A man throws a brick at police following the funeral of Freddie Gray in Baltimore
National Guard troops fanned out through Baltimore, shield-bearing police officers blocked the streets and firefighters doused still-simmering blazes early yesterday as a growing area of the city shuddered from riots following the funeral of a black man who died in police custody.
The violence that started in West Baltimore on Monday afternoon — within a mile of where Freddie Gray was arrested and placed into a police van earlier this month — had by midnight spread to East Baltimore and neighborhoods close to downtown and near the baseball stadium.
It was one of the most volatile outbreaks of violence prompted by a police-involved death in the U.S. since the days of protests that followed the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man who was shot and killed during a confrontation with a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer.
At least 15 officers were hurt in Baltimore, including six who remained hospitalized late Monday, police said. Two dozen people were arrested.
A weeklong, daily curfew was imposed beginning yesterday from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., the mayor said, and Baltimore public schools announced they would be closed yesterday.
State and local authorities pledged to restore order and calm, but quickly found themselves responding to questions about whether their initial responses had been adequate.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was asked why she waited hours to ask the governor to declare a state of emergency, while the governor himself hinted she should have come to him earlier.
Rawlings-Blake said officials believed they had gotten the unrest that had erupted over the weekend under control “and I think it would have been inappropriate to bring in the National Guard.”
But later on, Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts made it clear events had become unmanageable. “They just outnumbered us and outflanked us,” Batts said. “We needed to have more resources out there.”
Batts said authorities had had a “very trying and disappointing day.”
Police certainly had their work cut out for them: The rioters set police cars and buildings on fire in several neighborhoods, looted a mall and liquor stores and threw rocks at police with riot gear who responded occasionally with pepper spray.
“I understand anger, but what we’re seeing isn’t anger,” Rawlings-Blake said. “It’s disruption of a community. The same community they say they care about, they’re destroying. You can’t have it both ways.”
Maj. Gen. Linda Singh, adjutant general of the Maryland National Guard, said up to 5,000 troops would be available for Baltimore’s streets.
Monday’s riot was the latest flare-up over the death of Gray and came amid a national debate over police use of force following the high-profile deaths of several black men in encounters with police — from the Brown death in Ferguson to the deaths of Eric Garner in New York and Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina.
Gray was black. Police have declined to specify the races of the six officers involved in his arrest, all of whom have been suspended with pay while they are under investigation. Tom Foreman Jr. and Amanda Lee Myers, Baltimore, AP
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