Posted on 05/06/2015 2:35:08 PM PDT by Kaslin
When the cops chasing Freddie Gray caught up with him, they had a problem: He had not done anything illegal. They solved that problem the way cops often do: They plucked a charge out of thin air.
The cops probably would not have gotten into trouble for making an illegal arrest if Gray had not died due to a spinal injury he suffered in the back of a police van. Gray's death has shined a light on the way police officers abuse their arrest powers to impose arbitrary punishment, a practice that helps explain the anger on display in Baltimore last week.
Of the various criminal charges that Marilyn Mosby, the state's attorney for Baltimore, announced on Friday in connection with Gray's death, the most unusual and revealing was false imprisonment. Mosby said Lt. Brian Rice, together with Officers Edward Nero and Garrett Miller, "failed to establish probable cause for Mr. Gray's arrest as no crime had been committed."
Rice, Nero and Miller arrested Gray for carrying a switchblade, which Maryland defines as a knife with "a blade that opens automatically by hand pressure applied to a button, spring or other device in the handle of the knife." Since Gray's perfectly legal folding knife did not fit that description, he plainly was not guilty of the crime that was the pretext for hauling him away in handcuffs.
Baltimore has a history of such trumped-up charges. A 2006 class-action lawsuit backed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) cited "a pattern and practice" of bogus arrests for minor, often vaguely defined offenses such as loitering, trespassing, impeding pedestrian traffic, disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace and failure to obey a police command.
Of the 76,497 people arrested by Baltimore police without warrants in 2005, the lawsuit noted, prosecutors declined to charge 25,293 -- nearly one out of three. According to the state's attorney, those cases were "legally insufficient."
The arrests nevertheless had real consequences for people who were publicly kidnapped by armed agents of the state, strip-searched and placed in "small, filthy and overcrowded cells" for hours or days. In addition to the humiliation, degradation and loss of liberty inflicted by this process, the ACLU and NAACP noted, victims of illegal arrests "may lose their jobs or be denied job opportunities in the future as a result of the permanent stigma of having a criminal charge on their record."
The named plaintiffs in the case included Tyrone Braxton and Evan Howard, two friends who spent 36 and 54 hours behind bars, respectively, after police accused them of loitering and impeding traffic; Donald Wilson, who was strip-searched and held for five hours, although he was never told what crime he had supposedly committed; and Aaron Stoner and Robert Lowery, two visitors from Pennsylvania who were arrested for failure to obey an order to stop loitering, strip-searched and locked up for 17 hours. "For innocent victims of these arrest practices," the lawsuit observed, "being unlawfully arrested can be a life-changing event."
Under a settlement reached in 2010, the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) agreed to change performance evaluation policies that encouraged false arrests and introduce safeguards aimed at ensuring that cops have probable cause when they take people into custody. Two years later, the ACLU complained that the BPD was "failing to comply" with the agreement. It noted that "BPD officers did not or could not justify arrests for quality of life offenses in at least 35 percent of the cases examined" by an independent auditor.
As demonstrated by Austin cops who arrest activists for recording police encounters and New York cops who arrest pot smokers for publicly displaying marijuana after tricking them into revealing it, this problem is not limited to Baltimore. But given the city's history of hassling young black men for imaginary offenses, it is not hard to understand why Freddie Gray ran when he saw the cops.
Question. Is having a weapon (even a legal knife) a violation of his parole/probation?
If not, why not?
WTH? So my Gerber multi-tool which includes pliers, knife, can opener, and corkscrew, is illegal? I am so not visiting Baltimore.
“Baltimore has a history of such trumped-up charges.”
Police get paid NOTHING for arrests. Police get paid NOTHING for getting into fights with people that may well hurt them. Police get paid NOTHING for being in intense situations.
If a cop drives around for seven hours and never speaks to a civilian once, he gets paid the same as one that makes three arrest and has two fist fights.
As someone with several retired cops as good shooting buddies, allow me to tell you how it ACTUALLY works.
All patrol officers start with some kind of meeting. It’s referred to by different names in different police departments, but we’ll just use ‘morning briefing’ for this discussion.
