The officer never claimed it was a switchblade. Somebody will eventually have to clear up the issue of whether this knife was illegal according to the City of Baltimore's laws, and not the State's definition. Frankly, I'd trust the officers who are on the street every day to know what is, or what isn't considered an illegal knife within the City limits, not some politician elected to a State position four months ago. Besides, we have no idea if Freddie Gray was under any previous court orders regarding carrying knives or any other weapon. Since he was an ex-con, I'm assuming he was, especially if he was still on parole. He also had been arrested on 3/13 and 3/30 for which we have no known disposition rendered. There's still a lot to come out in this case on both sides.
The charging documents linked in 58 say that he “did unlawfully carry, possess and sell a knife commonly known as a switchblade knife.”
The problem was that the knife he had is simply not the “knife commonly known as a switchblade.” That it had some features in common with switchblades does not make it one.
The ordinance bans switchblades and then make a clumsy attempt to dfine them. But the ban is on switchblades, and this wasn’t.