Cameras in police vans will eliminate a blind spot, Dan Rodricks says

Last week, following the acquittal of Lt. Brian Rice in the death of Freddie Gray, some readers of The Baltimore Sun wondered how news reporters had overlooked a key element of the case: Gray’s ultimately fatal injury, they suggested, must have occurred before he was placed in the police van for his alleged “rough ride” through West Baltimore.

“Has anyone noticed the video that was shown on TV?” a reader wrote Sun reporter Kevin Rector. “The bicycle policeman was kneeling on Gray’s neck. My first thought was, ‘He’s going to break his neck.’ Check it out.”

Three weeks ago, following the acquittal of Officer Caesar Goodson, the driver of the van that carried Gray following his arrest, I received this note:

“I have long suspected Freddie Gray’s injury was NOT caused in the police van but during his arrest, when he was pushed down and one of the cops put his knee on Gray’s neck. You can see that in the video of Gray’s arrest, and also see that when he was being hauled over to the police van. His legs were dragging and he appeared in pain. Why that avenue of inquiry was never pursued, I don’t know.” Well, of course, it was. And yes, we “noticed the video that was shown on TV.”

I’ve watched two videos of Gray’s arrest on April 12, 2015, many times, and one of them has been viewed on The Sun’s website and other online venues millions of times. It shows Gray lying face-down on a sidewalk, held there by police officers, then being carried to a nearby van, dragging his feet, his left leg bent at a strange angle.

The first video I saw included audio of a woman yelling angrily at the cops about Gray’s leg, which appears limp. Gray moans loudly as three officers take him to the van.

First impression: I thought the officers had roughed Gray up, or that he had broken a leg when tackled during a foot chase.

Later, after hearing that Gray was in a coma at Shock Trauma, I figured, as many others did, that something far worse had happened. That limp leg in the video might have indicated a paralyzing injury.

But “far worse,” it turns out, happened inside the van, not on the sidewalk.

Apologies to those who have followed the trials of the Freddie Gray Six — now the Freddie Gray Three, following the acquittals of Rice, Goodson and Officer Edward Nero — but some people apparently missed the pivotal news about Gray’s autopsy.

The Maryland medical examiner concluded that Gray’s death resulted from a “high-energy injury” to his neck at some point during the ride in the van. The examiner compared Gray’s injury to the kind sustained in shallow-water diving incidents.

The autopsy made clear that Gray’s body showed no sign of injuries that might have resulted from a physical confrontation with police: “No deep muscle hemorrhage of the torso or extremities or fractures of the long bones of the extremities were identified. No injuries that would suggest the use of a neck hold, Taser deployment or physical restraint, other than wrist or ankle cuffs, were identified.”

Still, the belief persists — among readers of a paper that has done more Freddie Gray reporting than any other news organization — that police officers who chased and arrested Gray injured him on the street. And this after widely reported medical testimony in four trials, with yet another starting this week.

To some extent, it’s understandable. Video images are powerful and convincing. They make strong first impressions that last.

But first impressions can be incomplete, or skewed by prejudice, or just plain wrong.

Cellphone videos drew our attention to Freddie Gray. However, the videos did not document the injury that caused his death.

Dr. Carol Allan, assistant medical examiner, testified that Gray’s fatal injury occurred in the back of the police van. But, as she noted during the Goodson trial, there was no camera in the van.

“So,” Allan said, “we don’t know exactly how it happened.”

That’s the blind spot in the Freddie Gray case, and why we will probably never know how his injury occurred and, even more importantly, precisely when.

We don’t have a picture of Gray’s condition during the van’s journey. We don’t have an objective record of how the officers treated and spoke to him at the stops along the way. A video would have established whether a “rough ride” occurred.

It’s too late for Freddie Gray, but this spring the Baltimore Police Department rolled out 10 new vans and outfitted 13 others with multiple cameras to record detainees. It’s an upgrade that should have happened years ago, after the city started paying huge injury settlements for “rough rides.” The cameras should make police more mindful of how they treat the people they arrest. The cameras should complete the picture. They should eliminate the blind spot.