Baltimore heads into weekend of rallies

BALTIMORE, May 2, (Agencies), A jubilant Baltimore headed into a weekend of rallies on Saturday after six police officers were criminally charged over the arrest of a 25-yearold black man whose death led to rioting earlier in the week.

Demonstrations are expected to continue around the United States through the weekend, with a massive rally planned for Baltimore city hall with marchers leaving from the Gilmor Homes housing projects where the victim, Freddie Gray, was arrested.

Many in the largely black city erupted with joy on Friday after the officers were charged with crimes ranging from murder to assault and misconduct in Gray’s death on April 19 from severe spinal injuries while in police custody.

Baltimore has largely followed the 10 pm curfew put in place after unrest that broke out after Gray’s funeral. Dozens of buildings and vehicles were burned, 20 police officers were injured and more than 200 people were arrested in that unrest. US Representative Elijah Cummings, who represents the area where Gray died and has worked to calm Baltimore’s streets the past four nights, said he was glad to see charges filed.

“It feels good, it’s a relief,” he said. “They have to let it play out. It will take time. But so often there are no charges and the process never begins.”

The charges served as counterpoint to other police killings of unarmed black men over the past year in cities including Ferguson, Missouri, and New York, where authorities cleared the officers involved. Those cases also led to sometimes violent demonstrations across the country.

Charges Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby brought charges on Friday hours after the Maryland state medical examiner had ruled the death a homicide and a day after police handed her office the findings of its internal review of Gray’s April 12 arrest.

Caesar R. Goodson Jr, a black officer who drove the police van, was charged with second-degree murder, which carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison. He and three others also face a charge of involuntary manslaughter and all must further answer to other lesser charges.

All six officers — three black and three white, five men and one woman — posted bond after their arrest Friday and were released from custody. Their union denounced the charges as an “apparent rush to judgment.”

While the charges brought relief to the city of 620,000, residents said they needed to see justice served, not only in Baltimore but in other communities where minorities are disproportionately targeted by police.

Mosby said Friday

that Gray’s arrest was illegal and unjustified, and that his neck was broken because he was handcuffed, shackled and placed head-first into a police van, where his pleas for medical attention were repeatedly ignored as he bounced around inside the small metal box.

The swiftness of her announcement, less than a day after receiving the police department’s criminal investigation and official autopsy results, took the city by surprise. So too did her detailed description, based in part on her office’s independent investigation, of the evidence supporting probable cause to charge all six officers with felonies. Gray’s death came amid a national debate about the deaths of black men at the hands of police.

Reason

The police had no reason to stop or chase after Gray, Mosby said. They falsely accused him of having an illegal switchblade when in fact it was a legal pocketknife. The van driver and the other officers failed to strap him down with a seatbelt, a direct violation of department policy, and they ignored Gray’s repeated pleas for medical attention, even rerouting the van to pick up another passenger.

Mosby did not say whether there was any indication the driver deliberately drove erratically, causing Gray’s body to strike the van’s interior. In 2005, a man died of a fractured spine after he was transported in a Baltimore police van in handcuffs and without a seat belt. At a civil trial, an attorney for his family successfully argued police had given him a “rough ride.”

The officers missed five opportunities to help an injured and falsely imprisoned detainee before he arrived at the police station no longer breathing, she said. Along the way, “Mr Gray suffered a severe and critical neck injury as a result of being handcuffed, shackled by his feet and unrestrained inside of the BPD wagon,” she concluded. Her announcement triggered celebrations across the same West Baltimore streets that were smoldering just four days earlier, when Gray’s funeral led to riots and looting.

“We are satisfied with today’s charges,” Gray’s stepfather, Richard Shipley, told a news conference. “These charges are an important step in getting justice for Freddie.”

But a lawyer hired by the police union insisted the officers did nothing wrong. Attorney Michael Davey said Friday that Mosby has committed “an egregious rush to judgment.”

“We have grave concerns about the fairness and integrity of the prosecution of our officers,” Davey said.

Mosby rejected a police union request to step aside and appoint a special prosecutor to handle the case, and said honorable police officers should have no problem working with prosecutors in Baltimore.