On April 12, 2015, lifelong Baltimore resident Freddie Gray was arrested, hogtied and thrown into the back of a police van by six officers. When Gray was pulled from the van less than an hour later, he was in a coma. A week later, he passed away from severe injuries to his cervical spinal cord. The incident, and the revelations thereafter, set Baltimore and the entire country ablaze. Details of the case alleged officers had taken Gray for a “rough ride,” a police brutality practice where individuals are intentionally left unrestrained in police vehicles during dangerous driving maneuvers. After a coroner ruled Gray’s death a homicide, the six officers involved in his arrest were charged with crimes ranging from false imprisonment to manslaughter. But the damage was done, not only to Gray, but to his community, which had endured decades of deprivations and abuse by Baltimore police. The resulting Baltimore Uprising shook the city and the nation to its core, fueling a fresh wave of Black Lives Matter protests building on the murders of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, and Eric Garner.
In a special 10-year anniversary documentary, TRNN reporters Stephen Janis and Taya Graham asked Baltimore organizers, activists, teachers, and residents for their reflections on Freddie Gray’s death, the subsequent uprising, and where the city is now. What did they feel when they first received news of Freddie Gray’s death? Did they have any hope the police would be held accountable, and has Baltimore City and its police department changed for the better as a result of the uprising? The following conversation is a thoughtful meditation on the long term impact of police brutality, the limitations of legislating cultural change, the power of community organizing, and the determination to still love and heal this city.
Headquartered in Baltimore City, TRNN was on the ground when the uprising began 10 years ago. You can find an archive of our original reporting here.
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
[CROWD CHANTING]:
While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying.
Taya Graham:
In 2015, 25-year-old Baltimore resident, Freddie Gray, locked eyes with a police officer. He was chased, arrested, hogtied, and thrown into the back of a van. He died a week later from severe spinal cord injuries. Baltimore City rose up to protest his death, the result of decades of aggressive over-policing. 10 years later, the real news spoke to activists and community leaders about what they remembered, how it affected them, and the impact on the community, and finally, their thoughts on the future of our city. This is what they said.
[VIDEO CLIP] Taya Graham:
Thank you. Thank you so much. Really appreciate that. Welcome to a special live edition-
Taya Graham:
Just before the uprising began, I was actually hosting a town hall with Michelle Alexander, who’s the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
[VIDEO CLIP] Michelle Alexander:
We maintain this attitude that we ought to be punishing those kids and teaching them a lesson by putting them in literal cages.
Taya Graham:
And activists and organizers from all throughout the city had joined us. Members of the ACLU, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle. All types of community members were there, and we were actually there initially to discuss the school-to-prison pipeline, but one of the people spoke up and spoke about the video of Freddie Gray that had just been released to the public.
[VIDEO CLIP] Adam Johnson:
I know here in Baltimore, in particular, we’ve been dealing with the issue of police brutality for quite some time. And Freddie Gray recently, his spine was severed and he died, I think two days ago.
Dayvon Love:
I actually got a text from a cousin of the Tyrone West family, and I still have it, a text message that has the picture, the famous picture that we’ve all seen of Freddie Gray in hospital while he was still alive, but on life support and says, “This is Freddie Gray. This just happened and we think this is going to cause a big uproar.”
Tawanda Jones:
When I seen Freddie Gray getting dragged into that van, it was like opening up my brother’s casket all over again.
[VIDEO CLIP] Eddie Conway:
Tyrone West’s family held their 200th-week protest and demonstration, trying to demand justice for Tyrone West, who was beaten to death by a dozen police in the city and still has not received any justice.
Tawanda Jones:
Hearing him screaming and moan, it just took me to, with my brother moaning and groaning and screaming and hollering, he was getting beat down in the same streets in Baltimore, not in the same streets, but in the same city, and nobody being held accountable. It broke my heart and that’s when I met Freddie Gray’s mom, Ms. Gloria, and I was just telling her pretty much to hold on, just keep fighting, and I was being prayerful that he was going to survive his attack.
D. Watkins:
I never forget, I was over Bocek’s, Bocek Park in East Baltimore and I got a homeboy that’s like he is one of those guys that he wanted to be affiliated. Rest in peace. He’s dead. This particular day, he was outside. He was riding around the city with my homeboy daz because they was filming a video and they was on a basketball court, and he just started blacking out. He was going crazy. He was going back and forth, and I’m like, “What’s wrong?” And he was like, “The police did such and such,” to my man, and he was going through it. So, that’s how I first heard about the story.
