Baltimore police disclose van stop
Inquiry results note an unmentioned incident before detainee Freddie Gray’s death.
BALTIMORE — The police van carrying Freddie Gray made a previously undisclosed stop before the 25year-old was found with a mortal back injury on arrival at a Baltimore police station, police said Thursday as they handed over the results of their investigation to prosecutors.
Police officials said nothing about the purpose of the stop or what happened there, but went out of their way to call attention to the new item in the chronology of the van’s winding way to the station. Deputy Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said the stop, one of four with Gray inside, had not been known to police investigators until they found video of the incident, implying that the police officers in the van had kept the information from their superiors.
“The second stop has been revealed to us during the course of our investigation and was previously unknown to us. We discovered this new stop based on our thorough and comprehensive and ongoing review of all CCTV cameras and privately owned cameras, and in fact this new stop was discovered from a privately owned camera,” Davis said at a news conference.
Police officials surprised Baltimore, which has calmed since rioting erupted Monday after Gray’s funeral, by handing the results of their investigation to State’s Atty. Marilyn Mosby a day earlier than promised.
Business owners had worried that more rioting could erupt Friday if the public was displeased by the report’s conclusions. Police Commissioner Anthony Batts did not reveal any of its contents, except for the new stop.
It will now be up to Mosby, a newly elected prosecutor, to decide whether to charge any of the six officers involved.
“The results of their investigation are not new to us,” she said in a statement. “We have been briefed regularly throughout their process while simultaneously conducting our own independent investigation into the death of Freddie Gray.”
“We ask for the public to remain patient and peaceful and to trust the process of the justice system,” Mosby said.
Batts said he had 30 detectives working on the investigation, a small army given Baltimore’s chronically understaffed department.
Large, generally peaceful demonstrations resumed in Baltimore early Thursday evening as the city entered the third night of a weeklong 10 p.m. curfew. Rioting, looting and fires erupted Monday night, and about 100 police officers have been injured this week.
“I understand the frustration. I understand the sense of urgency and … that is why we have finished it a day ahead of time,” Batts said. “The task force heeded my call and we have exhausted every lead at this point in time. But this does not mean that the investigation is over. Let me repeat: This does not mean that the investigation is over.”
But in terms of releasing information publicly, “getting to the right answer is more important than the speed,” Batts said. “Making sure that we look and overturn every rock is more important than just coming forth and giving a document.”
The extra stop during Gray’s transport on April 12 added another to a string of mysteries surrounding his death as a result of an injury to his spine, which one of his family’s lawyers said was nearly severed. The biggest question is where Gray suffered the injuries that led to his death in a Baltimore hospital on April 19.
Police encountered Gray in a poor West Baltimore neighborhood after he made brief eye contact with an officer. Gray ran from them and was chased down and handcuffed. It is unclear what probable cause they might have had to stop him, though he was later discovered to be carrying a knife strapped to his leg.
Witnesses have said that an officer knelt on his back, pulling him backward “like a pretzel” while he was screaming that they were hurting his neck.
“They had him folded up like he was a crab or a piece of origami,” Kevin Moore, a friend of Gray who recorded the arrest on video, told the Baltimore Sun.
“He was all bent up” and was “screaming for his life,” Moore said. “They were yelling stop resisting but there was no resistance — he couldn’t move.”
Video of the encounter shows that Gray was unable or at least unwilling to walk to the police van, causing officers to drag him to it. Gray appeared to be grimacing in pain. He was also suffering from asthma and asked for medical attention, which he did not receive. Gray was not buckled into his seat in the van, which police said is a violation of their procedures.
It was previously disclosed that after leaving the scene of the arrest, the van stopped, in part so that officers could put leg restraints on Gray, who was making noise in the back of the van. After the announcement Thursday, it became apparent that it had stopped a second time for unknown reasons.
It stopped two more times, once so officers could check on Gray, and then just a few blocks from the station, to pick up another prisoner.
The Washington Post on Thursday reported on a legal affidavit from another prisoner who rode part of the way in a separate compartment of the van with Gray. The unnamed prisoner said he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the van and believed he may have been intentionally trying to hurt himself, the Post said.
But the prisoner could not see Gray from his compartment, and it was unclear how he would know that the banging was intentional. Some officials reacted with skepticism that Gray could have severed his own spinal cord.
WBAL broadcast an interview with a person who the station said was that prisoner, but who denied that he had made any such statements to police.
By the time that the van arrived at the station after a ride of about 40 minutes, Gray was found to be unconscious, and an ambulance was called. He died in a hospital a week later.
Police announced that nearly 100 officers have been injured in confrontations this week, 13 of them seriously enough to be placed on medical leave and 15 on light duty. In addition, 106 people who were had been arrested during the disturbances have been released because police were unable to charge them during the 48-hour period after their arrest.
‘We have exhausted every lead at this point in time. But this does not mean that the investigation is over.’
— Anthony Batts, police commissioner