All,
There is absolutely nothing "mysterious" about the wanton brutal murder by the Baltimore police of Freddie Gray any more than there is any "mystery" after over four centuries on this continent we inhabit anything remotely "mysterious" about the venal pathology and relentlessly lethal consequences of the deadly scourge in thought and practice of White Supremacy in what is stil ominously and rather bizarrely called the "United States."
But as we well know from human history (and especially in the so-called "Western World") the casual abuse and ugly manipulation of language is always used to pretend that we don't really know or understand what is actually happening to us and why...or who and what is responsible for our oppression and destruction. But only a fool and/or a liar would be dishonest and simpleminded enough to act as though REALITY itself didn't exist....or that it was simply "mysterious"...
Kofi
http://www.theatlantic.com/…/the-mysterious-death-o…/391119/
Politics
The Mysterious Death of Freddie Gray
by David Graham
April 22, 2015
The Atlantic
When the Baltimore man was arrested, he was alive and well. By the time he reached a police station, he couldn't breathe or talk. What happened?
Freddie Gray's death on April 19 leaves many unanswered questions. But it is clear that when Gray was arrested in West Baltimore on the morning of April 12, he was struggling to walk. By the time he arrived at the police station a half hour later, he was unable to breathe or talk, suffering from wounds that would kill him.*
Gray died Sunday from spinal injuries. Baltimore authorities say they're investigating how the 25-year-old was hurt—a somewhat perverse notion, given that it was while he was in police custody, and hidden from public view, that he apparently suffered injury. How it happened remains unknown. It's even difficult to understand why officers arrested Gray in the first place. But with protestors taking to the streets of Baltimore since Gray's death on Sunday, the incident falls into a line of highly publicized, fatal encounters between black men and the police. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, a reserve sheriff's deputy in Tulsa, Oklahoma, pleaded not guilty to a second-degree manslaughter charge in the death of a man he shot. The deputy says the shooting happened while he was trying to tase the man. Black men dying at the hands of the police is of course nothing new, but the nation is now paying attention and getting outraged.
Authorities can't say if there was a particularly good reason why police arrested Gray. According to the city, an officer made eye contact with Gray, and he took off running, so they pursued him. Though he'd had scrapes with the law before, there's no indication he was wanted at the time. And though he was found with a switchblade, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said, “We know that having a knife is not necessarily a crime.”
The police say Gray didn't resist arrest and that officers didn't use force, which seems to be mostly corroborated by video shot by bystanders. Gray seems to shout in pain, and his leg seems injured as officers drag him to a police van. (Someone off camera shouts, "His leg broke and y'all dragging him like that!") Gray also had asthma and requested his inhaler, but didn't get it. Yet it's not the leg or the asthma that killed him. Instead, it was a grave injury to his spinal cord. Gray's family said he was treated for three fractured vertebrae and a crushed voice box, the sorts of injuries that doctors say are usually caused by serious car accidents. The van made at least two stops before reaching the police station, but there's no footage to say what happened during the journey or at those stops.
It's a baffling conundrum. "None of the officers describe any use of force," Deputy Police Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez said. "None of the officers describe using any force against Mr. Gray." And yet somehow Gray was fatally hurt while in police custody.
The lack of clear evidence in Baltimore is a reminder of just how unusual the case of Walter Scott was. The North Charleston, South Carolina, man was shot in the back by a police officer while running away, but a bystander caught the incident on video—debunking the official account in a police report. Officer Michael Slager has now been charged with murder. As my colleague Robinson Meyer wrote, society owes much to the brave bystanders who tape encounters like this, and their footage has gone a long way to helping achieve justice and to awakening the public to police brutality.
