Oops; I should have said “allegedly”, since police claim that ‘there was no evidence that the officers caused it. Perhaps he committed suicide in the van….
Sorry; I’ve been working on an entirely different #BlackLivesMatter story, and got waylaid by President Choom Gang‘s garbage, and now this. It’s wicked bad, so be prepared.
It’s seriously bad for ‘peace officers’ when even the media question their version of events, and publish a suspicious timeline and note that thirty minutes are not accounted for.
On April 14, the FreethoughtProject had posited that cops may have given him ‘a nickel ride’, but what happened in far worse than they imagined.
From cbslocal.com:
“William “Billy” Murphy Jr., the attorney for the Gray family released the following statement: “On last Sunday morning at about 8am, the police chased Freddie Gray, a 27 year old healthy man, without any evidence he had committed a crime. His take-down and arrest without probable cause occurred under a police video camera, which taped everything including the police dragging and throwing Freddy into a police vehicle while he screamed in pain. While in police custody, his spine was 80 percent severed at his neck. He lapsed into a coma, died, was resuscitated, stayed in a coma and on Monday, underwent extensive surgery at Shock Trauma to save his life. He clung to life for seven days and died today at approximately 7am. We believe the police are keeping the circumstances of Freddie’s death secret until they develop a version of events that will absolve them of all responsibility. However, his family and the citizens of Baltimore deserve to know the real truth; and we will not stop until we get justice for Freddie.”
Citizen video. Always film the police or their version will likely stand as ‘the truth’.
A few more Bad Apples will be investigated by the PTB.
May you some day rest in peace, Freddie, and your family and friends find comfort. May justice be served in some small measure.
[Updated]
From the WSJ, ‘Baltimore Officials Begin Criminal Investigation into Freddie Gray’s Death’
It’s behind a pay wall, but I dug it out of the google cache. A few pithy paragraphs:
“I want citizens to know exactly how it happened and if necessary, I will ensure we will hold the right people accountable,” Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said at City Hall, flanked by Police Commissioner Anthony Batts.
The city’s chief prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby, is involved in the probe of an unknown number of city police officers who took part in Freddie Gray’s arrest on April 12, city officials said. [snip]
Much about the case remained unclear on Sunday, including why Mr. Gray was taken into custody. At the City Hall news conference, Deputy Police Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez said he was arrested in a part of West Baltimore with drug activity and that officers believed he was involved in criminal acts.
Police have said Mr. Gray tried to flee officers before he was arrested. [snip]
In October, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services announced it would review the Baltimore Police Department’s use-of-force policies and practices, a move requested by Ms. Rawlings-Blake and Mr. Batts.”
Meanwhile, from the AP:
“Baltimore police were conducting a criminal investigation Sunday into the death of a man injured in their custody, and the mayor vowed to ensure the city held “the right people accountable.”
“It’s a two-part investigation. One is a criminal case, for Mr. Gray and also the officers. We always have that component in there to determine whether there is criminal culpability,” Rodriguez said. [snip]
On Sunday, Rodriguez was asked if Gray was injured in the van.
“That is truly what we want to find out. There was no evidence — I can say with certainty — we have no physical, video or any other evidence that an altercation,” resulted in injury, he said. “The question is how, and why and if anything contributed from our agency how we can prevent that.”
The department, an independent review board and the Baltimore prosecutor’s office will investigate the case, Batts said.”
But here’s the clincher:
“Officers and other witnesses have been interviewed, Rodriguez said. However, not everyone has been interviewed, Rodriguez noted, saying the officers who are subjects of the criminal investigation have a right not to potentially incriminate themselves. He said that if happened, it could “taint” the criminal investigation.”
Let it never be said that the officers’ statements taint the investigation, oh, no.
[Updated]
New citizen video by Kevin Moore, who was asleep in his home the morning of April 12, when his uncle yelled to him: “the police are tazing Freddie.” Moore was a friend of Freddie. “They folded him up like he was Origami.”
