Echoing last year’s protests and clashes with police following the in-custody death of Freddie Gray, citizens last night again faced a line-up of armed police, some clad in riot gear, at Penn-North in West Baltimore.

The occasion was a vigil for popular Baltimore rapper Lor Scoota who, according to police, was shot in his car on Moravia Road on Saturday after leaving a charity basketball game at Morgan State University.

Last night’s event to remember Tyriece Trayvon Watson, 23 – who went by the name Lor Scoota – began peacefully by all accounts. But by the end, three people were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, speaking at news conference last night, blamed a subset of the crowd for escalating the tension with police officers.

“There came a time when a few agitators decided to throw bricks and bottles at police officers, and that’s not going to happen in Baltimore,” Davis said.

Other witnesses provide a different narrative.

“Most of the people in the crowd deny that there were any bricks or bottles thrown,” according to a report in Baltimore City Paper, which describes tensions rising when the crowd moved into the streets and the police hovering above in helicopters ordered them to leave.

Mayor in Indy

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who has been in Indianapolis for a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, did not appear at last night’s West Baltimore incident or release a statement about it.

But according to press accounts and postings on social media, the activists, elected officials and political candidates who went to the scene as it unfolded included:

Green Party mayoral candidate Joshua Harris, Democratic mayoral nominee Sen. Catherine E. Pugh, City Councilmen Nick Mosby and Eric Costello and Morgan State University assistant professor Lawrence Brown.

Baynard Woods, who wrote City Paper’s piece on the Lor Scoota vigil, also published this in The Guardian.