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Crime & Justiceby Fern Shen10:12 amMay 1, 20150

A peaceful Thursday, but patience grows thin amid leaks about Freddie Gray case

Reports in the media suggesting that Freddie Gray wanted to hurt himself are met with suspicion and cynicism by protesters and some residents

Above: The chants yesterday were about love for Baltimore, but suspicion that officers won’t be charged also flared up.

At the microphone, protesters outside Baltimore’s City Hall were trying to stay on message.

“We need to be consistent. Keep the media focused on justice,” one of them said, putting it a little more plainly at one point: “Don’t do anything stupid!”

Yet as rain sprinkled and thunder rumbled overhead yesterday evening, bursts of hostility and suspicion flared across the crowd of several hundred who had just marched through the city from North Avenue.

“What are we going to do if they let ’em off?” said a man, furiously gesturing at the seemingly-permanent encampment of national press, who have pitched their logo-festooned pop-up tents around War Memorial Plaza.

“Peaceful protest didn’t bring nobody here! The media didn’t come around until we threw a mother-fucking rock.”

At yesterday’s rally, as on street corners and front stoops across the city, anger and cynicism prevailed on the 18th day since 25-year-old Freddie Gray was arrested and fatally injured in police custody.

“Why should we put our hands up?” this man said. “We didn’t do anything?” (Photo by Fern Shen)

Police handed their findings over to State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby Thursday, a day earlier than their self-imposed deadline, after working assiduously in recent days to tamp down expectations it would result in indictments or any release of information to the public.

Self-Inflicted Wounds?

Instead, information came to the public through media leaks. The Washington Post reported that Gray was “intentionally trying to injure himself” in the van – that information according to sources who told the newspaper what a fellow detainee in the van told police.

Another leak out of Washington media, reported by WJLA quoting “law enforcement sources,” said the police investigation showed Gray was not injured by officers during his arrest. (That same information had been conveyed by a “friend” of one of the arresting police officers to CNN’s Anderson Cooper. The person’s face was obscured and voice altered in the interview.)

Baltimore police have acknowledged that Gray had not been buckled into the van, per departmental policy. The Baltimore Sun and others reported “sources” saying a bolt in the van’s interior matched the injuries that Gray had sustained.

The idea that Gray’s snapped neck may be laid to a bolt, or to reckless driving, or to a failure to seat belt a prisoner, or to Gray’s own self-destructive impulses has struck many people in Baltimore who are following every report as ludicrous.

“Can’t you see they’re getting it all set up, all lined up, to let them [the police officers] off,” the angry man said, on a tirade that had fellow participants praising him and whipping out cell phones. “Speaking the truth, brother,” another man said.

“We need police, but can’t trust them”

The Gray case was also the talk of the residents of a well-kept block of rowhouses on Mosher Street in West Baltimore.

A corner grocery store nearby had become a part of the story with another new disclosure yesterday: that video footage from surveillance cameras showed that the police wagon transporting Gray had also stopped there.

News organizations who had mapped out info-graphics showing the three places police originally said the van went that Sunday morning had to be remake them to add this new one they were now saying had been revealed at the Mosher Street and Fremont Avenue intersection making it four.

Ayanna Summerville, sitting on her stoop with her son and a man who asked not to be identified, said she did not see the police vehicle that Sunday morning.

But she did have a quick reply when asked what might have happened there: “That’s probably where they finished him off.”

This grocery store at the corner of Mosher St. and Fremont Ave., is another place where the van transporting Freddie Gray stopped, police said today. (Photo by Fern Shen)

This grocery store, at the corner of Mosher and Fremont, is another place where the van transporting Freddie Gray stopped, police said today. (Photo by Fern Shen)

Summerville, 38, and the man talked about interactions with police they said were frightening and at times humiliating. The man, for instance, recalled a recent instance in which he and his brother had been stopped on the street by police because “we fit the description of a suspect.”

“They had a gun on me and my brother. They cocked it, too,” he said.

“Why they have to do that? Why do they make you drop your pants in the street?” he said, explaining that police officers who have stopped him have done so and gone on to “mess with your balls.”

“They ask, ‘Where are you going?’ Where are YOU going,’” he went on. “My mother’s deceased. Why do I have to tell you where I’m going? I’m an adult. I’m a man!”

Summerville, also angry, added this observation: “It’s a shame because we need the police. We need them to be able to protect us. We need to trust them. But we can’t.”

Cameras Everywhere

The block where they sat was largely occupied, but vacant lots, boarded-up vacant rowhouses and dilapidated roofless structures are everywhere in this part of Sandtown-Winchester.

Yesterday, the desolate landscape was abuzz with television crews, doing their quick stand-ups near the now-padlocked, three-story grocery store building where residents said they could buy juice, cigarettes or a cup of coffee.

“Nobody ever comes around here. This now is amazing,” Summerville said, looking at CNN’s Athena Jones and others at work.

“I never knew what a television truck actually was. What it looked like. I’d only seen them on television before.”

City police camera at Pitcher Street and Fremont Avenue intersection. (Photo by Fern Shen)

City police camera at Pitcher Street and Fremont Avenue intersection. (Photo by Fern Shen)

Residents said another kind of camera, though, is ubiquitous  – the police-operated CitiWatch cameras placed high on poles and buildings. The camera at the corner of Fremont and Pitcher, for instance, could have caught images of the wagon transporting Gray that day, many speculated.

Police made much use of that particular camera two months ago, releasing footage from it to show the public that a man they had shocked with a Taser and also shot was rushing toward them before the officer opened fire.

Residents are now wondering if that camera, or another camera on the side of a building at the intersection of Smithson Street and Myrtle Avenue, might have some other footage that could shed light on Freddie Gray’s van ride.

“If you look around,” Summerville said, “there’s cameras everywhere around here.”

Protesters at the Thursday Freddie Gray rally calling for justice for Freddie Gray. (Photo by Fern Shen)

Protesters at today’s rally again called for justice for Freddie Gray. (Photo by Fern Shen)

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