The obvious tie between the Gray and Scott cases, though, is that in both incidents police apprehended black men under questionable circumstances—Scott for a busted tail light, Gray for, well, it's unclear. In both cases, the black community feels its members were unfairly targeted by the local police
"I'm not saying Fred was an angel; whatever he did is now in the past. But the police already have made up their minds about who we are," Rudolph Jackson told The Baltimore Sun. "They figure every black person with their pants hanging down is a suspect, and they stop them without probable cause." That echoes complaints of African Americans around the nation, from Ferguson to Staten Island to Cleveland, about how they experience the police not as benevolent defenders of the peace but as an arbitrary menace, more likely to violate a citizen's rights than preserve them.
Six officers have been suspended with pay and placed on desk duty in the Gray case, and while the Baltimore Police Department didn't specify their races, the three officers in the clip arresting Gray all appear to be white. One thing that separates this case from, say, Ferguson or North Charleston is the demographics of those in power. It's true that whites are overrepresented in the Baltimore Police Department compared to the city's overall population, but black and white officers make up roughly equal proportions of the force. In addition, both Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Police Commissioner Anthony Batts are African Americans.
"They figure every black person with their pants hanging down is a suspect, and they stop them without probable cause."
Conflicts between the police and black citizens are often discussed as though the question is whether officers profess personal racism—a trap that even FBI Director James Comey, in an otherwise sympathetic and thoughtful speech on race and law enforcement, fell into. Troubled relationships like the one between Baltimore's black community and its police force, despite the presence of elected and appointed black leaders, show how racism is a systemic problem. It is the way people behave, rather than whether they manifest any personal animus. The issue is how the justice system as a whole treats black men.
The other obvious problem here is what happens when the police not only aren't being filmed but aren't even being watched. Despite movement to provide police with body cameras, many still don't wear them. There is much that's still unknown about Gray's fatal injuries, but it's hard to avoid the conclusion—based purely on what the mayor and others have said—that his injuries came at the hands of police officers in the van. “He did suffer a very tragic injury to his spinal cord, which resulted in his death," Rodriguez said at a news conference. "What we don’t know, and what we need to get to, is how that injury occurred.”
A common estimate is that 400 people die every year while being arrested—a number that CityLab's Richard Florida notes is probably an undercount—and six in 10 of those deaths are homicides, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. There are plenty of baffling cases that aren't ruled homicides, too. For example, in 2013, Jesus Huerta, a teenaged resident of Durham, North Carolina, died of a gunshot wound to the head while handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser. While that case elicited outrage, the district attorney said there wasn't evidence to disprove the police contention that Huerta shot himself with a gun an officer missed during a frisk.
Calming frayed nerves and ensuring justice in Gray's death will require figuring out what happened in that van. Rawlings-Blake has promised to do so, and the U.S. Department of Justice says it will also investigate whether officers violated Gray's civil rights. But if the police can't be trusted to get a man to jail without grave injury, can they be trusted to investigate this death effectively? And if they can't, who will?
* This story originally misstated the date of Freddie Gray's death. We regret the error.
David A. Graham is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers political and global news. He previously reported for Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and The National.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Panopticon-Review/342702882479366
All,
In the very first paragraph the NY Times reporter calls the Freddie Gray murder "the nation’s latest symbol of police brutality." That just about sums up everything, doesn't it?. All the rest is just the inevitable public fallout and endlessly tragic consequences from hundreds of years of the pervasive racist murders and abuse of black people that have never been addressed in a serious manner in this country. Stay tuned because it can be assured that still more collateral damage (as well as many more racist murders and endless abuse) are just on the horizon in still more cities and towns throughout the nation…Mark my words: We’re headed for a cataclysm of horrific dimensions...
Kofi
http://www.nytimes.com/…/04/28/us/baltimore-freddie-gray.ht…
Baltimore Enlists National Guard and a Curfew to Fight Riots and Looting
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
APRIL 27, 2015
New York Times
BALTIMORE — Gov. Larry Hogan 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, widespread looting and at least 15 police officers injured.
