The Freddie Gray case: a year in review

“We realize that 2015 has defined American policing and its future in a very different way,” Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said at a recent Foreign Affairs Symposium (FAS) panel on policing on March 22.

Tuesday marked one year since the arrest of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man and Baltimore native. His death one week later from a severe spinal cord injury sparked more than a week of both peaceful and violent protesting that gained national attention.

The issue of police misconduct, which has been under increased scrutiny since the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. in 2014, came to a head in Baltimore last April.

“We’re the nation’s eighth largest police department,” Davis said, “and for far too many years, our agency, like other agencies that struggle with violence, really turned into a one-dimensional police department where the only thing that mattered was reducing violence.”

The FAS panel was part of the larger conversation surrounding police brutality and race relations in Baltimore that began after Gray’s death.

One year later, The News-Letter revisits Gray’s arrest, the uprising, the surge in crime and the ongoing trials.

The Arrest

Gray was arrested on the morning of April 12 after running from three police officers who were patrolling the area on bikes.

According to former Deputy Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez, one of the three officers, Lieutenant Brian Rice, made eye contact with Gray and another individual at 8:39 a.m. and both men began running.

Gray ran two blocks before he was stopped and arrested. Officers found a knife on Gray’s person during the arrest, but as Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake explained a week later that finding did not necessarily justify their pursuit of him.

“We know that having a knife is not necessarily a crime. It is not necessarily probable cause to chase someone,” Rawlings-Blake said.

Rodriguez said thatGray did not resist arrest, and the officers claimed they did not use force against him. One of the officers took out a taser but did not use it, as evidenced by information downloaded off of the taser and an examination of Gray’s body.

According to Rodriguez, only Gray’s spinal cord appeared to have been injured.

“There was no physical, bodily injury that we saw nor was it evident in the autopsy of Mr. Gray. None of his limbs were broken. He did suffer a very tragic injury to his spinal cord, which resulted in his death. What we don’t know and what we need to get to is how that injury occurred,” Rodriguez said at the press conference.

At 8:42 a.m., a van was requested, and Gray asked for an inhaler. He did not receive one.

According to Rodriguez, Gray was breathing when he was placed in the van.

Amateur videos shot by witnesses show officers kneeling beside and behind Gray, who is lying facedown on a sidewalk with his hands behind his back. Officers then lift Gray up and walk him over to the police van. Gray’s feet drag along the ground, and he cries out.

Gray was put inside with his hands cuffed behind his back, but he was not buckled into his seat — a violation of a new BPD policy that had gone into effect a few days before Gray’s arrest.

At 8:46 a.m., the van driver reported Gray was angry in the back of the van. A few seconds later, a police unit asked the van to pull over so that paperwork could be completed. While the van was stopped, Gray was taken out, placed in leg irons and put back into the van.

The van began driving again at 8:54 a.m. but then stopped a second time because Gray was on the floor of the van. Gray was picked up and put back in his seat, but was not strapped in, contrary to a new BPD policy.

At 8:59 a.m., the driver picked up another male prisoner, who was put in the back with Gray. However, the men were separated by a metal barrier, so they could hear but not see one another. The other prisoner was interviewed by the BPD. Also, at 8:59 a.m., the driver of the van asked for backup to check on Gray.

At 9:24 a.m., the van arrived at the Western District police station, about six blocks from the site of Gray’s arrest, and a medic was called.

“When Mr. Gray was taken out of that van, he could not talk and he could not breathe,” Rodriguez said.

The Protests

Peaceful demonstrations began soon after Gray’s arrest while he was still in the hospital and continued for weeks. The protests gained national attention, however, when they turned violent following his death on April 19. A group of protesters engaged with police dressed in riot gear outside Camden Yards on April 25. The protesters threw rocks at the officers and smashed the windows of police cars and storefronts and later looted a 7-Eleven store. Many Baltimore residents tried to stop the violence downtown, putting themselves between police and protesters in order to prevent further escalation.

Gray’s funeral on April 27 prompted city-wide rioting that led to more looting as well as 15 structures and at least 144 vehicles being set on fire, despite Gray’s family’s pleas for Baltimoreans to remain peaceful.

“I don’t agree with that violence that they’re doing to the city. That’s too much. I don’t think all that’s for Freddie Gray,” Fredricka Gray, his twin sister, said at press conference that night. “Freddie Gray wasn’t that type of person to break into a store... I don’t like it at all.”

In response to the violence, the national guard was deployed and a state of emergency was declared by Maryland Governor Larry Hogan the night of April 27. Over 200 people, both adults and minors, were arrested. Hopkins also went into lockdown due to reports of non-affiliates on campus, two of whom were arrested.