@jamalhbryant 41m41 minutes ago
According to ACLU in last 4 years 109 have lost their lives in MD after encounters with police! It’s gotta stop! #freddiegray
Some police admissions via CNN:
(CNN)—Freddie Gray did not get timely medical care after he was arrested and was not buckled into a seat belt while being transported in a police van, Baltimore police said Friday.
Police Commissioner Anthony Batts told reporters there are no excuses for the fact that Gray was not buckled in as he was transported to a police station.
Five days after Gray’s death and amid ongoing protests, police officials acknowledged mistakes were made during and after his arrest.
Gray, who was stopped April 12 after a foot pursuit through several housing complexes, should have received medical attention at the scene of his arrest, said Deputy Police Commissioner Kevin Davis. A witness said the man was yelling and indicated he was having difficulty breathing.
Batts told reporters in an afternoon news conference: “We know our police employees failed to get him medical attention in a timely manner multiple times.”
Still no explanations of why they followed him, beat the crap out of him on the ground, reckoned ‘made eye contact’ was grounds, or any of that. Police claim they are looking through police videos, and did release some ten or eleven neighborhood CC tapes that show…absolutely nothing, as far as I can tell.
Baltimore Sun’s ‘The 45-minute mystery of Freddie Gray’s death’. Yes, all those extra minutes…failure to provide radio calls, secure CC tapes from businesses, now gone, etc.
Protestors are gathering in Baltimore, hoping to ‘shut it down!’. Rebelutionary_Z and others say they’ll be liveStreaming events, assumedly at #FreddieGray.
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
The techno-fix of Cop Cams may cause a few more Cops to be prosecuted but it obviously hasn’t reduced their hunger for violence one bit. This sends a clear message to the Skinnies that the Man rules the streets especially in the Blackistans of the Homeland.
The sad fact is that most people don’t care about or worse yet some even support this exercise of authority.
the weird thing to me is that sometimes the police release body and dash-cam video as *defenses* for the killings, as in james boyd’s flagrant execution. now in the case of laquan mcdonald, the chicago cops chose to pay off his family rather than release the videos. $5 million was deemed not too steep to hide the evidence of their murdering cops.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/mary-mitchell/7/71/518878/laquan-mcdonald-video-settlement-police-shooting
but the payouts may eventually cause those in power to say: Stop It Now, or the PDs being put under consent decrees and monitoring. but no, few care, but as i said, when even the local media are asking ‘wtf?’, that helps, at least incrementally.
but ‘reforming the police’ is a bogus meme. i haven’t read this but from ta-nehisi coates, i’ll stick it in, and hope it’s good. there’s just too bloody much to read, so i grab links, email links to myself, and tra la la.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-myth-of-police-reform/390057/?utm_source=SFFB
the crux of ta-nehihi’s piece seems to be this, and I’ll need some time to mull it over:
“Authority, claims Nisbet, is a matter of relationships, allegiances, and association and is “based ultimately upon the consent of those under it.” Power, on the other hand, is “external” and “based upon force.” Power exists where allegiances have decayed or never existed at all. “Power arises,” writes Nesbit, “only when authority breaks down.”
African Americans, for most of our history, have lived under the power of the criminal-justice system, not its authority. The dominant feature in the relationship between African Americans and their country is plunder, and plunder has made police authority an impossibility, and police power a necessity.”
i’ve been pleased to red that he’s in favor of reparations, as well. (the plunder hyperlink)
added on edit: as to most people either not caring, or supporting such killings: yes, or if they care, it’s not a priority, nor do they believe that it could ever happen to them. (classist, but so.) but it’s my job to help them care, even if just by blogging. that my.fdl made a far greater signal boost than here is undeniable.
I wish I could be less cynical about this subject but even the payouts are little more than Blood Money that comes not from the perpetrators or those in power but from the victims fellow subject’s taxes.
Consent decrees are another grotesque farce, these killers need more training? The Cops do despise CD’s as PC interference in their mission and easily design ways around them or just ignore them until they expire. We have seen this here and around the country for thirty years.
