I really don’t understand the case against the arresting officers. They’re out doing ‘proactive community policing’ in a high crime area, try to approach Gray, and he runs. So they chase him, and arrest him...and get charged with assault by their own DA.
So what happens in Baltimore today? If a guy runs from police, do they just stand and watch him run off? Seems that if cops are getting charged for chasing people down and tackling them, all a criminal has to do is run.
The police in Baltimore just don’t engage anymore. They don’t even leave their cars or because they get attacked by thugs with cameras (who want the cops to do something so they can win the ghetto lottery).
That’s why the murder rate in Baltimore has spiked. Of course, the residents of Baltimore have all of those strict Maryland gun laws to protect them....
There's a lot of bootlicking on FR, but you just set some kind of record. Your little case summary just happened to leave out that the perp was arrested while healthy enough to ride a bicycle, and then died from a broken neck he got on his ride to the jail. Protecting cops is one thing, but you're arguing for a return to the Soviet Union by what you leave out of your narrative. Wake up!
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).