Reuters – by SCOTT MALONE AND IAN SIMPSON
The streets of Baltimore were largely quiet overnight, with only scattered arrests reported during a curfew imposed after the latest wave of rioting fueled by anger against U.S police killings of black men.
Shortly after the curfew began late on Tuesday night, police in riot gear fired rubber bullets and lobbed gas canisters at a few hundred protesters who stood in front of a pharmacy that had been burned out.
But Commissioner Anthony Batts told reporters around midnight only 10 people had been arrested, adding “The curfew is in fact working.”
After the seven-hour curfew ended at 5 a.m. EDT, schools prepared to reopen after violence flared after the Monday funeral of an African-American man who died April 19 from a spinal injury suffered in police custody a week earlier.
The death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray has renewed a national movement against police use of lethal force, which protesters say is disproportionately exercised against minorities, that flared after police killed unarmed black men last year in Ferguson, Missouri; New York City and elsewhere.
Thousands of police and National Guard troops patrolled the streets of Baltimore overnight, and the curfew was scheduled to remain in place for six more nights.
In a rare move, the Major League Baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox will be played as scheduled Wednesday but closed to the public.
Baltimore, just 40 miles (64 km) from the nation’s capital in Washington, saw scenes of reconciliation, cleanup and even celebration, as well as continued protest on Tuesday. The day before, shops were looted, 19 buildings were set on fire, 20 officers were injured and police arrested more than 250 people.
In Chicago on Tuesday, about 500 people demonstrated outside police headquarters and marched in solidarity with the people of Baltimore, chanting “Stop Police Violence.” At least one person was arrested, but the event was mostly peaceful.
Local media reported that two people were injured overnight following gunfire in Ferguson, Missouri, during a protest near where unarmed black teenager Michael Brown was shot dead by police last August. It was not clear if the shootings were linked or connected to the demonstration.
WAITING FOR ANSWERS
Gray was arrested on April 12 after running from officers. He was taken to the police station in a van, with no seat restraint. A lawyer for Gray’s family says his spine was 80 percent severed at the neck while in custody.
Six officers have been suspended, and the U.S. Justice Department is investigating possible civil rights violations.
“There’s no excuse for the kind of violence that we saw (Monday),” President BarackObama said. “It is counterproductive.”
The rioting followed a week of largely peaceful protests in the city, where almost a quarter of the 620,000 people live below the poverty line, with demonstrators demanding answers in Gray’s death.
Police have said they would conclude their investigation by Friday and forward the results to state prosecutors.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said she acted cautiously on Monday to avoid a heavy-handed response that would incite violence.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, said he had called Rawlings-Blake repeatedly Monday but that she held off requesting the National Guard until three hours after looting started. He ended up declaring a state of emergency while she imposed the curfew.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will discuss the violent protests in Baltimore and call for reform in the U.S. justice system, including the use of body cameras by police across the country, in a speech in New York on Wednesday.
(Additional reporting by Warren Strobel; Writing by Curtis Skinner; Editing by W Simon)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/29/us-usa-police-baltimore-idUSKBN0NI1N720150429
“But Commissioner Anthony Batts told reporters around midnight only 10 people had been arrested, adding ‘The curfew is in fact working.’ ”
Wow.. what a breakthrough. Maybe we’ll be safe if we were ALL locked in our houses with federal police deployed to make sure we stay there.
Or…..maybe life isn’t “safe”, was never intended to be so, and the best people can do with their time on this Earth is endeavor to live in freedom.
This is funny. I was watching CNN when I was in the store earlier tonight and Anderson Cooper was on doing his wonderfully staged masterpiece on the NYC “protesters” as he calls them that were marching around some of the streets in NYC tonight, while he was switching back and forth over to Baltimore in order to stir up a non-existent hysteria.
First of all, the “protesters” in NYC (if you even want to call them that) were nothing more than a group of college kids (around 50 or so) who looked like they were walking to and from class and only one of them was holding a sign of any kind of protest. The others look like they were either trying to get home or go to their next class. Meanwhile, Anderson Cooper and his fellow reporters were shown walking with them and trying to make it seem like the people were marching and protesting. I mean it was literally them following a group of college kids and saying back to the camera, “Look everyone, their marching. It’s out of control!”.
In addition to that, when they come back from a commercial break, you can see Anderson Cooper smirking when he thought he was off camera and then his face immediately changed to serious and worried when he realized he was back on again. Typical CNN. They’ve gotten caught staging shit so many times that they don’t even care anymore that they get caught on camera staging everything.
Finally, I find it more than a coincidence that these two “riots”/”protests” are happening (with another set to happen soon in Cincinnati from what I heard) all in the NORTH while the Jade Helm exercises and disputes are happening in the SOUTH (which are of course being conveniently blacked out by the media)
Coincidence? I think not!