Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Baltimore Police Cite Presence of Minors in Defending Response to Unrest - New York Times

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Aftermath of Unrest in Baltimore

Aftermath of Unrest in Baltimore

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

BALTIMORE — Armored vehicles lined this battered city’s main thoroughfares and thousands of law enforcement officers and National Guard troops poured in to maintain order here on Tuesday, while residents toting brooms and trash bags turned out in droves to help keep the peace and clear broken glass and debris from a night of rioting and arson.

As sunset approached, with a citywide curfew set to go into effect in a few hours, demonstrators marched through the streets, chanting, “All night, all day, we’re gonna fight for Freddie Gray!” — a reference to the 25-year-old black man whose death, from a spinal cord injury sustained in police custody, set off the unrest. As the group made its way downtown, it was noisy but peaceful.

Earlier in the day, people of all ages and races had converged at the intersection of Pennsylvania and West North Avenues in blighted West Baltimore, where a CVS drugstore had been looted and burned. As rifle-toting officers in riot gear blocked the street, a group of men formed a human chain, putting themselves between officers and some angry young people.

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At one point, the crowd sang “Amazing Grace.” But tensions did flare briefly, when someone in the crowd threw bottles at the line of police officers.

“It’s sad, this don’t make no sense,” said Clarence Cobb, 48, one of many neighborhood residents who, describing themselves as brokenhearted, came out to survey the wreckage and clean up. “It comes to a point where you just got to take pride in your own neighborhood. This makes us look real bad as a city.”

Debate erupted over whether Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake had waited too long to ask Gov. Larry Hogan to send in the National Guard — and whether the city police, who confessed to being outnumbered and outflanked a day earlier, were underprepared.

The authorities said that 15 buildings and 144 cars had been set on fire during Monday night’s chaos, which began in Northwest Baltimore’s Mondawmin neighborhood and spread to other pockets of the city after morning funeral services for Mr. Gray, who was eulogized with soaring gospel music and impassioned calls for justice and peace. The police made 235 arrests. Nineteen police officers were injured, but by Tuesday, all had been treated and released.

Several hundred people marched through the city Tuesday evening, chanting, “We love Baltimore! We want peace!” Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

With schools closed and camouflage-clad National Guards members patrolling the streets, Baltimore struggled to find some sense of normalcy. The Baltimore Orioles, forced by the unrest to cancel a game against the Chicago White Sox, announced that the teams would play Wednesday at Camden Yards — but without fans, because the ballpark would be closed to the public.

In Washington, President Obama, making his first public remarks on the crisis here, denounced the rioters as “criminals and thugs” and said there was “no excuse” for the violence. He sought to distinguish it from the largely peaceful demonstrations that have unfolded since Mr. Gray died on April 19. Speaking in the Rose Garden, Mr. Obama said that he understood people “want answers,” and that the Justice Department was working with local law enforcement to find out what happened to Mr. Gray.

But, he said, “When individuals get crowbars and start prying open doors to loot, they’re not protesting, they’re not making a statement — they’re stealing. When they burn down a building, they’re committing arson.”

The police had begun gearing up for the violence Monday afternoon after word spread across social media of a call for high school students to “purge” — an apparent reference to the 2013 action horror movie “The Purge,” whose plot revolves around one night a year when, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., crime is legal and police, fire and medical emergency services are unavailable.

Residents cleaned Baltimore’s battered streets Tuesday as law enforcement officers stood guard. Matt Rourke/Associated Press

The police said Tuesday that what they expected to be a demonstration by high school students had quickly evolved; of the 235 arrests, they said, just 31 were juveniles. They also said that the number of young people had swelled because the area is a hub for eight schools, and students had emerged from buses.

“When we deployed our officers yesterday, we were deploying for a high school event,” the Baltimore Police spokesman, Capt. J. Eric Kowalczyk, told reporters here. “I don’t think there’s anyone that would expect us to deploy with automatic weapons and armored vehicles for 13-, 14- and 15-year olds.”

Most Baltimore officials, including Mayor Rawlings-Blake, had convened at the New Shiloh Baptist Church for Mr. Gray’s funeral, which let out shortly before the violence began. The mayor, saying the city had reacted “very swiftly,” defended herself.