The only thing I have observed that the Cops have learned lately is to empty their weapons into their victims to insure the Fear Factor defense.
yes, many consent decrees have been shelved in derision, some mayors have appealed them, and some of them (but not all) won their appeals. :too expensive to implement!” is the biggie. i’d thought some of those ignored decrees had led to putting a few PDs under federal receivership, including oakland, but it seems not to have been so. they came up with the negotiated plan that allowed one monitor (not the precise term) to be able to fire and hire a chief. and that’s how oakland got the former head of internal affairs as chief.
and yes, it seems that the monitor in abq signed off the weak protocols of the citizen review board there. and yes, many city councils have money appropriated for civil suits brought against cops, so yes, it’s akin to blood money.
but again: not all police departments are killing with such regularity, and a few have stopped. so there must be some combinations of public pressure, civil awards, bad PR, and other ingredients that lead to that outcome.
baltimore paid out close to six million between 2011-2014, and sure, taxpayers footed the bill *and were robbed* of other projects that might have benefited ordinary people.
heh, but when ya think that bill bratton went to LA to *fix* the police/community enmities under a consent decree, one has to be pretty bloody skeptical of them.
With the Grate Equivocator, it is more apt to characterize Amerikan ghettos as Barackoons in coast-to-coast USchwitz; wherein chief “law-enforcer” and E卍ceptional choomer Barry-0 hisbadself, can prejudice with impunity (STILL NOT Impeached!) ala the following PRIOR to Manning’s show trial!
Why expect any grater ‘integrity’ from the Barneys?
that must have been the one in which he declared manning guilty of treason; it was hard to hear. funny, we can agree with officer friendly obama’s decimated the constitution, though. ;-)
What happened to Mr. Gray is inexcusable. I want to know how he got injured, of course, but I also want to know why, when it was obvious he couldn’t walk and was barely responsive — after the wagon stopped in order to apply further restraints to him (exactly what does that mean?) — medical attention wasn’t called immediately.
What is it with police who refuse to give first aid (though they are all, each and every one, trained in first aid and many are certified EMTs), who don’t call for first aid, or who prevent first aid workers from tending injured and dying victims?
Of course, it’s policy. They are almost never disciplined in any way for letting victims bleed out or what have you, simply because their departments expect them not to render any kind of aid, not to call for medical aid, and to prevent aid workers from attending their victims until the “scene is secured.”
They aren’t disciplined because they are following protocol.
Policies can be changed overnight. There is no law of nature that says police have to behave the way they do toward their victims, and quite a few PD have instituted policies which require police to call for medical attention immediately when they shoot someone or otherwise obviously injure them or “the subject” evidences any form of physical/mental distress. These policies aren’t always followed, but they do exist.
Apparently Baltimore does not have such policies, or if they do, they are followed only to the extent officers choose to follow them.
In the case of Mr. Gray, medical aid was only called a half hour after the man was put in the back of the van the second time, in other words, a half hour or more after it was evident he was in severe distress, couldn’t walk or stand on his own, and was barely responsive.
My own sense is that he was injured in the initial take down by police, but at that time, it wasn’t obvious how severely he was injured. He was probably further injured in the van, either by falling or by some form of extension/compression (bouncing around on rough streets could have done it) which compounded the injury he sustained in the take down, leaving him essentially paralyzed. Eventually in a coma. And then dead.
From what I’ve seen, it looks like the police thought he was faking, much as prison guards like to pretend all their inmates are faking when they may actually be in severe distress, and as we’ve seen over and over again, the subsequent neglect of victims leads to their deaths.
Policies of medical neglect are very widespread, but they are not written in stone. They can be and they must be changed. Once changed, they must be enforced.
RIP Freddie Gray — you and all other victims like you deserved better.
you may be right that his initial injuries were exacerbated by bouncing, etc. in the van, but it’s as likely that the ‘additional restraints’ caused them. i can’t find the descriptions of the surgeries performed on him again, but one was on his ‘voicebox’ (larynx). was billy murphy’s intentional use of *severing* to mean internally, or externally? we may know eventually.
it’s noteworthy to me that plenty of msm outlets have picked up the story by this morning the atlanta black star had these excerpts:
“Witnesses say police stopped the vehicle and took him out of the vehicle for reasons that are unknown to us and put him back in the vehicle,” Murphy told the media. “Now we hear from reliable sources that they may have stopped two or three more times and taken the man out of the vehicle or dealt with the man in some kind of way in the vehicle before taking him to the Western District.”