Morning briefing 1 “We’re getting a lot of calls from citizens in (such and such street) complaining about crack dealers standing right in the middle of the street dealing.” Likely outcome: ignored.
Morning briefing a few days later “Dang it I still have these citizens calling in about the dealers on (such and such street). Likely outcome: also ignored.
Morning briefing a week or so later “Dammit, if somebody doesn’t do something to get those pain in the butt citizens off my neck about the dealers on (such and such street), I’m going to start coming up with some real crappy assignments for some of the people in this room.” Result - police show up in force.
There is no money or glory in going into a distressed area and starting a fight. Aids, Hep B, and others all await. When ever you hear one of these stories, believe me there had already been NUMEROUS citizen complaints about what was going on. The cops know exactly what the people are up to long before they got there. Only when it is completely obvious that the situation won’t fix itself do they go in.
He was in violation of his conditions of parole by carrying a weapon. Plus, he was out on bond pending several active charges against him. He should have never been granted bond as he was obviously an habitual offender.
Because he was a paroled felon.
If that's the case I heard Judge Napolitano state it would not have been a legal arrest since they were unaware of the knife until after they arrested him.
So if the charge of an illegal knife was valid, under Baltimore law, then won’t Mosby be guilty of the same false arrest charge?
Here Libertarian Sullum is letting his bias show. According to Sullum it’s all about the war on drugs. Whether a person believes the WODs is useless or fruitful, the police officers are obliged to enforce the law. And Grey had broken the drug laws and a number of other laws many times. Sullum looks like an ass in this story.
Because he was a criminal, that’s why.
So what? Most commenters on this site probably have WEAPONS.
Just goes to show that neither BOR nor AARP are lookin’ out for YOU!
Sure. But most commenters on this site are not convicted thugs on parole/probation who have forfeited their rights to a weapon.
Originally it was stated that the cops made “eye contact” with Freddie, and that’s why he ran.
One article I read stated that the reason the cops made “eye contact” with him is because they saw him selling drugs.
Post #23 hit on the angle I was going to take so I would like to add
:Maybe the arrest wasn’t important. The idea of harassing a KNOWN dealer (They want ‘community policing’ where the beat cop knows the citizens), and if nothing else getting him to destroy or throw away his stash being a plus, when he ran they figured he was holding and they had a ‘bonus’ with the knife. Maybe the idea was to take him on a ‘tour’ of the speed bumps and pot holes in the city, hitting all red lights and any kind of ‘jerky’ driving - just to harass him, with the intention of getting him to HQ and letting him walk home or even a little time in the tank so he could think his situation out.
That it was mentioned he was trying to ‘hurt himself’ is entirely possible, he had just settled a court case and found an ‘easy’ way to make money.
We will never know now and the SA completely trashed any case the City may have had just based on her ‘overkill’.
It is not a crime to run from the police. Nor is it a crime, as such, to be a career criminal.
The police are supposed to arrest people only for probable cause, which, at least according to the charges filed against them, they didn’t have in this case. It looks very much like they arrested him simply because they were pissed off he made them chase him.
Then I assume that money got booked as evidence. Oh wait. They didn't book him, did they? They killed him first.
Here’s the Baltimore ordinance:
“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.”
The knife he had simply was not the kind “commonly known as a switch-blade knife.” It did not have an “automatic spring,” it had a spring that assisted in opening the knife manually.
The ordinance may be poorly worded, but it clearly and specifically was intended to outlaw switchblades, which his knife wasn’t.
They arrested Freddie? When did this happen?
Fact is - they didn’t arrest him. They didn’t charge him. They simply detained him.
“They didn’t find the knife until after they decided to arrest him.”
Yeah, and he’s conveniently not around to testify as to whether it was his or not! What’s really disgusting about the cops these days is that the good ones won’t stand up and say the truth about the bad ones.
Sorry, if you’re not “free to leave,” you have been arrested. That’s what the word means.
He may or may not have had charges filed, I see different claims. But since he was handcuffed and transported across the city in a paddy wagon, he certainly was not free to leave and therefore was under arrest.
Most states require that charges be filed within 48 or 72 hours. Cops also don’t charge people. Prosecutors do that.
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