“There’s always going to be armchair quarterbacks,” she said Tuesday, adding that she faced “very delicate balancing act” and had to be careful about “not escalating and increasing the problem” by creating a militarized atmosphere that could further inflame tensions. That was the case in Ferguson, Mo., after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in August.

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Cleaning Up Baltimore

Cleaning Up Baltimore

After a night of violent clashes with the police, protests, vandalism and arson, Baltimore residents aim to put their city back together.

By A.J. Chavar on April 28, 2015.

In death, Mr. Gray has taken his place along with Mr. Brown as a national symbol of police mistreatment of black men. His death set off a string of largely peaceful protests, although a march downtown did lead to scattered violence on Saturday night. But it renewed long-simmering tensions between residents of this majority black city and a police force with a history of aggressive, sometimes brutal, behavior.

Six Baltimore officers have been suspended without pay, and the police are investigating Mr. Gray’s death. Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts has said the results of the inquiry will be presented on Friday to the city prosecutor, who will determine whether to bring charges.

Even as 2,000 National Guard troops and police from multiple states came in to secure the streets, more protests were planned; college students calling themselves City Bloc said they would march to City Hall on Wednesday “to make young people’s voices heard over the many people characterizing the riots as the only way people are responding to the death of Freddie Gray.”

The crisis in Baltimore is as much a test for Mr. Hogan, a Republican whose election in this heavily Democratic state in November was a surprise, as for Ms. Rawlings-Blake, and there appeared to be some tension between them. The governor said as early as Saturday that he was prepared to declare a state of emergency, allowing him to call in the National Guard, when a march through downtown set off scattered nighttime violence.

The police were out Tuesday morning as buildings burned. Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

But he had to wait for the mayor to ask; she did so at about 6 p.m. Monday, roughly two hours after the rioting began.

“You could say: ‘Should she have called us a couple of hours earlier? Should we have made the call without her?’ ” the governor said on Tuesday. “But it wasn’t an issue on Saturday.”

Some said the police had exacerbated tensions by sending 200 to 300 officers to the Mondawmin Mall as school let out. “Having the cops showing up in riot gear just inflamed the situation,” said Melech Thomas, 27, a minister who works with youth in West Baltimore.

Policing experts said Ms. Rawlings-Blake was walking a delicate line, and some said they would much rather see a city take Baltimore’s cautious approach than react with the kind of militarized police presence used by Ferguson. Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a research group based in Washington, said, “It’s better to go in low-key and build up if necessary.”

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Timeline: Mapping the Clashes Between Baltimore Police and Protesters

Norman H. Stamper, the Seattle police chief who oversaw a harsh response to vandalism and demonstrations when the World Trade Organization met in that city in 1999, and who later disavowed those tactics, agreed.

“There is a sense of damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” he said. “I’m not saying Baltimore did everything right, but generally, when you get criticized for exercising restraint, that’s preferable to sort of a wanton, aggressive response.”

Throughout Tuesday, state troopers in riot gear and camouflage-clad National Guards members patrolled the Inner Harbor tourist district and around downtown Baltimore hotels.

Three hundred law enforcement officers from states including Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as the District of Columbia, arrived by nightfall. Governor Hogan said he had been in touch with the state’s insurance commissioner and the Small Business Administration about financial assistance to business owners who incurred losses.

As the city seeks to rebuild, some in Baltimore say the problems here run much deeper than Mr. Gray’s death and the conduct of the police.

Near the burned-out CVS, Robert Wilson, a college student who went to high school in Baltimore, said: “With the riots, we’re not trying to act like animals or thugs. We’re just angry at the surroundings, like this is all that is given to us, and we’re tired of this, like nobody wants to wake up and see broken-down buildings. They take away the community centers, they take away our fathers, and now we have traffic lights that don’t work, we have houses that are crumbling, falling down.”

Mr. Wilson said he had seen someone on television say, “This doesn’t feel like America.”

“And I’m like, ‘This is America!’ ” he said. “ ‘They just don’t want you to know!’ ”

Alan Blinder, Nikita Stewart, Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Ron Nixon contributed reporting from Baltimore, and Richard Pérez-Peña from New York.


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