Police have not released any video of the incident, including civilian video that has been shown on local news outlets.
But a key question remains unanswered: Why did the officers approach Gray to begin with?
Gray had compiled several drug convictions in his 25 years and had a trial scheduled for May 21 on new drug charges stemming from an arrest in December.”
i’d think the mayor and the chief should know what their policy on medical help is, and whether or not they ever enforce it, if it exists. is there video from inside the van?
freddie gray’s screams of pain were horrific. and the woman who shot the video was trying to tell them that they’d bloody well broken his leg; the angle at which it was torqued must have been excruciating.
head toward the light, mr. gray, and rest all you need.
the guardian has copies of the arrest papers filed with the court, as did the baltimore sun early today.
“A man who died with a broken neck following his arrest in Baltimore “suffered a medical emergency” inside a police van after being detained without a notable struggle, according to court documents.
Freddie Gray was “arrested without force or incident” after a knife was found in one of his pockets and only required hospitalisation due to something that happened while he was being transported in a wagon to a nearby police station, according to an account by officer G Miller.
Billy Murphy Jr, an attorney for Gray’s family, said the charge for possessing a hidden knife did not explain why Gray was chased and searched in the first place.”
Murphy said Gray’s arrest ought to have been captured by two overhead city surveillance cameras.
“I want to see that tape,” he said. “Because a picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth 10,000 words.”
Relatives of Gray told the Guardian on Sunday they wanted the US Department of Justice and FBI to take control of the investigation into how he was injured.”
court docs
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1995734-freddie-gray-charging-documents.html
Arrested for running away from cops while owning an out-of-sight switchblade.
After reading how some groups in Texas are addressing this problem with the Power/Authority of the State I discovered some interesting differences in the actions of two disparate political ideologies on this issue, Liberals and Libertarians.
Liberals have been reacting to these outrages by talking, organizing, seeking media coverage and demanding Statist solutions such as new laws, oversight, technical fixes, and political promises from the Democrat Party to do something about the problem. It’s ironic that they are asking/begging/demanding the same Power Structure that enables this power and authority to lighten their oppression or at least ‘Stop The Killing’
Some of those whacky Libertarians in Texas have taken a different approach and are acting directly to confront the Power/Authority of the State. They are exercising their First and Second Amendment rights directly by organizing citizen patrols to track, observe and record police activity involving all citizens in a variety of situations involving the police. Some of them are armed but there has been no armed confrontations or gunplay. Some of them are verbally aggressive towards the police and some even wear police hats with pig ears but this is just more acting to let the Cops know they won’t be intimidated by their unconstitutional power and authority.
It seems to me that the AA people most affected by this suppression and the Liberal groups supposedly assisting them might learn something from these tactics. They might apply them, probably best to leave the guns out, and confront the Cops daily in many situations before they kill someone, not after the bodies are laying in the streets.
The fact is that too many Liberals and AA leaders still see the State as the only answer to their problems while the Libtards and others see the State as the problem.
which Texicans and where, peter? not cliven bundy, that’s nevada, eh? but you may be speaking of people of the sagebrush rebellion camp, although they’ve gone by other names like ‘patriot rebellion’ over the decades.
i will say that the ‘different roads’ post i wrote featured a few groups and thoughts outside the mainstream blackLivesMatter groups, but one answer to your thinking is: they are all white. bug difference, imo. and at least around here many of the elected officials are those same tea party-ish folks, and our newspaper is full of their letters to the editor and even guest editorials.
and around here, they darned tootin’ are all armed, including with conceal carry permits..
where do you read they photograph the cops? interesting.
The Free Thought Project and Cop Block are the two groups I read about and they are open to anyone. One story was about two Hispanic members who had run-ins with the Cops while exercising their rights. I think they mentioned support for BlackLivesMatter but whatever their other beliefs and alliances may be they are showing leadership and action on this issue.