Michael Wilkins:
That morning, that morning, I actually had a hearing for a parole violation down in classification on Biddle Street, I think it is in Baltimore. And when they call you in for parole hearing for a violation, if they’re calling you into the actual jail itself, it means you’re not coming up.
Doug Colbert:
I was supervising law students who were representing people in criminal court, and we had many cases just like Freddie Gray, where the police would react to a black person who was not showing the proper respect and decorum, and they would then chase them down and eventually apprehend them and search them. And of course, those searches would not have been constitutional legal. So, my students won most of those cases.
Michael Wilkins:
So, I’m at home, and I’m like, “I don’t want to go to jail today.” Who wants to go to jail? So, I’m like, “I don’t want to go to jail,” and I’m praying. And then the riots break out, shuts the whole city down.
[VIDEO CLIP] Jaisal Noor:
In Baltimore on Saturday, April 15th, about 1500 people took part in the largest demonstrations to date against the killing of 25-year-old West Baltimore resident, Freddie Gray in police custody.
D. Watkins:
When people see things on video, it brings a different type of anger than just us talking about it. That’s the first thing. The second thing is poor leadership in a police department. We never really tracked down the source of who made the decision to shut the bus lines down, but some people said it came from the state, and then some people said it came from the police department. I don’t know. But whoever made that decision is a very, very bad decision.
Doug Colbert:
Oh, I think what happened in terms of the video was so unusual. It’s when you see something and then you have live witnesses who can tell the story that made a huge difference, and the reaction was immediate and predictable.
Michael Wilkins:
It made me feel as it relates to the city that once you push any population enough, once you keep them under your thumb enough, once you continually to kick them and prod them and laugh at them and mock them, it gets unbearable after a while.
Taya Graham:
For years, our community had yelled out and screamed out, people are experiencing misconduct, people are experiencing brutality. We had endured 10 years of zero-tolerance policing, where corners were cleared. People were taken off blocks for loitering or expectorating, spitting in public or simply not even having your ID on you to prove that you lived in the neighborhood. I actually endured that on multiple occasions in my own neighborhood, I would have to produce ID and be questioned on who I was, where I was going, and did I belong there.
[CROWD CHANTING]:
No justice, no peace, no racist, police.
Doug Colbert:
Freddie Gray was well-known in his community, and there were a lot of Freddie Grays who had suffered the same consequences. So, when people were actually there, they were able to tell the story firsthand.
Michael Wilkins:
Freddie Gray, unarmed. Freddie Gray dying in the custody of police. And then the first thing the police do is try to soften the situation and then they try to devalue Mr. Gray by victimizing him, putting the blame on the victim, saying that it was his fault that he died. All that together with everything else going on, it was a powder cake and it grew up.
[CROWD CHANTING]:
Justice for Fred. Justice for Fred. Justice for Fred. Justice for Fred.
Michael Wilkins:
You have to understand the atmosphere surrounding Freddie Gray’s murder, the uprising, which grew from, you have to understand the climate.
Jill P. Carter:
I think zero tolerance had a lot to do with it. It’s not me just thinking that the entire Department of Justice thought so because it’s all throughout the report that led to the consent decree.
[VIDEO CLIP] Vanita Gupta:
EPD engages in a pattern or practice of making unconstitutional stops, searches, and arrests.
Jill P. Carter:
So, it absolutely did. How does it not? How do you have 100,000 people in a city of 600,000 people? Many of them are not even eligible for arrest because they’re either super old or super young. So, you take out, out of the 600, you got what, 300 or 400 that are actually maybe arrest eligible or likely, and then you got a hundred thousand people arrested each year, each year.
Michael Wilkins:
Nothing is in a bottle, you know what I mean? Nothing is isolated, you know what I mean? It’s like a silo with wheat flurries going through it. All it takes is a spark for that silo to ignite. It’s like being at a gas pump and the fumes in the air and you light a cigarette, the pump might blow. So, the fumes, in this case, the wheat flurries in this case of the silo of Baltimore was the policing, was the attitude of the police.