The next day, April 28, classes at many local colleges, including Hopkins, were cancelled and Mayor Rawlings-Blake instituted a curfew aimed at curtailing the violence. Protests continued that night, but the majority were peaceful. Twelve people, both adults and juveniles, were arrested.

Peaceful protests continued the following day. More than 1,000 people, including many high school and college students, participated in a peaceful protest march from Penn Station to City Hall. Hopkins students, faculty and staff joined in the march. Protests also spread to New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston and Ferguson, Mo. among other cities. Hundreds of protesters marched throughout Manhattan, and more than 100 people were arrested. Protests also occurred in Ferguson where, according to Ferguson Police Department spokesman Jeff Small, three people were shot.

The Trials

The six BPD officers involved in Gray’s arrest were charged on May 1 with crimes ranging from reckless endangerment to second-degree murder by State’s Attorney for Baltimore Marilyn Mosby.

“To the people of Baltimore and demonstrators across America... to those that are angry, hurt or have their own experiences of injustice at the hands of police officers, I urge you to channel the energy peacefully as we prosecute this case,” Mosby said. “I have heard your calls for ‘No justice, no peace.’ However, your peace is sincerely needed as I work to deliver justice on behalf of Freddie Gray.”

To date only one officer, William Porter, has been tried. His trial ended in a hung jury in December. He was originally set to be retried in June, but the date was recently pushed back to September.

Porter’s mistrial led to complications for both prosecutors and defense attorneys in the remaining five cases, since Porter was called to testify in all of them. Porter pled the fifth amendment out of fear of self-incrimination as he would have to testify against his fellow officers before being retried. After months of hearings and postponements of the trials, the Court of Appeals ruled in March that Porter would be compelled to testify with limited immunity against all five officers, a victory for the prosecution.

Since the sixth and final trial was supposed to have occurred in March, all the officers have been given new dates. The first trial is set to begin next month and the last in October.

Additionally, prosecutors are currently seeking to compel a second officer Garrett Miller to testify against fellow Officer Edward Nero, who will be tried in May.

Civil Settlement

In addition to filing criminal charges against the officers, the city also offered civil compensation to Gray’s family. In September, Rawlings-Blake announced that the city would pay a $6.4 million settlement to his family over the course of the 2015 and 2016 fiscal years, despite them not having filed a wrongful death suit. In the settlement, the city accepts all civil liability in Gray’s arrest and death.

“This settlement is about making the right fiscal decision for the city of Baltimore,” Rawlings-Blake said in a press conference in September. “Faced with the prospect of significant legal expenses involved in an extended federal lawsuit as well as potential liability that could come with an unfavorable jury verdict, our city’s attorneys came to the conclusion that the $6.4 million settlement is in the best interest of protecting taxpayers. I ultimately agreed with that recommendation.”

However, Rawlings-Blake explained that fiscal and legal concerns were not the only considerations made when reaching the settlement.

“The purpose of the civil settlement is to bring an important measure of closure to the Gray family, to the community and to the city,” she said.

Spike in Homicides

The violent demonstrations had largely subsided within weeks of Gray’s death. However, Baltimore experienced an unprecedented spike in homicides in the remaining months of 2015. By the end of December, the 2015 homicide count had reached 344, making it the city’s deadliest year on record on a per-capita basis.

In July, Police Commissioner Anthony Batts was fired by Mayor Rawlings-Blake in response to the skyrocketing murder rate. Additionally, the Fraternal Order of Police released a report shortly before his termination, arguing that the April uprising could have been prevented and Batts’ alleged mistakes exacerbated it.

Rawlings-Blake appointed Deputy Commissioner Kevin Davis to assume Batts’ role on an interim basis. Davis was confirmed permanently as police commissioner in October despite protesters interrupting the hearing at City Hall in an attempt to prevent his appointment.

In the six months since then, Davis has implemented measures to improve the reputation of the BPD following Gray’s death.

At the FAS panel, Davis said that he found the “zero-tolerance” approach to policing problematic because it did not reduce violence on a large scale and only widened the gap between the BPD and poor, minority communities. He stressed that as commissioner he does not count numbers of arrests, field stops or citations, which many police departments do in order to reward officers. Davis wants to change the way police officers interact with communities.

Davis was asked about the lack of common sense exhibited by some police officers in their handling of suspects, specifically regarding the treatment of Freddie Gray after his arrest. In response, Davis discussed ways in which police departments can improve their behavior.

“When you look at police departments in Baltimore or elsewhere, if there is a significant gap between standard operating policies and standard operating practices, that’s where you run into trouble. [In] healthy police departments, those two things are really, really close, if not side by side, if not one in the same,” he said.

“Everything that we do is an effort to ensure that what we say, what we preach, what we mandate and what is practiced on the street, get closer each and every day.”

Morgan Ome contributed reporting.