The Cliven Bundy showdown was telling in a number of ways and involved armed militias, some reporters are trying to brand the Cop Block people as vigilantes. I can’t sympathize with Bundy but when I read some of the concerns listed by those groups many were identical to what many other people express about the State. .I can’t support their methods or solutions but it was interesting how quickly the Liberal Media and blogs started calling them terrorists and sided with the power/authority of the State.
before i go ll high dudgeon, please let me explain why i’m about to. i wasted my time trying to find links i’ve brought recently, for one thing. for another, i am slow in RL’s many chores, both chosen and natural, given to almost maximum pain (which can make me a bit cranky), so my time online is increasingly reduced. not only to post here, answer comments, but also to try to sort out people who want to register to be authors, but haven’t found the way, even with my hints and clues, but researching for other coming posts whose subjects i care about.
so: when i’ve provided many links to copblock, the free thought project, and countercurrent news in so many diaries here re: the huey newton brigade, the ‘disarm the police’ coalition, the new black panthers, yada, yada, i will say that you must not read the links, and it’s supremely frustrating altogether.
yes, you are the most revolutionary person here, and you believe you’re correct, even to your touting that the ferguson protestors join IS, regardless that they are often baptists, for goodness sake. good night; i’m exhausted.
Sorry you are feeling so cranky so get some rest. I didn’t actually recommend that the Ferguson protestors join the IS just that they might get more attention if they converted to Islam and that I thought it was ironic that they could also receive more justice under Sharia law. BTW Malcolm and Ali were probably Baptists or some derivative before they converted to Islam.
As you have probably noticed I don’t rely on links and I don’t expect you to provide them, I usually mention the sources I read and anyone interested can easily look them up. I’m just a commenter with opinions and being the most radical person on the sites I frequent today is not a great feat.
I want to encourage people to think for themselves and not rely so much on what the Chattering Classes feed us even if it sounds good. No one has to become a Libertarian to think about using the tactics employed by the Cop Block or any other group. Cliven Bundy will not stop by to chat even if you show support for the work of the Cop Block.
I suppose you have already read about the dismissal of the charges in the Rekia Boyd case, I have some opinions about that also.
wow, thanks, marym. the text was: “@BrianToddCNN 36m36 minutes ago”; i’ll add:
Dramatic scene: children join protestors for #FreddieGray- sitting on street, blocking major intersection. #Sitroom
and ché had been opining about PDs and their failures to provide emergency medical help. this video from 2013 comes with a warning: “Cops Arrest Man for “Sagging Pants” Tase Him, Leave Him Face Down in Cell Until He Died”
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops-arrest-man-sagging-pants-tase-him-leave-face-cell-died/#AWMQUfDOeWTzecsw.99
one could begin to wonder how many cops are sociopaths.
Wendy Dear.
Ya helped me figure out copy and paste for real. LOL- watch out. Here i come. :)
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2015/03/08/police-brutality-and-city-hall
the x vandals video sure added some punch, my stars. please forgive my addled brain, but is this a different paper than the one you’d published in before?
but yes, you are a Copy-Paste Demon, now! look what i created it! good to see a few folks commented, and all those, in favor. good on you, michael cavlan. but ah, wendydavis knows how to googledy-bing like nobody’s business, yessir!
update on the freddie gray assassination, fwiw:
“But not everyone is pleased by the presence of protesters. A statement from the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3 compared the demonstrations to a “lynch mob.”
“While we appreciate the right of our citizens to protest and applaud the fact that, to date, the protests have been peaceful, we are very concerned about the rhetoric of the protests. In fact, the images seen on television look and sound much like a lynch mob in that they are calling for the immediate imprisonment of these officers without them ever receiving the due process that is the constitutional right of every citizen, including law enforcement officers,” it read.”
Pfffft; the only effective unions are police unions. Wow; how ironic./s
Feds getting involved
“The increasing public pressure comes as the Department of Justice announced it was opening an investigation into the case.
