| Baltimore: A Year After Freddie Gray, We Finally Woke Up! | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: Apr 26 2016, 10:38 PM (111 Views) | |
| U Thant | Apr 26 2016, 10:38 PM Post #1 |
![]()
|
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/26/a-year-after-the-baltimore-uprising-the-real-work-is-just-beginning/ ...ONE YEAR AND one day after Freddie Gray succumbed to the spine injury he received during a 45-minute drive in a police van, the Baltimore police commissioner sat on stage before a room packed with people who had poured into the city’s streets demanding justice. On the walls, black-and-white photos of protesters reminded everyone of the rawness and emotion of Baltimore’s breaking point. On stage interviewing Commissioner Kevin Davis were two protesters raised to sometimes reluctant fame during “the uprising,” as this section of Baltimore has come to call the protests — rejecting “riots,” the term used by much of the media. One of them, the photographer Devin Allen, was propelled from the streets of West Baltimore to the cover of Time magazine when he captured the protests’ most iconic image: a black man, face half-covered by a bandana, running from dozens of baton-wielding cops. The other activist, Kwame Rose, landed in the national spotlight when he confronted Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera on live television, becoming one of the most recognizable faces of the protesters’ anger. On April 20, sitting next to Commissioner Davis, they were once again facing a police officer up close, and they weren’t about to go easy on him. Davis is new to the job. His predecessor, Anthony Batts, was fired in July — not over the protests but because of the spike in violence that followed them. There were 344 homicides in Baltimore last year — the deadliest in the city’s history. Batts was not the only one to go: Baltimore’s mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, announced in September that she would not seek re-election, and much of the city council followed suit. Today, the city will vote in the primaries for the first mayoral race in years that doesn’t seem decided from the start. “This type of conversation isn’t normal,” said Rose, asking the audience to trust his “aggressiveness” in questioning the commissioner. No one objected when he then asked Davis, bluntly, “How do you deal with the anti-blackness that is natural inside yourself?” Rose asked Davis about two police brutality lawsuits that directly involved him, and whether he would now fire an officer who committed similar acts of violence. Davis answered every question, if not always directly. He apologized to Allen, Rose, and anyone in the room “who has ever had a negative experience with a police officer. I am sorry that that’s happened to you, I really am. That’s not just on behalf of the Baltimore Police Department, that’s on behalf of our profession.” In a sense, the staged conversation was a symbol of what has improved in Baltimore over the last 12 months — the city is now talking to itself, and asking tough questions. Debates about Freddie Gray’s death and the big-picture problems that led to it have echoed from the streets, to public forums, to the mayoral campaign trail. There’s general acknowledgement of the poverty, housing, and education crises in the city — and honest recognition that police culture must change. But if Baltimore has now asked the tough questions, it’s less clear what the answers are. IN NOVEMBER, on the eve of the first trial in the Gray case, the police department confronted a team of Penn North residents — this time on the football field. Police won the regular game, but then added an extra quarter and had the officers who “weren’t all that” play local children, with the specific instruction to “let them score.” Residents went home with the trophy, “but the truth of the matter is we whipped their butts!” joked Lt. Col. Melvin Russell, who leads the department’s community partnership division. Driving around different parts of West Baltimore last week, I saw two different groups of officers throwing a football around with kids, an officer at a playground helping small children climb a set of monkey bars, and a young girl playing with a police car’s loudspeaker telling passersby to put their hands on the ground. Young men nearby looked on, slightly confused. This was weird, they mumbled. Russell, a staunch advocate of cops walking the beat as “partners not occupiers,” was a vocal critic of the department’s failures before and during last year’s protests, and is now leading attempts to reform its culture. I spoke with him at the police headquarters downtown, but ran into him around West Baltimore several times last week. “You hear law enforcement agencies across the nation saying that they believe in community policing, but at the end of the day, at least for the ones I have looked at, they are just words, I haven’t seen anyone put it in practice,” he said. “We are dead set on showing Baltimore, and proving to them and ourselves, that we do belong in this community.” “We did not get into whatever [situation] we are in overnight,” said Russell, pleading for time. “We are really plowing the ground with the community and planting those seeds. To think that you can wake up tomorrow and see the fruits of that is ridiculous. You got to get through the season to see the fruits of your work.” In early April, the Maryland legislature passed a police accountability bill — the direct result of conversations that followed Gray’s death — ordering changes to the ways in which officers are hired, trained, and disciplined. But the bill didn’t include a provision the community had requested, giving civilian review boards authority to investigate officer misconduct... Edited by U Thant, Apr 26 2016, 10:38 PM.
|
![]() |
|
| Zechariah | Apr 26 2016, 10:55 PM Post #2 |
![]()
Zechariah
|
Nigga, your dumb ass is in a perpetual sleep, that's why your blind and deaf ass can't hear truth that could save your pathetic soul. Niggas like you will litter the highways to hell, dumb ass gay monkey.
|
![]() |
|
| U Thant | Apr 27 2016, 05:45 AM Post #3 |
![]()
|
according to this, no doubt: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Express_Yourself/topic/5024039/8/#post799979 |
![]() |
|
| Zechariah | Apr 27 2016, 08:19 AM Post #4 |
![]()
Zechariah
|
|
![]() |
|
| U Thant | Apr 27 2016, 08:50 AM Post #5 |
![]()
|
according to this, no doubt: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Express_Yourself/topic/5024039/8/#post799979 |
![]() |
|
| Zechariah | Apr 27 2016, 09:58 AM Post #6 |
![]()
Zechariah
|
Dumb gay ass monkey.
|
![]() |
|
| U Thant | Apr 27 2016, 02:50 PM Post #7 |
![]()
|
according to this, no doubt: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Express_Yourself/topic/5024039/8/#post799979 |
![]() |
|
| reddgirl64 | Apr 27 2016, 04:12 PM Post #8 |
|
Are you taller than Too Short?![]() Shut this sorry ass site down, or beg all the cliq members to come back, nigga.. Beg nigga, beg!! See what happens, when you leave ghetto nigga's in charge of anything? |
![]() |
|
| U Thant | Apr 28 2016, 10:19 AM Post #9 |
![]()
|
|
![]() |
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · General Discussion · Next Topic » |










4:46 AM Jul 11