The violence that shook the city broke out in the late afternoon in the Mondawmin neighborhood of northwest Baltimore, home to the New Shiloh Baptist Church, where more than 2,000 people — politicians, activists, White House officials and civil rights activists including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Dick Gregory — had gathered for a morning of soaring Gospel music and passionate eulogies for Mr. Gray.
Related Coverage:
Scenes of Chaos in Baltimore as Thousands Protest Freddie Gray’s Death
APRIL 25, 2015
Freddie Gray’s death has cast attention on the Baltimore police
Baltimore’s ‘Broken Relationship’ With Police
APRIL 24, 2015
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake of Baltimore at a news conference on Friday. She met with community and faith leaders to discuss the police investigation into the death of Freddie Gray.
Baltimore Police Admit Delay in Calling Ambulance for Freddie Gray
APRIL 24, 2015
Hours after the service ended, angry groups of people threw bottles, rocks and chunks of concrete at officers who lined up in riot gear with shields deployed. Young men surrounded a police cruiser and smashed in its windows in what police described as an organized attack by criminals. Cars were set on fire, and store windows were shattered. A CVS drugstore was looted and set on fire. A check-cashing business was also looted. The cafe portion of the Trinacria Italian Deli, in Baltimore since 1908, was destroyed.
By evening, the unrest was spreading, and the police said at least 27 people had been arrested. At a news conference on Monday night, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced that a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew would be imposed for a week beginning on Tuesday. “Too many people have spent generations building up this city for it to be destroyed by thugs,” she said. The city already has a curfew for juveniles.
The governor, at the request of the city of Baltimore, declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard. Officers were also on the way from surrounding counties to back up more than 1,000 Baltimore police officers already on the streets and 82 state troopers dispatched earlier in the day.
“Today’s acts of looting and violence in Baltimore will not be tolerated,” the governor said in a statement. He condemned “direct attacks against innocent civilians, business and law enforcement officers,” adding, “there is a significant difference between protesting and violence.”
The Baltimore police vowed the authorities would take “appropriate measures” to keep officers and the neighborhood safe.
“You’re going to see tear gas. You’re going to see pepper balls. We’re going to use appropriate methods to make sure we can preserve the safety of that community,” a spokesman, Capt. J. Eric Kowalczyk, said at a news conference. Fifteen police officers were injured, some with broken bones, and one was unresponsive, according to the department.
Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard when riots broke out after the funeral of Freddie Gray.
A White House official said President Obama had spoken to Ms. Rawlings-Blake and stood ready to “provide assistance as needed,” though officials were not specific.
The police said early in the day that they had received a “credible threat” that members of various gangs, including the Black Guerrilla Family, Bloods and Crips had “entered into a partnership to ‘take out’ law enforcement officers.” But officers kept a low profile in the neighborhood during the Gray funeral. The police also said that a flier circulated on social media called for a period of violence on Monday afternoon to begin at the Mondawmin Mall and move toward City Hall downtown.
Warned by the police of possible violence, the University of Maryland campus in downtown Baltimore closed early, as did the mall. The Orioles postponed their home game against the Chicago White Sox on Monday.
Pastor Jamal Bryant, who delivered Mr. Gray’s eulogy, came back to the neighborhood after the burial on Monday afternoon to appeal for calm. He said he would send teams of men from his church, the Empowerment Temple, to help keep the peace.
“This is not what the family asked for, today of all days,” Mr. Bryant said. “For us to come out of the burial and walk into this is absolutely inexcusable.” He said he was “asking every young person to go back home,” adding, “it’s frustration, anger and it’s disrespect for the family.”
Video
Play Video|1:40
Baltimore Youths Clash With Police
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.
Mr. Gray’s death on April 19, a week after sustaining a spinal cord injury while in police custody, has opened a deep wound in this majority-black city, where Ms. Rawlings-Blake and Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts — both of whom are black — have struggled to reform a police department that has a history of aggressive, sometimes brutal, treatment of black men.
