The death of Freddie Gray
Our view: Delays in releasing details of the death of a Baltimore man in police custody will heighten public suspicion that officials aren’t giving the full story
The death on Sunday of Freddie Gray, a Baltimore man severely injured under unexplained circumstances when he was taken into custody April 12 by Baltimore police, has sparked angry protests by city residents and promises by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Police Commissioner Anthony Batts to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation of the incident. On Monday, police released far more detail about the incident than they previously had, but they still provided no satisfactory answer to the most crucial question: How did a 25-year-old man enter a police van with no sign of significant injury and exit it unable to talk or breathe, with a spinal cord injury so severe that he would die? Given the uproar over the deaths of unarmed men at the hands of police nationally and a history of mistrust between the community and police in Baltimore, this explanation, eight days after the fact, is too little, too late.
Up until a nationally televised news conference Monday afternoon, Mayor Rawlings-Blake, Commissioner Batts and other top officials had not even so much as said why police pursued Mr. Gray in the first place, despite the fact that the information was available in a publicly filed police report. Billy Murphy, the attorney for Mr. Gray’s family, accused authorities of keeping quiet until they could find a way to spin events in their favor. The Police Department’s disclosure of new surveillance video and a more detailed timeline of events certainly don’t amount to that but instead just deepen the mystery. Nonetheless, the delay in bringing forward information that should have been available immediately following Mr. Gray’s arrest is bound to raise questions in the public mind about whether we are even now being given the full story.
The police report reveals that Mr. Gray was stopped because he “fled unprovoked upon noticing police presence” and that officers placed him under arrest after a knife was found clipped to the inside of his front pants pocket. “The defendant was arrested without force or incident,” the report continued, but “during transport to Western District via wagon transport the defendant suffered a medical emergency and was immediately transported to Shock Trauma via medic.”
Deputy Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez reiterated at Monday’s news conference that none of the four officers describe using force and that physical evidence shows that while one officer drew his Taser, it was not used on Mr. Gray. A video shot by a bystander and a separate surveillance video show Mr. Gray being dragged to a police van, but Mr. Rodriguez insists that other than requesting an inhaler, Mr. Gray was in no physical distress at the time. Mr. Rodriguez detailed various stops the van took en route to the Western District police station, including one during which Mr. Gray was put into leg irons. As to what happened after that, officials profess to have no clue.
Baltimore is a city that has spent $5.7 million to settle more than 100 civil suits against the Police Department since 2011. It’s where a 19-year-old patient in a hospital lapsed into a coma and died after officers struck him repeatedly with Tasers. It’s where police investigators had video showing an officer beating a man at a crowded bus stop but did nothing until the victim’s lawyer released the footage to the media. It’s where “zero-tolerance” policing a decade ago succeeded in arresting the equivalent of nearly one out of every six city residents in a single year.
In that environment, Mayor Rawlings-Blake needed to tell the public everything she knew without delay. Allowing a week to pass, and only providing answers after the public pressure of protests over Mr. Gray’s death had intensified, only increased the chances that matters here will spiral out of control, no matter what the truth may turn out to be. Ms. Rawlings-Blake’s promise a “blue-ribbon” panel of experts to review this case isn’t good enough. The Justice Department is already engaged in a “collaborative review” of Baltimore police policies and procedures, but an official there says it would be premature for federal officials to step in on this case. State law allows for the governor to request that the attorney general’s office handle an investigation like this one. Mayor Rawlings-Blake should ask that he do so.
That’s the only way the public is going to believe that the investigation into Mr. Gray’s death is not only thorough and transparent but also independent.