In a Baltimore courtroom on Wednesday, a verdict that had been months in the making finally landed with the quiet force of accountability. Two police officers, Mordechai Mandelbaum and Menachem Rosenbloom, were found guilty of charges stemming from a violent encounter that began with a missing-parent call and ended with a surrendered man pepper-sprayed in the face and a web of false reports meant to hide the truth. The Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office announced the convictions, and the court’s decision cut through a story filled with dishonesty, laughter, and indifference. Officer Mandelbaum was found guilty of false statement, false report, and two counts of misconduct in office. Officer Rosenbloom was found guilty of second-degree assault and one count of misconduct in office. The charges are not technicalities. They are the legal system’s way of saying that a badge does not give anyone the right to lie, to hurt, or to mock a person who has already surrendered. For the residents of Baltimore, and especially for the man at the center of this case, the verdicts may feel like a rare moment of judicial clarity in a city that has seen too many cases where police violence goes unanswered. But the anger and pain of what happened on June 26, 2025, in the 700 block of East Chase Street, do not simply disappear with a guilty verdict. They linger in the details: two young children left alone, a father sprinting down city streets, an officer falling and choosing to turn a clumsy mistake into a manufactured attack, and a man with his hands up being sprayed again and again until he crumpled to the ground.
The trouble began as a call that is all too familiar to officers: police responded to East Chase Street and, at the conclusion of that call, noticed a man had left his apartment, leaving his two young children unattended. That is a serious concern in itself, and it may have justified a conversation, a report, or even an arrest. But what followed was not a careful, measured response. The man, whatever his reasons or his fears, took off on foot, andOfficer Rosenbloom began driving the patrol car with Officer Mandelbaum in the front passenger seat. They pursued him on foot around I-83, a chaotic and dangerous chase that put everyone at risk. At some point, Mandelbaum, who had gotten out of the car to run after the man, lost his balance and fell. It was an accident. It could have been a moment of humility, a moment when an officer quietly admitted that he had stumbled. Instead, Mandelbaum climbed back into the patrol car and did something far worse: he told Rosenbloom a lie. He said the man had “tripped” him and then “kicked” his foot. That lie was the spark that turned a foot pursuit into an assault. Rosenbloom immediately got on the radio and announced that the man was “going to be 10-30 for assault on police,” a coded warning that an officer had been attacked. In reality, the only thing that had been attacked was Mandelbaum’s pride. And then, according to court documents, the two officers laughed and joked about it, even suggesting that Rosenbloom was to blame for Mandelbaum’s fall because he should have been the one to “jump out” of the car and chase the man on foot. The laughter is perhaps the most chilling detail, because it shows that this was not a split-second mistake; it was a conscious choice to turn a minor embarrassment into a false narrative, and to treat the whole situation as a game.
The game turned violent a short time later, when the officers found the man again. By then, the man had been running, dodging traffic, and trying to escape. It would have been understandable for anyone in his position to be terrified, exhausted, and desperate. When he finally stopped, he did what officers always say they want a person to do: he stood in a corner behind residential buildings, raised both hands in the air, and surrendered. The chase was over. The man was not reaching for a weapon, not lunging at an officer, not posing any apparent threat. He was giving up. And yet, Officer Rosenbloom, who had exited the car and initiated another foot pursuit, chose to deploy pepper spray directly into the man’s face. There was no legal justification for it. The man immediately went to the ground, his body complying with the spray and the command. But Rosenbloom did not stop. He sprayed three more times. Four bursts of chemical agent into the face of a man who was already down, already compliant, already defeated. The image is visceral: a man’s eyes burning, his skin on fire, his hands no longer in the air but pressed against the ground, and still the spray keeps coming. It is hard to read that detail without flinching. It is harder still to think about how much that must have hurt, and how unnecessary it was. A third officer, Officer William Miller, arrived during the assault and aimed his service weapon at the man. Later, in his use-of-force review statement, Miller claimed that pointing a gun was necessary because the man “may have had a weapon” and because the man had already “assaulted another officer previously when trying to flee on foot on East Chase Street.” That claim rested on the same false foundation that Mandelbaum had built. There was no prior assault. There was only a lie.