Jill P. Carter:
I think that the ongoing confusion that people have, as well, when those arrests were coming, wasn’t that what was needed? Well, no, because those were also years that we had astronomical homicide numbers and astronomical violent crime numbers and astronomical shootings that didn’t lead to homicides.
Dayvon Love:
Whenever I talk about the Baltimore case, I just, I point viewers or people talking to two figures. One figure is spending on parks and rec, and the other is spending on policing, starting in 1980. I think in 1980, parks and rec spending was like $35, $45 million parks and rec spending in 2015 was $35, $45 million. Policing was maybe, I think 140 million, policing by 2015 was three times, that was approximately 430, 440 million. Now, it’s above, I think, it’s maybe 500, 550 if not more. And then you look at where that spending goes, that spending goes into a martial approach to policing.
Some of the factors that I think led to the uprising is that law enforcement is a very insular industry, and the way that the system of white supremacy operates in this society is that there’s a fundamental disregard for the humanity of people of African descent. And that manifests itself in the notion that the community having oversight of law enforcement and light respectable “political establishment society” is seen as ridiculous.
Taya Graham:
The fuel, the gasoline was all the crimes that had gone unpunished. And when I’m speaking of these crimes, I’m talking about police crimes, Baltimore City police crimes against our community.
Dayvon Love:
Because I remember talking to a reporter at the time for whom I mentioned this concept of community oversight of law enforcement and young white women whose response was almost like she found it a little bit of a stretch.
D. Watkins:
If I walk out here right now and you put a gun on me and rob me, the last thing on my mind is going to be, “Call the police.” I’m never going to think that unless I had something that was insured and I was like, “Oh, I can get that bread back.” Then I might be like, “All right, back, call the police.” But other than that, if I can’t get my stuff back or figure it out, then that person was meant to have whatever they took and that’s just theirs. That’s just what it is.
Dayvon Love:
But I’m mentioning that because when you think about all the structural forces that in terms of socioeconomic denigration, lack of access to resources, disempowerment of community, when you have all those factors, the community doesn’t have the levers that it needs to be able to push back against police abuse.
Lester Spence:
Yeah. So at that point, what happens is when an event happens that people didn’t predict, and remember, I didn’t predict, I do this, but I didn’t really predict it. So when something happens that people can’t predict something explosive like this, it disrupts everything. It disrupts alliances. It disrupts institutions. It disrupts the solutions that people routinely believe should be applied to political problems.
Jill P. Carter:
I was infuriated. So the arrest and ultimate death of Freddie Gray literally happened days after the conclusion of the 2015 legislative session. And that was a session where for the second time in a row, 2014 and 2015, I had proposed a multitude of different pieces of legislation that would do things to create police reform.
Dayvon Love:
So police, in many respects could run rough shot as a result of that, the community not having those mechanisms of accountability because they’re fundamentally politically disempowered given the society that we live in.
Jill P. Carter:
One of the ones that I thought was really important was we’ve ultimately passed something similar now, but whistleblower protection so that officers would be free to report on other misconduct within their institutions and other officers and even their leadership without fear of repercussion. This happened a number of times and there were a lot of different mothers testifying. And why was that painful? Because my colleagues within the legislature just didn’t seem to care.
Michael Wilkins:
I don’t think that people really realize that nobody on the corner wants to be on the corner. Whoever’s doing bad, selling drugs, shooting people, robbing people, nobody wants to do that. That’s the reality of it. And if anybody comes and says, “Look, we’re going to help you find a job, that’s all that they want.” You think some man wants to go home to his girlfriend and two kids after spending all day on a corner, hustling drugs?
Doug Colbert:
And what then happened is that three nights a week, they did drug suites or gun suites or whatever arrest, whoever was on the street on a Sunday, Tuesday, or Thursday, if those were the three nights would be arrested.
Jill P. Carter:
Those were the years, the O’Malley years where everybody wasn’t safe outside of their home. You are sitting on your steps on your porch, you’re in your backyard, you’re on your street, you’re on your corner, just being present and being black could often result in an arrest without charges. So out of those 100,000 or so arrests every year, at least 1/3 were without charges, meaning we had no reason to legitimately arrest you.
