Dana Mulhauser, an experienced prosecutor who currently serves as St. Louis County’s top police misconduct watchdog, will lead the Maryland Attorney General’s newly established Independent Investigations Unit, according to a Monday announcement from Attorney General Brian E. Frosh.
The Independent Investigations Unit was created as part of the Maryland General Assembly’s push for police reform this year: Senate Bill 600, sponsored by Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Chairman William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery), set up a process to independently investigate use of force incidents resulting in death through the new unit. Mulhauser will have a “critical role in shaping the policies and protocols” of the unit as its first chief, according to the announcement.
Mulhauser has served as the founding chief of St. Louis County’s Conviction and Incident Review Unit since 2019, according to the release. That unit reviews police shootings and prosecutes cases involving excessive force and police misconduct. She also previously investigated and prosecuted police misconduct, human trafficking and hate crime cases across the country for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
“I have devoted my career to investigating excessive-force cases because I believe that they are among the most crucial tests of our values and commitments to each other,” Mulhauser said in the release. “I am honored to join the effort to put Maryland’s new police reforms into practice, and I look forward to helping build a statewide system that will examine fatal incidents with rigor and impartiality.”
Frosh said Mulhauser is the “ideal” person to head up the new Independent Investigations Unit.
“Dana brings a wealth of experience leading complex federal cases centering around law-enforcement misconduct,” Frosh said. “Her sense of fairness, ability to lead a team of investigators and prosecutors, and commitment to transparency makes her the ideal person to lead the Unit. We look forward to Dana joining our team.”
St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell said Mulhauser built “a robust and systematic process for investigating use-of-force cases” during her time leading the county’s Conviction and Incident Review Unit.
“I hate to lose her and know what a force we are losing in her, but I look forward to seeing her continue to do this vital work for the state of Maryland,” Bell said in a statement.
Bennett Leckrone
Reporter
Bennett Leckrone was a Report for America corps member at Maryland Matters through May 2022. He is a December 2019 graduate of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. Leckrone has interned at The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Columbus Dispatch, PennLive.com, The Dayton Daily News and The Troy Daily News.
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