Baltimore Enlists National Guard and Curfew to Fight Riots and Looting

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

NY TIMES

Maryland’s governor activated the National Guard on Monday and the city of Baltimore announced a curfew for all residents as a turbulent day that began with the funeral of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, the nation’s latest symbol of police brutality, ended with rioting by rock-throwing youths, arson, looting and at least 15 police officers injured.

Hundreds of young people gathered outside a mall in northwestern Baltimore and confronted the police, throwing rocks and bottles at officers. By WJZ-TV CBS Baltimore via Associated Press on Publish Date April 27, 2015. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

The violence that shook the city broke out in the late afternoon in the Mondawmin neighborhood of northwest Baltimore, where Mr. Gray’s funeral had taken place. Angry residents threw bottles, rocks and chunks of concrete at officers who lined up in riot gear with shields deployed. Cars were set on fire, store windows were shattered, a CVS drugstore was looted, and the cafe inside a century-old Italian deli was destroyed. Trouble also erupted at the city’s Lexington Market.

 turbulent day in Baltimore ended with rioting by rock-throwing youths and a call to end the violence by religious leaders and the mother of Freddie Gray. By Axel Gerdau on Publish Date April 28, 2015. 

By nighttime, the chaos seemed to be competing with a push for calm. Looters pulled junk food from convenience stores within a few blocks of police in riot gear and cars that had been set ablaze. At the same time, young men in black T-shirts from a local antiviolence group urged their neighbors to go back inside. A large fire burned in east Baltimore, consuming a partly built development project of the Southern Baptist Church that was to include housing for the elderly.

Freddie Gray in Baltimore: Another City, Another Death in the Public Eye

Protests in Baltimore on Tuesday over the death of Freddie Gray included Mr. Gray’s mother. Credit Matt Roth for The New York Times

NY TIMES


In life, friends say, Freddie Gray was an easygoing, slender young man who liked girls and partying here in Sandtown, a section of west Baltimore pocked by boarded-up rowhouses and known to the police for drug dealing and crime.

In death, Mr. Gray, 25, has become the latest symbol in the running national debate over police treatment of black men — all the more searing, people here say, in a city where the mayor and police commissioner are black.

Questions are swirling around just what happened to Mr. Gray, who died here Sunday — a week after he was chased and restrained by police officers, and suffered a spine injury, which later killed him, in their custody. The police say they have no evidence that their officers used force. A lawyer for Mr. Gray’s family accuses the department of a cover-up, and on Tuesday the Justice Department opened a civil rights inquiry into his death.

But as protests continued Tuesday night — with hundreds of angry residents, led by a prominent pastor and Mr. Gray’s grieving family, chanting and marching in the streets — the death has also fueled debate on whether African-American leadership here can better handle accusations of police brutality than cities like Ferguson, Mo., and North Charleston, S.C., with their white-dominated governments.

Police Commissioner Anthony Batts spoke at a news conference on Monday, joined by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. Credit Kevin Richardson/The Baltimore Sun, via Associated Press

This week the mayor and police commissioner have appeared repeatedly in public promising a full and transparent review of Mr. Gray’s death. On Tuesday, the police released the names of six officers who had been suspended with pay, including a lieutenant, a woman and three officers in their 20s who joined the force less than three years ago. Officers canvassed west Baltimore, looking for witnesses.

In 2006, the N.A.A.C.P. and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the city, alleging a broad pattern of abuse in which people were routinely arrested without probable cause. The city settled in 2010 for $870,000, agreed to retrain officers and publicly rejected “zero-tolerance policing.” Ms.Stephanie Rawlings-Blake became mayor that year.

In 2012 she brought in Mr. Anthony Batts, who had run the police department in Oakland, Calif. In 2013, he proposed that police officers wear body cameras to capture encounters like the one that injured Mr. Gray; plans are now in the works for a pilot project.


Ms. Rawlings-Blake has also eliminated a police unit that had a reputation for treating suspects harshly. Last year, she and Mr. Batts asked the Justice Department to investigate after The Baltimore Sun reported that taxpayers had paid nearly $6 million since 2011 in judgments or settlements in 102 lawsuits alleging police misconduct. That investigation is ongoing.

Mr. Gray was stopped early on the morning of April 12 after a police lieutenant made eye contact with him and he ran away. That lieutenant was one of the six officers who were suspended. 

A police officer stood guard at the Baltimore Police Department's Western District. Six officers were suspended Tuesday amid protests over the death of Freddie Gray. Credit Matt Roth for The New York Times

 At a news conference Monday, Deputy Police Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez said Mr. Gray “gave up without the use of force.” Mr. Gray, who was apparently asthmatic, then asked for his inhaler, but he did not have one; he was conscious and speaking when he was loaded into the van to be taken to the police station, Mr. Rodriguez said.

In Mr. Gray’s neighborhood, which is adjacent to a public housing development called the Gilmor Homes, people remembered him Tuesday as a likable young man who sometimes got into trouble with the law — Maryland court records show he had at least two arrests for drug-related charges since December.

Mr. Gray had a twin sister, and a brother who died, friends say, and he also suffered lead poisoning as a child. They are furious about his death, and particularly about police conduct.


“He wasn’t out causing any trouble,” said Roosevelt McNeil, 26, who had known Mr. Gray since Mr. Gray was a child. “He had some arrests, but he wasn’t a big drug dealer or something like that. He was a great guy over all — he didn’t deserve to be handled like that. Why won’t the cops say how they ended up going after him, from that to him having his neck broken?”