City tense after violence
Obama condemns riots as National Guardsmen patrol Baltimore
Baltimore was a city on edge Tuesday as hundreds of National Guardsmen patrolled the streets against unrest for the first time since 1968, hoping to prevent another outbreak of rioting.
Maryland’s governor said 2,000 Guardsmen and 1,000 law officers would be in place overnight to try to prevent a repeat of the unrest that erupted Monday in some of the city’s poorest neighbourhoods and sent a shudder through all of Baltimore.
“This combined force will not tolerate violence or looting,” Gov. Larry Hogan said.
In a measure of how tense things were, the city was under a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. emergency curfew. All public schools were closed and the Baltimore Orioles cancelled their baseball game Tuesday night at Camden Yards.
And in what may be a first in baseball’s 145-year history — the Orioles announced Wednesday’s game would be closed to the public.
The streets were largely calm all morning and into the evening. But police with riot shields lined up shoulder to shoulder and kept close watch over a growing, chanting crowd of about 1,000 people at the corner where some of the worst violence took place the night before.
At the White House, U.S. President Barack Obama called the deaths of several black men around the country at the hands of police “a slow rolling crisis.” But he said there was “no excuse” for the violence in Baltimore, adding the rioters should be treated as criminals.
“They aren’t protesting. They aren’t making a statement. They’re stealing,” Obama said.
The real test Tuesday was expected after dark, with the start of the curfew.
The looting and rock- and bottlethrowing by mostly black rioters broke out just hours after the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who suffered a fatal spi- nal cord injury while in police custody. It was the worst such violence in the U.S. since the unrest that erupted last year over the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo.
Political leaders and residents called the violence a tragedy for the city and lamented the damage done by the rioters to their own neighbourhoods.
“The same community they say they care about, they’re destroying. You can’t have it both ways,” Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said: “I had officers come up to me and say, ‘I was born and raised in this city. This makes me cry.’”
But the rioting also brought out a sense of civic pride and responsibility among many Baltimore residents, with hundreds of volunteers turning out to sweep the streets of glass and other debris, with brooms and trash bags donated by hardware stores.
As the day wore on, police field- ed rumours of would-be rioters gathering at various places in and around Baltimore, but as of late afternoon, only a few scattered arrests were reported.
Jascy Jones said the sight of National Guardsmen on the street gave her a “very eerie feeling.”
“It brought a tear to my eye. Seeing it doesn’t feel like the city that I love,” she said. “I am glad they’re here, but it’s hard to watch.”
The uprising started in West Baltimore on Monday afternoon and by midnight had spread to East Baltimore and neighbourhoods close to downtown and near Camden Yards.
At least 20 officers were hurt, one person was critically injured in a fire, more than 200 adults and 34 juveniles were arrested, and nearly 150 cars were burned, police said. The governor had no immediate estimate of the damage.
The violence set off soul-searching among community leaders and others, with some suggesting the uprising was about more than race or the police — it was about high unemployment, high crime, poor housing, broken-down schools and lack of opportunity in Baltimore’s inner-city neighbourhoods.
“You look around and see unemployment. Filling out job applications and being turned down because of where you live and your demographic. It’s so much bigger than the police department,” said Robert Stokes, 36.
“This place is a powder keg waiting to explode.”
The same community they say they care about, they’re destroying. You can’t have it both ways.