Michael Wilkins:
Is directly proportionate to these men having jobs now. And we’re talking about a very impoverished area. People in trouble with the law already. And from personal knowledge, I can tell you how difficult it is to have a criminal record, a felony record, and not being able to find a job. I mean, there’s a lot of despair involved in that. There’s a lot of give up in that. I mean, you talk about taking a knee, try going to an interview, getting hired, and then a week later getting fired because your background record comes back. People get tired of that. So the easier path, is just to go on the corner. I can make 75, $100 a day hanging on the corner for 8 hours, and that’s enough that they’ll get me by until tomorrow.
Doug Colbert:
And I remember having a conversation with the mayor because we happened to both belong to the downtown athletic club. Baltimore is a very small town, and I’m going, “Martin, these arrests are not legit.” He says, “We got five guns off the street, that’s five less people that are going to be in danger.” I said, “But the other 95 people should never have been arrested in the first place.” He said, “Well, they shouldn’t have been out in the street.” I said, “Martin, they have fines that they didn’t pay.”
Lester Spence:
I think when Martin O’Malley was mayor, I think over a three-year period, he made more arrests than Baltimore had black citizens. So each of those arrests ends up leaving a mark. Leaves a mark on the individual, leaves a mark on that individual’s family. And as much as those arrests are concentrated in certain types of neighborhood, it leaves marks on those neighborhoods.
Taya Graham:
So the protests had been going on for days, and Marilyn Mosby calls a press conference. So at the time, everyone was a little bit nervous. No one was sure what was going to be said, but we knew it was going to be important.
Michael Wilkins:
And you have a brand new city-state’s attorney, Marilyn Mosby, who nobody thought would win, who was an extreme outsider fighting against the system just being a black woman and running for city-state’s attorney. And she wanted to show that she was different.
Taya Graham:
So she calls a press conference in front of the War Memorial, and it seemed like the entire world was there. There were reporters from across the country, and even international reporters were there to listen to what SAO Marilyn Mosby had to say.
Marilyn Mosby:
First and foremost, I need to express publicly my deepest sympathies for the family of the loved ones of Mr. Freddie Gray. I had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Gray’s family to discuss some of the details of the case and the procedural steps going forward. I assured his family that no one is above the law and that I would pursue justice on their behalf to the thousands of city residents, community organizers, faith leaders, and political leaders that chose to march peacefully throughout Baltimore, I commend your courage to stand for justice. The findings of our comprehensive, thorough and independent investigation coupled with the medical examiner’s determination that Mr. Gray’s death was a homicide which we received today, has led us to believe that we have probable cause to file criminal charges. The statement of probable cause is as follows.
Lester Spence:
So Marilyn Moseley was one of the beneficial… It’s complicated, but her election was one of the beneficial consequences of organizing. She had far less money, if any, than her person she was running against, and she ran on the platform of holding police accountable.
Taya Graham:
City state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby walks out to the memorial and she drops a bomb that she’s charging all six officers. As much as it was what people in the community wanted, I think we were all shocked that was actually really happening.
Speaker 21:
This morning at seven o’clock, I said, on one of the national networks that I would trust, whatever Marilyn Mosby did. I didn’t know that a decision would be coming down today. And the other thing that I said was this, that I believe with all my heart that she would take the facts, once she did all the research she needed to do, size it up with the law and make the right decision. And I said this morning before I knew any of this, that whatever her decision would be because of her integrity and the fact that I believe in her, that I would accept that decision.
Tawanda Jones:
I was so shocked that Marilyn Mosby stood up because I never saw a state prosecutor stand up and say, “You know what? You all hold your peace while I get accountability, gave the greatest speech that I have ever heard.”
[VIDEO CLIP] Marilyn Mosby:
To the youth of this city, I will seek justice on your behalf. This is a moment. This is your moment. Let’s ensure that we have peaceful and productive rallies that will develop structural and systemic changes for generations to come.
Tawanda Jones:
And I’m like, “Oh my God.” I’m at work. I’m in tears. I didn’t know, because I’m thinking in my mind, “Nobody’s going to be charged. They didn’t charge nobody in my brother case.” But when she came out with those words, I’m like, “Oh my God,” and that speech was profound. I’m like, yes,
D. Watkins:
I know it didn’t make her a lot of friends, but at the same time, it made her a hero to a lot of people. So a lot of people, they still talk about that, but on one side, and then a lot of people on the other side can’t stand her for that.
