Five years after Freddie Gray unrest, MTA allows a look at Mondawmin videos
For five-and-a-half years, the Maryland Transit Administration has refused to let the public see surveillance camera video depicting the start of the 2015 unrest following the death of Freddie Gray.
This fall, the agency relented, granting TheBaltimoreSunexclusive access to scenes captured by surveillance cameras throughout the Mondawmin Mall transit hub.
TheMTAwouldonlyallowthetapestobe viewed and not copied. The Sun also visited the station and conducted interviews. The review determined the footage is as notable as much for what is not depicted as what is shown:
Theagencyrevealed, for the first time, that it does not have footage from seven of the 12 cameras during the crucial period of 2:30 to 4 p.m.
MTA could not explain why the recording servers weren’t working, despite what it said were repeated attempts to find emails, alerts or information technology logs from that time that would explain the lapse.
There were no disturbances at the transit station itself before it was shut down.
The footage largely matches previous accounts and transcripts given by MTA.
For years, officials have blocked the release of footage, citing security concerns.
However, all the source cameras for the tape are in plain view to anyone walking through the station.
Top agency officials said that their post-disturbance investigation relied far more heavily on local media footage of the
events than on their own security cameras.
In the security video, MTA police can be seen clearing people from the station within a minuteof a group of youth running through
it, at a time when officials say looting and rock-throwing wasoccurring ontheperiphery. Thatactivity cannot beobserved in view of the cameras, though hundreds of youth can be seen congregating away from the station.
A spokeswoman for the agency said all information on the video reviewed by The Sun was the actual footage reviewed by investigators at the time, andmatchesprevious timelines andtranscripts released bythe agency in the previous five years.
Since 2015, the incident has been the subject of dueling narratives: that teens intent on carrying out a “purge” that was allegedly advertised onsocial mediaflooded the transit station and attacked police; or that students whouse the transit hub to get homewerestrandedandprovokedbypolice when the station was shut down preemptively.
Neither police nor transportation officials have ever said who ordered the shutdown, nor has it been substantiated whether the “purge” meme was widely shared or had traction among youth. Elected leaders showed no interest in getting to the bottom of either question.
The tapes do nothing to answer the lingering question of who ordered the station closed in the first place.
Revelations about the gap in camera coverage, combined with the state’s long refusal to release the footage, are unlikely to endthe controversy over whathappened outside the station on April 27, 2015.
Whatevertheproblemswiththe cameras in the first hour were resolved by 4 p.m., when all 12 cameras recorded the events. Although what went on after that hour is already known.
Erin Henson, a spokeswoman for the MTA, said the seven cameras were on a separate server, but couldn’t say why there was only footage starting at 4 p.m.
“I tried to find IT records, and they weren’t there. I went through our email system searching for any kind of alert and there wasn’t any,” Henson said. She added that she spoke to a top police official and asked if heremembered; she said hedid not.
The footage from the five working cameras starting at 2:30 p.m. depicts a typical day at the outdoor station, with people of all ages shuffling to different bus stops, arriving from or getting on underground subway trains, or just passing through.
Tensions had been growing for weeks over Gray’s death April 19, with a series of protests, including one downtown that escalated into clashes on Saturday April 25. Gray’s funeral was held the morning of April 27.
City, police and school officials had been on alert about the possibility of a youth disruption at the mall, and police were assembled in the parking lot near the transit station in anticipation. The video begins with those officers out of view of the station’s cameras.
At around 2:47 p.m., MTA officers at the station watch with interest as a large group of students walk through the mall parking lot, south of the transit station. As many as 200 or more people head toward an area where police were arriving in vans.
At 2:55 p.m., a smaller group of youth run through the station, with five MTAofficers giving chase. The MTAhas said previously that around that time rocks were thrown at BPDofficersinriot gear, whomovedacross the bus loop, effectively closing it down. There is no clear vantage point confirming that account on the camera footage.
Around that time, a bus arrives and switches its display to “Notin service,” turning away a group of adults waiting to board. There are nodisruptive youth in view at the station.
Next, a group of MTA officers walks through the station around 2:56 p.m., with one waving her hand as if telling people to clear out — which is what happens next, as the station is virtually empty two minutes later.
At the same time, city officers in riot gear can be seen assembling at the western edge of the station, and another wave of youth run through the station.
One camera pans to Reisterstown Road, showing more than 100 young people congregating in the medianandtheparking lot of a Midas service station. People were still coming up the escalator at 3 p.m., but MTA officers close the station by shutting a gate one minute later.
More than 5,000 students transfer at the Mondawmin hub every day. Though the youth that day hadn’t been queued up in bus lines, shutting down the station eliminated that as an option. MTA officials note that they had made additional buses available three blocks awayat Druid Hill Park in an attempt to keep people from converging on the station, and alerted school officials so that the information could be relayed to students.
The students “were clearly not trying to catch transit,” Henson, the MTA spokeswoman, said, explaining there were plenty of transportation options available.
A Baltimore Police “bearcat” tactical vehicle drives up Reisterstown Road, causing people to scatter, regrouping when the vehicle leaves.
Thefirst observable instance of someone throwing an object at police comes around 3:06. AnMTAofficercanbeseenduckingas anobject sails byhim, andagroupofofficers briefly takes cover inside a kiosk. Around the same time, in a different area, a television cameraman is swarmed by youth and pulled to the ground and kicked, the video shows.
Several members of the media were on scene by this time, andwhathappenednext was broadcast from helicopters, on-theground cameras and cellphone videos. The group lingered and clashed with police, eventually moving south through neighborhoods. It wasn’t until 4:25 p.m. that they movedintotheintersection of Pennsylvania andNorthavenues, whereaCVSandpolice vehicles were set on fire.
In the months after the unrest, officials pointed fingers at each other regarding who shut down the station. The MTA said it came at the request of city police, who referred questions to the MTA. Then-Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said the call could have come from a commanderinthefield, thoughpolice never identified such a commanderdespiteparticipating in multiple “after-action” review of the day’s events.
One of those after-action reviews, by Johns Hopkins University and based on police radio communications, outlined violence taking place near the transit station but out of the view of its security cameras. At 2:45 p.m., a schools police officer said students were throwing rocks and bricks south of the station, and that a group was looting a 7-Eleven store on Liberty Heights Avenue, northwest of the station, at 2:50 p.m. Thatis also out of view of the Mondawmin cameras.
“Let’s start corralling these kids, and let’s start makingarrests,” oneofficersaid at 2:50 p.m.
Then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said the decision to close the station wasthe right call.
“Let’s say they’re open: What happens if that melee goes onto the subway tracks? What happens if somebody fell on the subway tracks? It was just a bad, bad situation,” she said in July 2015.
The cameras for which footage was available are all on the east end of the transit station, while the other seven cameras, which have footage available after 4 p.m., are along the bus loops.
Henson said that the agency never revealed that somecamerasweren’t recording before now because officials were focused on what information they had, and not what they did not.