The death spawned a week of protests that had been largely peaceful until Saturday night, when demonstrators — who had spent the afternoon marching through the city — scuffled with officers in riot gear outside Camden Yards, the downtown baseball park. Authorities attributed the scattered violence that night to outsiders who, Ms. Rawlings-Blake said, “were inciting,” with “ ‘go out there and shut this city down’ kind of messaging.”
But the violence on Monday was much more devastating and profound, a blow for a city whose leaders had been hoping Mr. Gray’s funeral would show the nation its more peaceful side. At the New Shiloh Baptist Church, Mr. Gray lay in an open white coffin, in a white shirt and tie, with a pillow bearing a picture of him in a red T-shirt, against a backdrop of a blue sky and doves, with the message “Peace y’all.”
The service was much more than a celebration of Mr. Gray’s short life; it was a call for peace and justice — and for residents of Baltimore to help lead the nationwide movement for better police treatment of black men that emerged last August after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
“The eyes of this country are all on us, because they want to see whether we have the stuff to make this right,” said William Murphy, the lawyer representing the Gray family, who is a fixture in legal and political circles here. “They want to know whether our leadership is up to the task.”
Much of that leadership was seated in the pews, including Ms. Rawlings-Blake and Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, who was one of the speakers.
Also among the mourners were Kweisi Mfume, a former congressman and chief of the N.A.A.C.P.; three aides to President Obama; and several family members of others killed by the police in various parts of the country, including Erica Garner, daughter of Eric Garner, a man who died after a police officer put him in a chokehold last year on Staten Island. She said she had come “to stand with the family of Freddie Gray. It’s unfortunate, but I feel we have a connection.” In his eulogy, Mr. Bryant spoke of the plight of poor, young black men like Mr. Gray, living “confined to a box” made up of poor education, lack of job opportunities and racial stereotypes — “the box of thinking all black men are thugs and athletes and rappers.”
“He had to have been asking himself, ‘What am I going to do with my life?’ ” Mr. Bryant said. “He had to feel at age 25 like the walls were closing in on him.”
Great article, I only point out in the first paragraph that the author calls Freddie Gray, "...the nation's latest symbol of police...
Mr. Bryant insisted that Mr. Gray’s death would not “be in vain.” He vowed that Baltimore residents would “keep demanding justice” but also issued a pointed rebuke to the congregation, telling members that black people must take control of their lives and force the government and police to change.
“This is not the time for us as a people to be sitting on the corner drinking malt liquor,” he roared, as his voice rose and the congregation, clapping, rose to its feet. “This is not the time for us to be playing the lottery or at the horsing casino, this is not the time for us to be walking down with our pants hanging down.”
He said, “Get your black self up and change this city!” and added, “I don’t know how you can be black in America and be silent. With everything we’ve been through, ain’t no way in the world you can sit here and be silent in the face of injustice.”
But as the day went on, the mood changed. The violence appears to have begun inside the Mondawmin Mall. Erica Ellis, 23, who works in a Game Stop store there, said the mall was shut down at 2 p.m., not long after Mr. Gray’s funeral cortege left for his burial.
She said she went outside and saw a big line of police officers and hundreds of young people who started throwing rocks and bricks. But police did not respond immediately, she said. “The police officers were trying as hard as they can not to hurt the people’s children,” she said.
At the corner of North Fulton and West North Avenues, looters could be seen breaking into stores and walking out with cases of food and water while hundreds of police officers in riot gear gathered about four blocks away.
When a pair of police cruisers tried to enter the area, young men threw bottles at them. Several of the men wore surgical masks. Some carried baseball bats, others carried pipes. While several people held signs that said “Stop the war,” protesting peacefully, the rising chaos surrounded them: a broken-down BMW sat empty in the middle of the street, shards of glass from convenience store windows lay on the pavement and a young man carrying bolt cutters walked by.