Michael Wilkins:
She wanted to show that her constituency matter to her. That she was going to stand up for them and with them, because she is part of them and she charged them. She charged those officers like they should be charged.
Doug Colbert:
What prosecutor state’s attorney Mosby did, which she really has never gotten the full credit for, is that she handled that case so differently from the way that most criminal prosecutions against police officers would take place. So in the first instance, she did not allow the police to investigate police officers because the outcome of that situation, not just here in Baltimore but throughout the country, was that there would never be charges filed.
Taya Graham:
But as soon as she announced those charges, the pushback from law enforcement began even before the trial. There were, let’s say, advocates on behalf of the law enforcement industrial complex in Baltimore city that were going on CNN, lawyers who were calling her juvie league and saying that she was rushing to judgment. There was an entire media blitz to discredit Mosby from the very beginning of her actually announcing those charges, let alone the trial itself.
Doug Colbert:
Steve, I think what people forget is how close the prosecution came to convicting Officer Porter, who was the first to go on trial. As I recall, the jury went out late Monday afternoon, probably around four o’clock if I recall, and they deliberated very little on Monday. They had a full day on Tuesday. On Wednesday, they sent a note to the judge in the afternoon saying that they had not reached a verdict, and the judge had Thursday, there was a holiday weekend coming up, as I remember. The judge easily could have allowed them to deliberate some part of Thursday at least to see if they could have resolved their difference. Surprisingly, the judge did not do so, and that’s when the mistrial took place. But I think that outcome really scared the bejesus out of the police union because they saw how close a jury of 12 people came to convicting the first officer.
Taya Graham:
I sat in that courtroom, and I can tell you, even though there had been a lot of chatter about how Judge Williams was going to be a fair judge, he was an honest judge and a forthright judge. When I was sitting in that courtroom, I couldn’t help but feel like the fix was in.
Dayvon Love:
So I think the officers that participated in arresting Freddie Gray that ultimately led to his death, them being clear, is, I think, a little complicated. There is a natural relationship between the prosecutor and law enforcement. So in some ways there’s an inherent structural mismatch between the notion of a prosecutor holding police accountable, and having the tools that when a prosecutor decides to do that, having the tools to do that, because you need law enforcement in order to do the investigations, in order to hold them accountable.
D. Watkins:
And I tell people, I don’t claim to be an expert on anything, but it is hard to be a revolutionary, identify as a revolutionary, and work as a prosecutor. If you want to be loved by the masses, you got to go be a public defender.
[VIDEO CLIP] Marilyn Mosby:
There were individual police officers that were witnesses to the case, yet were part of the investigative team, interrogations that were conducted without asking the most poignant questions, lead detectives that were completely uncooperative and started a counter investigation to disprove the state’s case by not executing search warrants pertaining to text messages among the police officers involved in the case.
Dayvon Love:
So in terms of them being cleared, for me, it is a result of the structural mismatch between the fact that law enforcement in many respects, as a matter of policy, had developed a structure where they’re the only ones that could investigate. And so with just the culture of the blue wall of silence, it makes it nearly impossible
Michael Wilkins:
When those cops, when those six policemen were exonerated, I don’t want to sound cliche, but it was just deflation. It was an air balloon with the oxygen being turned off. But at the same time, I’m old enough and I’m wise enough to realize that police is a very powerful beast with a very powerful ying and a very long reach. And they stay together, they stick together. There’s not too many juries and judges around that’s going to facilitate willfully their incarceration.
Dayvon Love:
And there are ways that both her deciding to indict those officers and prosecute marked her in ways that was detrimental to her and her family. But it was a net positive to have a person in that seat who took the positions that she ended up having to take. It was a net positive. I think it helped us on police accountability, juvenile justice. Her being there really helped in some of the policy work that we’ve done on a lot of relevant issues. And I think the targeting of her in many ways was not just about her, the individual. It was about her policy platform and pushing back against it.
Taya Graham:
So after the Uprising, the Baltimore City government makes a really extraordinary choice, and that choice was to give a billionaire a $600 million tax break to build out Port Covington.
[VIDEO CLIP] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake:
So my office began working with Sagamore Development months ago to make sure that all of the people of Baltimore benefited from Port Covington.
