Tag Archives: Baltimore

U.S. in deal to reform Baltimore police after Freddie Gray death

mural of late Freddie Gray in Baltimore

By Donna Owens

BALTIMORE (Reuters) – The city of Baltimore will enact a series of police reforms including changes in how officers use force and transport prisoners under an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department filed in federal court on Thursday.

The agreement comes almost two years after the death of a black man, Freddie Gray, of injuries sustained while in police custody sparked a day of rioting and arson in the majority-black city. It also led to an investigation that found the city’s police routinely violated residents’ civil rights.

Outgoing U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the deal, which is subject to a judge’s approval, would be binding even after President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20.

“The reforms in this consent decree will help ensure effective and constitutional policing, restore the community’s trust in law enforcement, and advance public and officer safety,” Lynch told reporters, flanked by recently elected Mayor Catherine Pugh.

The 227-page consent decree agreement is the result of months of negotiations after a federal report released in August found that the city’s 2,600-member police department routinely violated black residents’ civil rights with strip searches, by excessively using force and other means.

The probe followed the April 2015 death of Gray, 25, who died of injuries sustained in the back of a police van. His was one of a series of high-profile deaths in U.S. cities from Ferguson, Missouri, to North Charleston, South Carolina, that sparked an intense debate about race and justice and fueled the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Department of Justice is scheduled to release the findings of its investigation into the Chicago Police Department on Friday in the Midwest city, local media reported. In Philadelphia on Friday, a report on reform efforts by the Philadelphia Police Department will be released, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.

Prosecutors brought charges against six officers involved in Gray’s arrest but secured no convictions.

William Murphy Jr., an attorney who represented the Gray family in a civil suit against the city that led to a $6 million settlement, praised the deal.

“Make no mistake, today is a revolution in policing in Baltimore,” Murphy said.

The head of city’s police union was warier, saying his group had not been a part of the negotiations.

“Neither our rank and file members who will be the most affected, nor our attorneys, have had a chance to read the final product,” Gene Ryan, president of the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police, said in a statement.

City officials said union officials had been involved in talks early on but stopped attending meetings.

(Additional reporting by Timothy McLaughlin in Chicago. Editing by Tom Brown and Andrew Hay)

FBI report expected to show violent crime rise in some U.S. cities

Phone banks of the FBI

By Julia Harte

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Violent crime in certain big U.S. cities in 2015 likely increased over 2014, although the overall crime rate has remained far below peak levels of the early 1990s, experts said, in advance of the FBI’s annual crime report to be released later on Monday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s report was expected to show a one-year increase in homicides and other violent crimes in cities including Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., based on already published crime statistics.

Coming on the day of the first presidential campaign debate between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, the report could “be turned into political football,” said Robert Smith, a research fellow at Harvard Law School, in a teleconference on Friday with other crime experts.

A rise in violent crime in U.S. cities since 2014 has already been revealed in preliminary 2015 figures released by the FBI in January.

A recent U.S. Justice Department-funded study examined the nation’s 56 largest cities and found 16.8 percent more murders last year over 2014.

Trump last week praised aggressive policing tactics, including the “stop-and-frisk” approach.

Clinton has pushed for stricter gun control to help curb violence and has called for the development of national guidelines on the use of force by police officers.

FBI Director James Comey warned last year that violent crime in the United States might rise because increased scrutiny of policing tactics had created a “chill wind” that discouraged police officers from aggressively fighting crime.

Increased crime has been concentrated in segregated and impoverished neighborhoods of big cities. Experts said in such areas crime can best be fought through better community policing and alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent crime.

“We’re just beginning to see a shift in mentality in law enforcement from a warrior mentality … to a guardian mentality,” said Carter Stewart, a former prosecutor for the Southern District of Ohio, on the teleconference. “I don’t want us as a country to go backwards.”

In Chicago, 54 more people were murdered in 2015 than the year before, a 13 percent jump in the city’s murder rate, according to an April study by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.

(Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Matthew Lewis)

Charges dropped against remaining Baltimore officers in Freddie Gray case

Police watch on as a man participates in a protest in Union Square after Baltimore Police Officer Caesar Goodson Jr. was acquitted of all charges for his involvement in the death of Freddie Gray in the Manhattan borough of New York

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Prosecutors dropped charges against the remaining three police officers in connection with the death of black detainee Freddie Gray, the Washington Post and CNN reported on Wednesday.

Last week the prosecutors failed for the fourth time to secure a conviction against a police officer in the case, and Baltimore’s police union called on prosecutors to drop the charges against three officers still awaiting trial.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson and Susan Heavey; Writing by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)

Baltimore police lieutenant acquitted in Freddie Gray death

Lt. Brian Rice in undated booking photo provided by the Baltimore Police Department

By Donna Owens

BALTIMORE (Reuters) – A Maryland judge on Monday acquitted Baltimore police Lieutenant Brian Rice of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office for the April 2015 death of black detainee Freddie Gray.

Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams handed down his verdict after a bench trial. Rice, 42, is the highest-ranking officer charged in Gray’s death from a broken neck suffered in a police transport van.

Gray’s death triggered protests and rioting in the mainly black city and stoked a national debate about how police treat minorities. The controversy flared anew this month with the deaths of African-American men at the hands of police in Minnesota and Louisiana.

Monday’s verdict is the latest setback for prosecutors, who have failed to secure a conviction in the trials of four officers thus far.

Rice, who is white, ordered two officers on bicycle to chase Gray, 25, when he fled unprovoked in a high-crime area.

Prosecutors said Rice was negligent in shackling Gray’s legs and not securing him in a seat belt, as required by department protocol.

But defense lawyers said Rice was allowed leeway on whether to get inside a van to secure a prisoner. The officer made a correct decision in a few seconds while Gray was being combative and a hostile crowd was looking on, they said.

Williams, who heard the case without a jury at Rice’s request, said prosecutors failed to show the lieutenant was aware of a departmental policy requiring seat belts for prisoners during transport.

“The state did not prove the defendant was aware of the new policy,” the judge said in court.

Only a handful of protesters were at the courthouse for the verdict’s announcement.

Williams previously acquitted Officers Edward Nero and Caesar Goodson Jr., the van’s driver. A third officer, William Porter, faces a retrial after a jury deadlocked.

(Writing by Ian Simpson in Washington and Joseph Ax in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Baltimore Boy Gets World’s First Double Hand Transplant

An 8-year-old Baltimore boy who lost his hands and feet to infection when he was 2 will now know what it’s like to be able to pet a dog, throw a football or climb on the swing set at school.

Zion Harvey was given the world’s first double hand transplant at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

A team of 40 doctors, nurses and reconstruction specalists were guided by Dr. L. Scott Levin, the chair of orthopedic surgery at Penn Medicine (the medical school for the University of Pennsylvania).

“We know what we have to do today,” Dr. L. Scott Levin told his troops before the 10-hour operation began. “I know everybody assembled here has a commitment to this patient and making this a reality for this little boy. We can have complications. We can fail. We can have trouble. But we’re not planning on it.”

Zion had already survived a kidney transplant and mastered using prosthetic legs.

“It was Zion’s decision,” thie boy’s mother Pattie Ray told the Baltimore Sun. “If he wanted them we were going to get them. If he didn’t we weren’t.”

Zion informed his mother that because he now had hands, he wants a puppy and wants to play football.

Baltimore Restaurant Owner To Feed Homeless Rather Than Promote Self

A Baltimore restaurant owner is passing on a week of self-promotion as part of the city’s “Baltimore Restaurant Week” to feed the homeless of the city.

Michael Tabrizi, owner of Tabrizi’s, will shut down his dining room from July 20th to July 25th to provide three meals a day for those in need.

“I decided that, after all of the chaos earlier this year, it would be better to do something for the city to unite the people,” he says. “It isn’t about revenue and money right now, we’ve done restaurant week before and we know the numbers, but right now it’s more important to promote the welfare of the city and its residents rather than to promote the business.”

Tabrizi said that the week will mean more than just providing a hot meal for those who need it but also providing some dignity to those who find themselves worrying about where they will find their next meal.

“These people don’t only suffer from hunger, but also from hopelessness, they feel that they don’t have any dignity anymore,” Tabrizi says. “We want them to come in and feel like they’re cared for.”

Tabrizi is asking for volunteers from the community to help serve the meals at 1, 3 and 5 p.m. each day.

“The main goal is just to show people that actions do matter. Baltimore has a long way to recover and we can’t just rely on other people to lead. It’s our city,” Tabrizi says. “My dad used to always say, ‘You can’t control what people do and say, but you can control how you act.’ My reaction is bringing people together and showing them that I care.”

Grand Jury Formally Indicts Baltimore Officers

A grand jury in Baltimore has indicted six officers on charges connected to the Freddie Gray situation that led to massive rioting.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced the grand jury’s decision to bring charges against all the officers during a Thursday press conference.  The indictments were similar to charges Mosby announced earlier this month but a few changed due to what she called “new information in the case.”

“These past two weeks, my team has been presenting evidence to a grand jury that just today returned indictments against all six officers,” Mosby told reporters. “As our investigation has continued, additional information has been discovered, and as is often the case during an ongoing investigation, charges can and should be revised based upon the evidence.”

The officers will be formally charged on July 2nd.

The Washington Post reports that Gray had an extensive criminal record “and had a handful of convictions, mostly on charges of selling or possessing heroin or marijuana. His longest stint behind bars was about two years.”

Gray’s death sparked nationwide protests and calls for the officers to be charged with murder.

Baltimore Police Undergoes Federal Investigation

On the heels of riots in Baltimore and the arrest and charges against six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray, the mayor has asked the federal government to carry out an investigation of the police department.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said that the police had a “fractured” relationship with the community.  The declaration comes after the Obama administration’s new attorney general visited the city and held a private meeting with Blake.

“The attorney general is actively considering that option in light of what she heard from law enforcement, city officials, and community, faith and youth leaders in Baltimore yesterday,” Justice Department spokeswoman Dena Iverson said.

A spokesman for Baltimore City Council President Jack Young said that Mr. Young has been calling for an investigation since October.  The requested investigation is similar to the one in Ferguson, Missouri after the Michael Brown incident.

In the first five years of their term, the Justice Department has started investigations into over 20 police departments, more than double the amount of the previous term.

Five law enforcement agencies were found to have had no violations.  Cities that have faced similar investigations include New Orleans and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Police Officers In Baltimore Charged

Every officer connected to the arrest of Freddie Gray in Baltimore has now been charged with crimes by the city’s state’s attorney.

State’a Attorney Marilyn Mosby said Friday that Freddie Gray’s death was a homicide, that his arrest was illegal and that she was charging every officer involved with crimes ranging from murder to “misconduct in office.”

“The findings of our comprehensive, thorough and independent investigation, coupled with the medical examiner’s determination that Mr. Gray’s death was a homicide,” Mosby said, “has led us to believe that we have probable cause to file criminal charges.”

“To the people of Baltimore and the demonstrators across America, I heard your call for ‘no justice, no peace’. Your peace is sincerely needed, as I work to deliver justice on behalf of this young man.” Mosby added.

The announcement of charges was expected to take longer than less than 24 hours from the delivery of the police department’s report on the incident.  The city is still under a nighttime curfew from Monday’s riots.

“Mr. Gray suffered a severe and critical neck injury as a result of being handcuffed, shackled by his feet and unrestrained inside of the BPD wagon,” Mosby said.

President Obama responded to the news of charges by saying that the legal process should run its course.

“What I think the people of Baltimore want more than anything else is the truth,” Obama said.

The Fraternal Order of Police challenged the actions of prosecutor and said that an independent prosecutor needs to be assigned to the case because of potential bias.

NFL Star on Baltimore: Only Christ Can Mend Us

An NFL star is boldly addressing the situation in Baltimore, saying that the problem is that people are not turning to the one who can truly bring healing: Christ.

Benjamin Watson, 11 year NFL veteran and current tight end for the New Orleans Saints, said that the problems in Baltimore are not unique to that city and will likely happen again somewhere else.  However, the problems are not just in cities but the nation.

“We have major problems as a nation. Yesterday, Ferguson burned. Tonight #Baltimore burns. Tomorrow, it will be another city in our homeland,” Watson wrote. “Watching the coverage I’m hearing yet another version of a nauseatingly familiar narrative: violence by police reciprocated by violence by the community, reciprocated by violence by police reciprocated by.… It seems fruitless to continue to analyze, condemn, and respond to these dreadful episodes.”

“Our problems are wholistic [sic] and common to the human heart. Hatred, prejudice, exploitation, pride, self righteousness, secrecy, and rebellion, manifest itself in the explosions we’ve seen over the last year, the last century, and the last millennia,” Watson continued. “Tonight I see so much entrenched pain without remedy. Most are handling it without violence while a few are committing the unacceptable.”

The remedy he said was Jesus.

“Tonight I see ‘smoke,’ but we must address the fire. The response that we are watching is just ‘smoke’ from years of hopelessness,” Watson described. “After each situation the more I am convinced that the love of God for our fellow brothers and sisters who were created in His image is our only hope for reconciliation.”

He also said that churches need to get out and make a difference in their neighborhoods because “holding hands and singing” is not the answer.

“But the only way we can even see Him that way is if God illuminates our view and changes our thought process. I’m not talking about holding hands and singing. Love is an action that compels one to treat another with dignity and respect even if they don’t deserve it,” Watson opined. “It pushes for education and opportunities for those in poverty. It gives identity and self worth. It administers justice without abuse. It honors authority and promotes peace. It is not weak, but strong for what is right!”