Posted on 04/21/2015 5:14:12 AM PDT by Theoria
Baltimore's mayor, police officials, and prosecutor sought to calm their city Monday, while six officers were suspended as authorities investigated how a suspect suffered a fatal spine injury in police custody last week.
A week after Freddie Gray, 25, was pulled off the street and into a police van, authorities don't have any videos or other evidence explaining what happened to cause the "medical emergency" an arresting officer said Gray suffered while being taken to the local police station, Deputy Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez said.
The Gray family's lawyer, Billy Murphy, had said that Gray's "spine was 80 percent severed at his neck."
Autopsy results returned Monday show that Gray "did suffer a significant spinal injury that led to his death," Rodriguez said. "What we don't know is how he suffered that injury."
In a police report obtained by The Baltimore Sun, Officer Garrett Miller wrote that police on bike patrol stopped Gray April 12 after he was seen fleeing "unprovoked upon noticing police presence." Police said a knife was found clipped to Gray's pants pocket and he was arrested on a weapons charge.
The video taken by a bystander of the arrest does not show the injury occurring, but did capture four police officers dragging a screaming Gray to a police van.
On Monday, police released a more detailed timeline that revealed that Gray was placed in leg irons after an officer felt he was becoming "irate," and that the van stopped on its way to the police station, even picking up another prisoner in an unrelated case, while Gray repeatedly asked for medical attention.
"During transport to Western District via wagon transport the defendant suffered a medical emergency and was immediately transported to Shock Trauma via medic," Miller wrote in the report.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
What is wrong with cops these days? I know - not all cops are...blah blah blah. Well, apparently enough of them are more dangerous than the criminals. Where do they get these guys?
It’s getting harder and harder to take a cops’ word about anything nowadays. I miss the peace officers of old.
In Chicago it was called the Black Mariah.
It’s that easy. Just get a hot-button word like “switchblade” inserted into the conversation, and many people will believe from now until doomsday he was carrying a concealed illegal switchblade. Even if it was a nail file etc. That’s how you do it.
It’s certainly possible the police are lying. It’s possible any report that says only a “knife” was found is incorrect too.
There are plenty of reasons to criticize their behavior in this case. I don’t see a reason to latch on to insisting it was only a regular pocket knife found.
It’s irrelevant, in other words, whether he was carrying a switchblade, a regular knife, or a bazooka for that matter. Once apprehended he had a reasonable expectation of safety. Obviously he was alive when apprehended with no injuries. Obviously he suffered some kind of traumatic injury after apprehension. There is no excuse for that. That is what should be the focus here.
“Leaving when one sees the police isn’t a crime.”
Heck, nowadays it seems like common sense.
We don’t know what kind of knife it was, and he shouldn’t have died as you said, no matter what type it was.
My only point is that this is a classic case about how false memes can be inserted into a conversation, if it turns out that “the switchblade” was an invention.
a) Possession or sale, etc., prohibited.
It shall be unlawful for any person to sell, carry, or possess any knife with an automatic spring or
other device for opening and/or closing the blade, commonly known as a switch-blade knife.
(b) Penalties. Any person violating the provisions of this section, shall, upon conviction thereof, be fined not
more than $500 or be imprisoned for not more than 1 year, or both, in the discretion of the court.
(City Code, 1950, art. 24, §155; 1966, art. 19, §160; 1976/83, art. 19, §185.) (Ord. 44-057.)
And we still don’t know if the “illegal switchblade” really existed, or is a false meme inserted to bolster the cops’ story.
If he had a spinal injury from the initial contact with the police, they should have called for EMT's.
By moving him they only make his condition worse.
“...and that the van stopped on its way to the police station, even picking up another prisoner in an unrelated case...”
The police have an out...the other prisoner did it.
Good point.
Excellent point.
To reporters who call a semi-auto rifle a machine gun, a folder that flicks open with a thumb stud or similar easily becomes a switchblade (mine’s a Chris Reeve Sebenza; my EDC since 1998).
The article said it was clipped to his belt. Can you get a switchblade that does that?
This article says different - knife clipped to his belt. So who knows which is right? Regardless the police had no reason to purse him, other than he ran which they equated to having to be guilty of something, and whatever happened to him happened after the police got him. He shouldn't be dead.
It seems that these days that applies only to the police. In all these cases there are crowds of people saying the dead perp must have done something to justify what the police did. The police couldn't have acted out of panic or bad judgement or anything like that.
I took the thumb studs off my big Cold Steel folder. They just slow down or hang up the draw from the pocket. The blade opens easily one-handed with a back and down flick motion.
The Sebenza thumb stud doesn’t protrude over the handle slab so it doesn’t get caught up when drawing it from a pocket (though I mostly carry it in a pouch or not clipped to the pocket), but it won’t do an ‘inertia flick’ anyway. For me it’s a tool first and foremost. CS makes nice knives, as do Benchmade, Spyderco, etc. Good to have choices. Have you ever tried a Chris Reeve? The workmanship is simply sublime.
Apparently in the american police state it is.
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