Lester Spence:
And as much as that’s all occurring within a dynamic in which Baltimore is being hollowed out in social service provision, and they’re giving tax breaks to a combination of high income earners and then to either corporate actors like Under Armour or even like my employer, like Hopkins, who doesn’t pay taxes, it ends up creating this hollowed out city in which I think the word that comparative politics or IR scholars would use to describe Baltimore if it were a nation, I think the term is Garrison State. It’s a state in which most of its governing resources are put into policing.
Taya Graham:
This tax break of $600 million going to a billionaire is going to allow him to build out Port Covington, also now known as the Baltimore Peninsula. Now, this area is isolated from the rest of Baltimore City, so the amenities, the luxury apartments, the Under Armour headquarters, none of this is actually going to benefit city residents.
Lester Spence:
The degree to which there were some actors who were able to benefit far more than others, and that in some ways, even though the priorities shifted, they didn’t shift, they shifted, right? So they shift a little bit, but not enough where giving a $600 million basically tax write off to a major development actor wasn’t deemed to be abnormal. It was still business as usual.
Tawanda Jones:
Again, it’s just a capitalist system that perpetuates off of poor people and use our paying for its game, just like they built a Freddie Gray community center. What is the Freddie Gray community center? How is it helping black and brown folks, or needy folks? What is it doing? Do anybody know what is it doing?
Jill P. Carter:
Where you spend your money is indicative of your priorities and your moral code, your moral compass. So if you’re spending your resources or expending resources to help billionaires while you have neighborhoods of people starving, that shows you the priorities. And that’s indicative of the leadership of the city that’s always been in place. I’m born and raised in Baltimore, and I wasn’t always astute about decisions of leadership and how they affected everyone, but when you look at the entire history of the city, we’ve always had leadership and an establishment that feeds the rich and starves the poor.
D. Watkins:
Freddie Gray got robbed by one of those settlement companies. You’re supposed to get a lead check for like a half a million dollars, and they come through with like 15, 20 cash, it was something criminal like that. So it’s like you’re being preyed upon by the people at the corner store, you’re getting preyed upon by the payday loan people, you’re getting preyed upon by some of the ripoff preachers. So many different people are just picking at you, and you got to exist in that reality. And then you got a world of people speaking on your behalf, and they don’t fuck with you either, in a real way.
Tawanda Jones:
It’s the haves and the have-nots. They take care of what they want to take care and neglect what they want to neglect. And the saddest part, they get more money in the city than they do anywhere else. And then they take our money and run with it, and take care of what they want to take care of, and leave people in food deserts, leave them. It is the same exact way. And in fact, it’s getting worse.
Taya Graham:
It was a hastily called press conference at City Hall. Mayor Catherine Pugh, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and Police Commissioner Kevin Davis announced they had reached an agreement over how to reform the Baltimore City Police Department.
[VIDEO CLIP] Catherine Pugh:
I want to say that the agreement recognizes that the city’s Baltimore Police Department has begun some critical reform, however, there is much more to be done.
Taya Graham:
A process that started last year with the release of a damning report that revealed the Baltimore City Police engaged in unconstitutional and racist policing. But the devil was in the details. Among them, a civilian oversight taskforce charged with assessing and recommending changes to the city’s civilian review process, requirements that suspects are seatbelted when transported, and that cameras are installed in all vans. It also included additional training and emphasis on de-escalation tactics.
Doug Colbert:
The federal consent decree is the best thing that has happened in legal circles since Freddie Gray’s killing. And I say that because once you have a federal judge monitoring police behavior and police conduct, and Judge Bredar, another unsung hero has been doing so for the last, what, eight years, and he doesn’t just bring people in to pat them on the back. He’s always demanding, “What are you doing to control that practice?”
Dayvon Love:
So what I’m about to say is not super popular. So initially when the consent decree was conceived, I wasn’t super excited about it. And I think sometimes people say “consent decree”, but aren’t even entirely clear structurally what it is. It is in essence an agreement between the federal government and local jurisdiction that we would sue you, but we won’t unless you meet these certain standards and obligations in order to withdraw any potential legal action. So that is in essence structurally what a consent decree is. And so the consent decree doesn’t impact policy as much as it impacts the internal practices of the institution of the police department.
