Baltimore Police Officer Acquitted in Gray Case on Narrow Grounds

American Thinker ^ | May 25, 2016 | Jonathan F. Keiler

[pepsionice]

I think the only true issue in this whole thing is that Baltimore has a particular type of vehicle for arrests and transport of folks to a downtown jail. Had they put Freddie into a regular squad car....nothing would have happened. Freddie would have gotten there and be hyped on some drug at the county jail.

But Freddie got put into a truck vehicle...which had what seems to be a steel seating arrangement and reminds one more of a Venezuelan method of transporting prisoners around. The advantage is you can cuff four or five guys and dump them into the back of this truck. The regulation upon the use of this vehicle is that you buckle guys into the steel bed area. Well...either they forgot this rule or they just figured that Freddie would get injured and sue the city for $10,000, and in some way they were doing Freddie a favor. Who knows the intention or the chaos of that particular day?

If you go and look at French cops or German cops...they arrest a guy and he gets put into a bus or van, with regular seats....sometimes a cubed bus-like vehicle with cushioned seats. You don’t have injuries being transported to jail.

In this episode....you had a somewhat doped up guy...unrestrained...in the back of a truck with no seat belts on him to keep him in one position. It’s his own fault for being doped up but just one single cop doing what the book said to do (buckle the prisoner up)....would have resulted in Freddie being around today (hyped up still on some fantastic drugs).

[TYVets]

My guess is age 30.

But I would not wager more than a cup of coffee on that number.

[lacrew]

The van driver stopped a few times...and at least one time he pulled Gray completely out of the van. The reason for this was Gray was banging things, and the driver pulled him out to shackle his legs. I believe the combination of not being belted in, and also having both hands and feet bound, make Gray very vulnerable to sudden stops in the van.

This is why I don’t understand why the original arresting officers were charged with assault. Something terrible happened to Gray in the van - but they had nothing to do with it.

I don’t think a padded seat would work very well, though. I’ve seen specials on European prisons, and frankly, their prisoners are just more civilized than ours. Prisoners from US inner cities would immediately destroy anything soft and padded.

But the other option is just to drive the van carefully. I’ve towed horse trailers, and its really very easy to drive softly and slowly, if you know there’s something alive in back that can’t handle sudden movement. The cops could do the same.

And that leads to the heart of the case. The van driver is a minority. So the BLM meme goes out the window on this...which I believe is why the DA charged everybody who had any contact with Gray that day...just to get more white ‘bad cop perps’ on the indictment form. And the evil genius of this cynical scheme is that (I predict) all the white officers will be acquitted, but the van driver won’t - thus launching a new grievance for BLM.