Sweeping broken glass and shell casings, reflecting on what drove the violence
On the morning after, how things looked at the epicenter of the post-Freddie Gray violence to a woman who lived there her whole life
Above: On Fulton Avenue, Jennie Davis cleans up across the street from her home, which was safe after a night of rioting.
The sun glinted off the state troopers’ plexi-glass riot shields, CNN’s Miguel Marquez was on Woodyard Street suiting up for another day of covering “riot-torn Baltimore,” and around the corner, Jennie Davis and other women were sweeping up the debris.
“Y’all are going to leave, but we still live here. We shouldn’t have to look at this mess,” Davis said, pushing a pile of refuse with her broom.
There were lottery tickets, a Louis Farrakhan flier, a shotgun shell, cigarette butts, plastic bags and lots of broken glass.
But angry as she is about yesterday’s violence and looting, Davis is angrier still about the incident that set it off – Freddie Gray’s fatal injury, a snapped spine the 25-year-old experienced at some point during his arrest by Baltimore Police more than two weeks ago.
“If they weren’t police and they stood on the top of somebody’s neck and broke it, they would have locked them up!” she said.
“There wouldn’t have been any investigation if it had been somebody else, somebody without a uniform,” the 42-year-old added.
The city has not charged anyone in connection with his death and has released no account of what happened, as multiple investigations are pending. The six police officers have been suspended with pay, Davis carefully noted.
When “Ground Zero” is Your Home
Davis lives on Fulton Avenue just south of the North Avenue intersection where some of the worst mayhem occurred last night. Looters broke into bars and convenience stores, trashed an ATM, smashed store windows and set fires.
America saw it on CNN; Davis saw it through the front windows of her rowhouse home.
“It was nerve-wracking to see people, of all different races, up in here going crazy,” Davis said. “I saw people jump out of cars and just throw liquor on these fires. Everything was going up.”
This woman, who lives above the looted store where Jennie Davis works, seemed overwhelmed by the scene this morning. (Photo by Fern Shen)
The crowd tore apart the ATM at the Oxford Tavern on the corner of Fulton and North. (Photo by Fern Shen)
Davis called 911 when the looters started smashing the convenience store on her block where she works as a cashier, but got only voice mail.
“I was texting my boss to see if he was alright. He lives over the store,” Davis said.
Owner Otis Knight was fine, but his shop, the Variety-and-Cellphone Center, a place to get a hat, a birthday balloon or a bar of soap, was trashed.
“My family’s owned that house since 1928,” Davis said, pointing to her building a few doors down from the store, saying she has lived on the block off and on for her whole life.
“Right about now, I’m ready to leave it.”
Destruction Began Long Ago
Davis talked about what’s changed in her neighborhood over the years she has lived there. The street used to be slower and narrower. Now there’s two busy lanes of traffic in each direction, with a grassy median in between.
Vacant houses have spread, over time, like a cancer to the point where only 15 houses are occupied on a block with about 33 buildings, she said.
What’s it like living next to vacants? Davis said that she does “something crazy” with the unoccupied unit next to hers – “I pay the landlord $100 a month just to keep the drug dealers out of it.”
She explained that she worked out an agreement whereby her brother can stay in the structure, which has no heat and water, just so he can secure the place and keep her safe.
“He takes showers at my place and we run an extension over there so he can have TV,” she said.
Behind the troopers, vacant houses already trashed by years of neighborhood decline. (Photo by Fern Shen)
According to Davis, until she moved her brother in, the building was a shooting gallery for local addicts.
“I was finding hypodermic needles around there. It was awful. I can’t have that. There’s a two-year-old living in my house.”
Davis pointed to several houses on the block where children live, but said the street is too dangerous for them with the drug dealing and rough characters in the area.
“They stay in the house most of the time. They can’t even go to the park,” she said. “Every once in a while they come out with a bicycle, and the parents sit on the stoop and watch them.”
The Mayor Should Have Known
Asked about her take on Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s handling of the violence that has spiraled amid the unanswered questions about the Gray case, Davis said she faults her for not seeing it coming.
“She should have had some kind of insight that this kind of crap was going to happen, She should have known when they started throwing stuff that this was going to happen on the day of [Gray’s] funeral.”
But having just been through a night where she worried that the vacants might go up in smoke, taking her house with them, Davis said she’s very angry with the people who trashed and pillaged the neighborhood.
“What they did, they negated any progress we made for that boy, for Freddie Gray,” Davis said. “It turned the wheel back.”
After last night’s melee on Fulton Avenue, Jennie Davis and other women clean up the block. (Photo by Fern Shen)