Once the man was handcuffed and in custody, the officers did not reflect on what they had done. They did not check on the man, apologize, or stop to consider the two young children who had been left alone. Instead, according to court documents, they celebrated. Officer Mandelbaum approached Rosenbloom and said, “You made up for your bad tactics.” Rosenbloom replied, “I maced him like four times.” Mandelbaum then said, “On camera, I appreciate you for avenging me.” They were aware they were being recorded, and they still said it. They referred to a brutal, unjustified attack as payback, as if the man had personally insulted them and deserved to be punished. Rosenbloom tried to bolster the lie, claiming that the man “tried to scale” a 20-foot wall and that he was “too short to do it, so he came back down.” Officials later reported that the man never attempted to scale the wall. The lie was so unnecessary, so easily disproven, and so cruelly deployed, that it seems almost absurd. But this is what cover-ups look like in the real world: not clever conspiracy, but clumsy, arrogant fabrication. The cover-up continued after the arrest. Police Sergeant Steven Langher responded to Rosenbloom’s use-of-force report, and Mandelbaum repeated his false assertion: the man had assaulted him as soon as he left the patrol car. He told the same lie to Sergeant Langher at least three separate times, insisting that the man “kicked him.” He also told the on-scene medic the same story, making sure the false narrative was embedded in the official record. Rosenbloom’s own written use-of-force statement repeated the fiction, claiming that the man “had just attempted to climb over a 20-foot wall and escape police,” and that “Officer Mandelbaum reported that he thought he had been kicked and tripped by the subject when the foot pursuit initiated.” The word “thought” is revealing. Rosenbloom knew that Mandelbaum only thought he had been kicked. He knew it was a lie. But he wrote it down anyway, and he signed it.
The convictions did not happen by accident. Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan J. Bates credited months of investigation by his office’s Public Trust & Police Integrity Unit, working alongside the Baltimore Police Department’s Public Integrity Bureau. The partnership between prosecutors and detectives was essential, Bates said, to ensure the cases were investigated “fully and fairly.” In his statement, Bates delivered a message that reaches far beyond the two officers involved: “Police officers are entrusted with tremendous authority and a responsibility to uphold the law. When that authority is abused, through excessive force, false statements, or misconduct in office, it undermines public trust and threatens the integrity of our justice system. These guilty verdicts reaffirm that no one is above the law, and our office will continue to hold individuals accountable for their actions, regardless of their position or badge.” That statement is important, but it cannot erase the human cost of the incident. The man at the center of this story may have made a bad decision when he left his children alone and ran from police. But he was not given a chance to face that decision with dignity. He was chased, lied about, sprayed with chemicals, and treated as a punchline in a joke between officers. The two children he left behind were not at the scene, but their lives are now entangled with this case. They will grow up, perhaps, knowing that their father was the subject of a police cover-up, that his surrender was answered with violence, and that the officers who hurt him laughed about it.
Now, Officer Mandelbaum and Officer Rosenbloom await sentencing, scheduled for December 16. They face the possibility of losing their careers, their freedom, and their public standing. The verdicts send a clear message that the criminal justice system can hold officers accountable when they violate the law, but the case also leaves behind a series of uncomfortable questions. What if the officers had not been recorded? What if Sergeant Langher had not questioned the use of force? What if the Public Integrity Bureau had not worked with prosecutors to unravel the false statements? The incident on East Chase Street was not an isolated moment of panic. It was a series of deliberate choices: the choice to lie about a fall, the choice to escalate a pursuit into an assault, the choice to keep spraying a man who was already down, and the choice to cover it all up with false reports. The guilty verdicts are a necessary rebuke, but they are also a reminder of how easily the system can fail when officers decide that their own pride matters more than the truth. For Baltimore, a city that has struggled for years with the legacy of police violence and mistrust, this case offers a rare and important example of accountability. But true accountability is not just about convictions; it is about restoring the faith of residents who have heard too many promises before. The man who was sprayed with pepper spray, the children who were left alone, and the community that watches these cases unfold all deserve more than a conviction. They deserve a police force that does not need to be investigated to tell the truth, and a justice system that protects everyone, including those who surrender. As the sentencing date approaches, the officers will have to answer for their actions in a courtroom. But the damage they did will be felt long after the judge decides their fate, in the memory of a man who did the right thing and was punished for it, and in the hollow echo of four bursts of spray that should never have happened.