A spokesman said the agency is investigating whether Gray’s civil rights were violated during the April 12 arrest.
An autopsy found that Gray died from a spinal cord injury, but Baltimore Deputy Police Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez told reporters Monday that there is no indication how the injury occurred.”
they see protestors as “lynch mobs”? pot, meet kettle.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/22/us/baltimore-freddie-gray-death/index.html
added on edit: but surely this will help: ‘Maryland gov. sends state troopers to Baltimore as protesters crowd City Hall‘.
a big rally is planned for saturday. good.
and the prosecutor in the rekia boyd case is being lambasted for intentionally filing the wrong, and lesser charges that resulted in a directed verdict of not guilty. yeppers.
I doubt the prosecution in the Boyd case is feeling much pain form whomever is doing this lambasting, he/she is probably chuckling about how easily the rubes were manipulated by the system. If the Boyd family had a lawyer he or she should be lambasted and run out of town on a rail for letting this charade proceed with the family’s support and expectations of anything but a directed acquittal.
‘She’; states attorney anita alvarez. the lambasting is coming from other prosecutors and defense attorneys, partially due to her own history of knowing what charges need to be pursued, given servin’s actions were not ‘reckless’ in the least. plus; the judge pretty much said that when he issued his directed verdict.
don’t know that the boyd family had an attorney, but they sure will now. rekia’s brother is saying that the family begged alvarez to charge him with murder I or II. alvarez is up for re-election in june; might be at least a little bit interesting. but then: it’s chicago, so maybe not.
DemocracyNow! “”Running While Black”: Protests Swell over Death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore Police Custody”
Wanna bet how many po-po will be ‘doing crowd control’ today?
(to see Tweets whole, hold down Conrtol while pressing -, then +)
@Nettaaaaaaaa · 2h2 hours ago
Baltimore PD. no name tags. #FreddieGray
CNN’s reporting 4500 to 5000 people.
So many great things as the people of Baltimore rise up.
I was hoping they’d shut down Camden Yards, and sure enough, there they are. The police lies are being exposed one by one, and the utter failure to provide medical attention when it was called for is the damning evidence that Freddie Gray was murdered by neglect as much as by the acts of the police.
And as we’ve seen over and over again in other cases, delaying or refusing medical treatment to injured victims of police violence and for inmates is a leading cause of death. Every case is deliberate homicide.
There have been so many of them, there’s little doubt that delay and neglect are policy, regardless of what written police policies say.
The killing has got to stop. Timely medical attention is necessary to preserve the lives of victims of police violence. As we see so often, though, police do not value any lives but their own.
Every time a police union spokes person opens his/her mouth, the reputation of the police falls further into the toilet. “Lynch mob?” No, not exactly…
oh, stuff and bother; the site orcs ate my comment (when will they ever learn?). let me see if i can reconstruct a shorter version:
i loved that drawing of lynch mobs entirely. but as for ‘failure to provide medical attention’, i wonder if it’s not policy *per se*, but whispered among the Thin Blue Liners that “dead suspects” tell no tales.
i’ve commented in several different venues today, and am a bit conused at the end of the day. had i mentioned here that commissioner batts claims that the van had no video, but that he is ‘reviewing all extant police videos’?
the unions serve the police state masters, and yes, they are losing credibility, but man: the power. likely they’ll be doing some (ahem) extensive gotv for anita alvarez. and oh, fuck me: look at this travesty of justice; somehow, this one got to me. never mind, too many to count got to me.
http://revolution-news.com/grand-jury-clears-officers-in-shooting-death-of-mentally-ill-jason-harrison/
Fuck ben jacobs: “More than 100 officers — wearing helmets, gloves and vests and carrying batons — formed a wall along several blocks of Pratt Street, and began to make arrests. State police in full tactical gear were deployed to the city to respond to a crowd that was becoming unruly.
Protesters shouted: “Killers!” and “You can’t get away with this!” and “Hands up don’t shoot!” Some threw rocks, water bottles, even hot dog buns and condiments at police mounted on horses, smashed windows at local businesses and looted at least two convenience stores.”, yada, yada.