Jill P. Carter:
Right on the heels of the consent decree, there’s an entire unconstitutional lockdown because an officer is possibly shot and killed in one of the neighborhoods.
[VIDEO CLIP] Jill P. Carter:
The idea of making people understand that we understand that we’re valuable, I think that the message of what they did because of the detective’s homicide or potential homicide versus the lack of that kind of action with the other 60 or so people that were killed in West Baltimore this year.
[VIDEO CLIP] Speaker:
The second day when this was locked down, this board should have went to the media and said, “You’re in violation.”
Jill P. Carter:
Now every day, there are people that are not officers that are shot and killed, and we don’t have lockdowns of entire neighborhoods. That shows you that the priorities were no different even after the consent decree.
D. Watkins:
These questions are really complex, and it’s hard to give a straight answer, and I’m going to tell you why. If I’m living as an outlaw, I don’t give a fuck about a consent decree. I’m an outlaw, I’m not thinking about that shit. I’m not even watching… I love Debra Wynn, I’m not watching them talk about the dissent decree. You know what I’m saying? So it’s not even a part of my reality. So there’s nobody who’s like, “Yo, I’m going to be a bigger criminal because the police officers are nice now.”
Doug Colbert:
At that time, the police were still being extremely aggressive. The Gun Trace Task Force had been in effect and operating for probably six years. And so on the street, people knew about the hitters. I mean, they would just jump out of their car and they would go after whoever they wanted. And there was no regulation, there was no supervision.
Michael Wilkins:
For years, very passive, and it was part of that, them not working for the city and working for Marilyn Mosby, they would just not do it. And I believe that it was a complete call of duty for them not to perform their duties and tasks. I really strongly believe that.
Taya Graham:
I recently went to Gilmore Homes in order to speak to residents, and I have to be quite straight with you that it doesn’t look that much different than it did in 2015 when I was reporting from Gilmore Homes. Even as I was standing on the playground, there was a woman there picking up broken glass so the children wouldn’t be injured. As I looked across the street from the playground, I saw that the row houses that were connected, one of them was burned out in the middle. I mean, imagine having your home connected to a completely burned out and abandoned home.
Dayvon Love:
So I think what has happened in the 10 years since the death of Freddie Gray and the Baltimore uprising, it’s mixed. I think that one of the biggest outcomes of the uprising was that I think there was recognition of the demand for more black community control of institutions and more investment in black folks’ capacity collectively to have control of major institutions.
Doug Colbert:
We have to be investing in our schools, we have to be investing in our kids. It’s not that complex. And it doesn’t mean we’re going to succeed for everyone. And if we succeeded for half of the people, that would be enormous, because that would set an example for the other half. Right now, once you get a criminal record, once you get a criminal conviction, your chances of getting a good job have decreased considerably. In wealthy neighborhoods, we often will give enormous tax benefits, and that makes it, I guess, the profit-
And that makes it, I guess, the profit margin higher. But we’re talking about a city which has a very high poverty rate and a very high low income rate. And we’re just neglecting so many people.
Michael Wilkins:
No, it hasn’t changed and it won’t change. It won’t ever change. That’s the hood, that’s the ghetto. That’s where lower income Black folks are relegated to. That’s their designation. That’s their station. That’s where they’re from. That’s the way it will always be. Gilmor Homes, that whole West Baltimore area is huge. So to change the whole area, you have to change that huge amount of real estate and space. And what are you going to do? What developer is going to walk in there and step on those? And then what do you do with the people when you try to redevelop it? So no, it’s not going to change. It hasn’t changed. Nothing’s changed. Poverty is poverty. Poverty is necessary, some people believe, and Gilmor Homes faces the brunt of that belief.
Jill P. Carter:
It’s possible that 10 years ago, if you had asked me if I thought that was possible or if I had some optimism about what might happen, I probably would’ve said yes. But 10 years later, having watched what has occurred since then, no, I’m not surprised at all. There’s no real interest in… There’s a belief that the people that have been ignored, neglected, deprived, criminalized, demonized, are always going to be that way and it’s just okay. We got to always have some group of people that we can just prey on. Do you know what I mean? Do I think anyone in leadership is that crass or that insensitive? No, but it’s a subconscious kind of thinking.
Dayvon Love:
The decline in homicides and non-fatal shootings the last few years in Baltimore City I think is one of the most important things to discuss and I think it has national implications.