Residents looked on aghast. Along North Avenue, not far from the Gilmor Homes, the public housing development where Mr. Gray was first arrested, Chris Malloy, who lives in the area and participated in Saturday’s protest march, shook his head. He said he was angry at the police and the looters — all at once.
“All they had to do was march, but they did this,” he said, sounding disgusted, as the CVS store burned nearby. “You can take stuff out of the store, but why do you have to burn it down?”
http://www.theatlantic.com/…/nonviolence-as-complia…/391640/
All,
FINALLY... A journalist actually has the guts to tell the simple and unadorned truth. Thanks Ta-Nehisi...
Kofi
Politics
Nonviolence as Compliance
Officials calling for calm can offer no rational justification for Gray's death, and so they appeal for order.
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Apr 27, 2015
The Atlantic
Rioting broke out on Monday in Baltimore—an angry response to the death of Freddie Gray, a death my native city seems powerless to explain. Gray did not die mysteriously in some back alley but in the custody of the city's publicly appointed guardians of order. And yet the mayor of that city and the commissioner of that city's police still have no idea what happened. I suspect this is not because the mayor and police commissioner are bad people, but because the state of Maryland prioritizes the protection of police officers charged with abuse over the citizens who fall under its purview.
Related Story:
A State of Emergency in Baltimore
The citizens who live in West Baltimore, where the rioting began, intuitively understand this. I grew up across the street from Mondawmin Mall, where today's riots began. My mother was raised in the same housing project, Gilmor Homes, where Freddie Gray was killed. Everyone I knew who lived in that world regarded the police not with admiration and respect but with fear and caution. People write these feelings off as wholly irrational at their own peril, or their own leisure. The case against the Baltimore police, and the society that superintends them, is easily made:
Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil rights violations. Victims include a 15-year-old boy riding a dirt bike, a 26-year-old pregnant accountant who had witnessed a beating, a 50-year-old woman selling church raffle tickets, a 65-year-old church deacon rolling a cigarette and an 87-year-old grandmother aiding her wounded grandson ....
And in almost every case, prosecutors or judges dismissed the charges against the victims—if charges were filed at all. In an incident that drew headlines recently, charges against a South Baltimore man were dropped after a video showed an officer repeatedly punching him—a beating that led the police commissioner to say he was “shocked.”
The money paid out by the city to cover for the brutal acts of its police department would be enough to build "a state-of-the-art rec center or renovations at more than 30 playgrounds." Instead, the money was used to cover for the brutal acts of the city's police department and ensure they remained well beyond any semblance of justice.
Now, tonight, I turn on the news and I see politicians calling for young people in Baltimore to remain peaceful and "nonviolent." These well-intended pleas strike me as the right answer to the wrong question. To understand the question, it's worth remembering what, specifically, happened to Freddie Gray. An officer made eye contact with Gray. Gray, for unknown reasons, ran. The officer and his colleagues then detained Gray. They found him in possession of a switchblade. They arrested him while he yelled in pain. And then, within an hour, his spine was mostly severed. A week later, he was dead. What specifically was the crime here? What particular threat did Freddie Gray pose? Why is mere eye contact and then running worthy of detention at the hands of the state? Why is Freddie Gray dead?
When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
The people now calling for nonviolence are not prepared to answer these questions. Many of them are charged with enforcing the very policies that led to Gray's death, and yet they can offer no rational justification for Gray's death and so they appeal for calm. But there was no official appeal for calm when Gray was being arrested. There was no appeal for calm when Jerriel Lyles was assaulted. (“The blow was so heavy. My eyes swelled up. Blood was dripping down my nose and out my eye.”) There was no claim for nonviolence on behalf of Venus Green. (“Bitch, you ain’t no better than any of the other old black bitches I have locked up.”) There was no plea for peace on behalf of Starr Brown. (“They slammed me down on my face,” Brown added, her voice cracking. “The skin was gone on my face.")
When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is "correct" or "wise," any more than a forest fire can be "correct" or "wise." Wisdom isn't the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the rioters themselves.