My limited understanding is that Baltimore does have official policies regarding providing timely medical attention to people like Mr. Gray, and policies regarding detainee transport/safety, policies which were ignored or violated in this case (and rumor has it, in many others.)
This happens because police in Baltimore and many other places suffer no substantive consequences for violations of policy, even when it leads to the injury or death of inmates or suspects. Police do not value any lives but their own, and no one they feel like listening to is telling them they must value anyone’s life but their own.
The people of Baltimore are not taking this shit lying down. Racism is no stranger to Baltimore, any more than it’s a stranger in St. Louis. But it has been my impression that the black people of Baltimore are… how to put this… both bolder and angrier. They have ample reason. More than ample reason…
The unconscionable death of Freddie Gray was the last straw. No more. This ends now. Stop the killing.
That’s the thing. The killing can stop today. All it would take is the order to stop it — and obedience to the order by the cops.
The only way to compel obedience is if there are consequences for disobeying, and as we’ve seen, when there are no consequences, police do not obey.
They haven’t been following policy directives in Baltimore, and they seem to hold the mayor and police commissioner in contempt. The question is, now what?
(Oh yes, and last night’s violence was all on the part of the police. All of it.)
Mayor hyphenated indicated that there is such policy, and noted that it’s been disregarded before (someone mentioned a death by same in 2004), an even said in one early interview that she’d been asking the justice department to open an investigation into the PD.
you’re likely just right in your characterizations of blacks in baltimore, as this has all been in their lives forever for many of them, and they have an edge about them that will serve them well, i think. one man said they’d learned not to even go outside on work breaks, lest they be busted for loitering or some such.
i got waylaid online earlier, so i haven’t checked the overnight reports on the hashtag (never, ever, imgagined i’d be following bloody hashtags on twitter, oy.)
Marym linked to this history of baltimore ‘rough rides’ on mason’s ‘freddie gray’ diary. yes, lots of hideous history. but this is exactly what they author says about getting medical help for ‘miscreants’:
“Department policy governing “persons in police custody” now requires officers to use seat belts to “prevent the detainee from maneuvering out of the restraint and possibly causing injury to himself/herself or others.” It also says officers are required to take detainees to the nearest medical facility upon request.”
upon.request. and when did ‘now’ happen?
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-gray-rough-rides-20150423-story.html#page=1
i’m finished for the night, but mr. wd reminded me of this piece by d’angelo that seems to feature some very different musical construction, and perhaps intentional disharmony. good night, sleep well and dream well..
overnight: (deray’s vines make the page jump around like crazy)
and yes, two dudes smashed windows in two cop cars; oh well.
police in riot gear were massed at the site of the funeral. some high school kids walked out of class, and were tear-gassed for their deeds. all hell has broken loose, or a least…enough hell. yep, kids threw bottles and bricks apparently, some cops are injured, but most on the hashtag are understandably philosophical about it, given…everything.
baltimore is of course heavy with mainstream media, none providing any context but thick on the ‘looting, violence, riot!’ memes.
FILE UNDER: highly interesting (I’d thought it was satire, srsly):
we know now which side Miz Mayor-hyphenated it on:
“The problem of violence, then, is not the problem of a few rioters and rebels, but the problem of a whole social structure which is outwardly ordered and respectable, and inwardly ridden by psychopathic obsessions and delusions.”
~ Thomas Merton
Merton was right:
…”ridden by psychopathic obsessions and delusions”….
you may know of merton, but for those who don’t: he was a trappist monk, mystic, and buddhist, wrote prolifically on social justice and more. it’s not hard to get lost in his writing for hours at a time, even if you’ve assigned yourself…other tasks. ;-)
but yep, he was so right.
Shaun King says this is the most important post he’s done on Freddie Gray’s assassination: ‘A complete takedown of the lies spread by the Baltimore PD and Washington Post on Freddie Gray’; and boy, howdy, does he eviscerate them.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/30/1381400/-A-complete-takedown-of-the-lies-spread-by-the-Baltimore-Police-Washington-Post-on-Freddie-Gray#