Doug Colbert:
In some ways, we certainly have improved. I always like to start with the positive, especially in these times when sometimes it’s difficult to find positive, but our murder rate has decreased almost in half. I mean, whoever expected it would ever go under 200. And that reflects maybe a different approach to policing. I don’t get as many complaints or reports from citizens. I’m not saying they don’t happen, but I used to get regular calls, “We need your help. We need you to look at this.”
Dayvon Love:
So let’s just start with just the facts of where we are. Baltimore City Police Department for the past several years has said that it has a shortage of officers. So they’re having trouble recruiting officers, retaining officers, and therefore they will claim numbers between maybe 500 to almost sometimes, let’s say, a thousand short in terms of police officers in Baltimore City. What has happened simultaneously are precipitous declines and homicides and non-fatal shootings. So the argument that we have a police shortage, but homicides and non-fatal shootings go down that the case that makes is that law enforcement is not central to addressing public safety. The historic investments, and this is where the current mayor, Brandon Scott, should get a lot of credit. One of the first mayors to make the level of historic investments and community-based violence prevention. And what that means pretty simply is investing in people who are formerly involved in street activity, clergy that are really engaged and on the ground level, and a variety of other practitioners from the community and historic investments in their work to mediate conflicts, to prevent conflicts.
Jill P. Carter:
I do give credit to some of the violence intervention efforts that have sprung up since Freddie Gray and definitely since George Floyd. I don’t just give credit to the grassroots and neighborhood-based organizations actually to some of the political leaderships credit, they’ve funded and resource some of these organizations in ways they never had before. That is helpful, 100% helpful. But I also believe that I don’t understand why nobody ever looks at the decrease in population as well. You’re always going to have lower numbers if you have less, fewer people. What I would like to see it change, I would like the same way that it protects white folks. I would like for it protect brown and Black folks too, the same way it gives white privilege, we need Black privilege. That’s what I would like.
Michael Wilkins:
I think 10 years post Freddie Gray uprising, I think it has changed the city in the sense that the residents feel a certain compatriotism, they feel tied to each other. They feel as though they’re a collective, that they can move as one, that they can achieve goals, that if they stick together, if they hang together, if they are together, then they can move forward.
D. Watkins:
Invest in the residents, not just with money, but with ideas and that main idea being that this city is yours. It’s yours. You should love it and you should nurture it and you should take care of it because you can own a piece of it too. This is your city. It’s not a place where you rent. It’s not a place where you’re visiting. It’s not a place where you’re here until something tragic happens to you, this is yours.
Taya Graham:
Looking back 10 years after the uprising, I have a hope I didn’t before. And that’s because I have seen community organizers and activists and just community members actually feel like if they raise their voices, they can be heard. And I have seen incredible work from our community organizers going to the Maryland legislature asking for reform, crafting legislation.
Doug Colbert:
The criminal justice system always can be improved, always, but there are signs at least that lawyers are fighting for their clients. I always want them to fight harder for their clients. So we have a place to start. And if we can just keep adding to that and adding more resources to all of those different areas, I think we’re going to have a bright future.
Dayvon Love:
I think for me to overcome the narrative so that people aren’t freaked out by Black folks that are self-determined and that taking that posture doesn’t mean I dislike white people, but it is clear that there is no form of freedom where me being self-determined should be a threat to the space if folks are serious about liberation.
Jill P. Carter:
I’m always going to have hope because I’m always going to want to see people do better. I’m always going to want to see political leadership be better for all the people. But at this moment, I could honestly say I’ve been disappointed for the most part in what I’ve seen. But there’s always hope. Let me tell you, every generation there’s something that happens, some events that kind of galvanizes people around. And so I’m sure that there will be things in the future who’ll do the same thing.
D. Watkins:
Obviously we know a lot of people didn’t care when it happened and they don’t care now. A lot of people started off on their little activist journey and then they realized they weren’t going to get no bread, so they went and did something else. But there’s a whole lot of people who remember that, who remember those curfews, who remember seeing those tanks, who remember what happened, and they started moving differently as a result. And I think that’s important too. I’ve known some people that have passed and didn’t really have an opportunity to mobilize a city like that. I think his life mattered and I think his life put a whole lot of people on the journey towards being better people.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis.