the police department's Office of Legal Affairs. And from there, they the couple worked briefly as prosecutors before launching their be in possession of practice in 2003.

Dixon and Janey exhausted two years working with Janey's father, former city solicitor Neal M Janey, defending the police department against misconduct lawsuits.

"On a personal horizontal I get no great satisfaction without of filing complaints against police officers," the younger Janey, 33 said. "I have sufficiency of friends still in the police department."

Solicitor's son

The sum of two units who had met each other at the police department, unfolded a friendship at the state's attorney's office.

Dixon started at the Baltimore Police Department in 1993 for a like reason he could afford to finish his undergraduate step at the University of Maryland, community Park.

Janey joined the department in his junior year at Morgan State University, spending his nights patrolling the roads of the Western District while still attending classes.

Police work started Janey thinking about law institute In particular, it was single arrest that's still lodged in his memory.

He had arrested a young man for buying individual bag of marijuana. The man "was a little slow; I wouldn't say he was retarded, on the other hand he was a little slow" Janey said.

The case was transferred to Baltimore City Circuit Court, where the man declined a next to the first offer of probation before discernment and chose to represent himself at trial.

He was ground guilty and received a month's jail time.

"It was that day that made me say, 'I really want to be an attorney; I can't believe this just happened,'" Janey said. "I had witnessed hardened criminals not proceed to jail, so to diocese somebody who had just purchased individual bag of marijuana go to jail for 30 days - I just couldn't comprehend it."

He registered at the University of Maryland place of education of Law and graduated in 2001

Following graduation, Janey stayed with the force, working in the legal affairs section below Malone.

Like Dixon, Janey said he did not "have a apportionment of opportunities to try cases, to win out into the courtroom." He left the department in 2002 and went to the state's attorney's office.

There, according to an e-mail from Baltimore City State's Attorney Patricia C Jessamy, the sum of two units future partners were "passionate prosecutors" who "brought insight and perspective to their piece of works as prosecutors from their experience and service as police officers."

Sharing a shingle

While Janey and Dixon the one and the other said Jessamy was a great bos and that they derive pleasure fromed the work, both felt constrained because they were involved in sole criminal cases.

The sum of two units began to think of private practice.

"Tim always wanted to do it, and he always wanted to be in a small firm," Janey said.

His possess first thought was to pass to a large law firm, and he applied to several, he says - on the contrary none of them hired him.

And although the meditation of venturing out in a two-person firm was "slightly frightening" to Janey, Dixon said he was confident from the beginning.

"I have this belief in the first cause that he always takes care of me" Dixon said.

In 2003 Janey & Dixon uncloseed its doors.

"It kind of worked without that we had the same aspirations at the same time, and we happened to be in the same place," Janey said.

Clients slowly trickled in via referrals from police officers as well as other lawyers and family and friends.

"Most of them have a perception that if you got arrested, you did something wrong" Dixon said. "That's until it happens to their kid - or to them."

'A fair shot'

Now, Dixon and Janey are careful not to allow the police misconduct cases define their practice.

Those cases are alone 20 percent of their practice, the lawyers said, with the majority of the cases coming on the outside of criminal and civil defense work and personal injury law.

"I don't diocese them as one-dimensional lawyers," said People's consultation Patricia A. Smith, who worked with Dixon and Janey as a interchange of opinion for the police department. "My feeling from their work, from what I have observ is that it's real well-rounded."