Morning Brings Wail of Fire Engines in Wake of Baltimore Riots - NYT | Obama receives updates on Baltimore riots: Hogan, who activated the National Guard, said Obama urged him to have law enforcement officials exercise restraint, and the governor said he would. "But," he added, "I assured him we weren't going to stand by and allow our city of Baltimore to be taken over by thugs."
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Obama receives updates on Baltimore riots
Hogan, who activated the National Guard, said Obama urged him to have law enforcement officials exercise restraint, and the governor said he would.
"But," he added, "I assured him we weren't going to stand by and allow our city of Baltimore to be taken over by thugs."
Morning Brings Wail of Fire Engines in Wake of Baltimore Riots - NYT
“This is not what the family asked for, today of all days,” Mr. Bryant said. “For us to come out of the burial and walk into this is absolutely inexcusable.” He said he was “asking every young person to go back home,” adding, “it’s frustration, anger and it’s disrespect for the family.”
- Baltimore riots: Gang attacks on white police officers may spread outside cityWashington Times - 16 hours ago
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- Cops out in 'massive force' as rioters set Baltimore aflameBALTIMORE — Rioters plunged part of Baltimore into chaos Monday, torching a pharmacy, ...New York Post - 18 hours ago
- Baltimore riots: Gang attacks on white police officers may spread outside cityWashington Times - 16 hours ago
- Baltimore riots: Looting, fires engulf city after Freddie Gray's funeralCNN - 8 hours ago
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On Monday, WND said that Malik Zulu Shabazz, the former head of the New Black Panther Party and current head of Black Lawyers for Justice, is seen as one of the leaders spearheading the riots inBaltimore. Aaron Klein cited the New York Times, the Associated Press, the New York Daily News, CBS and other local media outlets. According to Klein, all of the outlets named Shabazz as a leader of the chaotic protests, but only mentioned his affiliation with the Black Lawyers for Justice.
“One of the protest’s organizers, Malik Shabazz, the president of Black Lawyers for Justice, said the crowd exceeded their expectations, adding that protesters’ anger is not surprising," the AP said. "There, Malik Shabazz, president of Black Lawyers for Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based group that called for the demonstration and advertised it on social media, told the crowd that he would release them in an hour, adding: ‘Shut it down if you want to! Shut it down!’" the New York Times added.
"CBS Local featured a photo of Shabazz leading protest chants in Baltimore yesterday, with a caption that identified the radical simply as 'Attorney Malik Shabazz,'" Klein said. CBS also said Shabazz "has demanded the arrest of six officers involved in the arrest of (Freddie) Gray, who died Sunday a week after suffering a spinal injury while in police custody.”
None of the reports, Klein said, mentioned his former affiliation with the militant group. A simple Google search, he added, would reveal his past.
Last year, for example, Shabazz called for rebellion if Darren Wilson was not indicted in the shooting death of Michael Brown. In 2012, he said the New Black Panthers needs to kill in self defense.
“When the white man came here, you should have left him to die,” Shabazz reportedly said in 2007 while protesting the 400-year celebration of the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia. Shabazz also played a role in the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and a video reportedly showed him leading death chants against Wilson.
Klein went on to say that Shabazz was a leader of a “splinter group" the AP said "looted a convenience store and threw tables and chairs through storefront windows, shattering the glass" on Saturday. "One group smashed the window of a department store inside a downtown mall and, at one point, a protester tossed a flaming metal garbage can toward a line of police officers in riot gear as they tried to push back the crowd," the AP added.
According to CNN, over 15 officers have been injured and two are in the hospital. Over two dozen protesters have been arrested so far.
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BALTIMORE — Rioters plunged part of Baltimore into chaos Monday, torching a pharmacy, setting police cars ablaze and throwing bricks at officers hours after thousands mourned the man who died from a severe spinal injury he suffered in police custody.
The governor declared a state of emergency and called in the National Guard to restore order — but authorities were still struggling to quell pockets of unrest after midnight.
The violence, which began in West Baltimore — within a mile of where Freddie Gray was arrested and pushed into a police van earlier this month — had by the end of the day spread to East Baltimore and neighborhoods close to downtown and near the baseball stadium.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in her first day on the job, said she would send Justice Department officials to the city in coming days. A weeklong, daily curfew was imposed beginning Tuesday from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., the mayor said, and Baltimore public schools announced that they would be closed on Tuesday. At least 15 officers were hurt, including six who remained hospitalized late Monday, police said. Two dozen people were arrested.
Officers wearing helmets and wielding shields occasionally used pepper spray to keep the rioters back. For the most part, though, they relied on line formations to keep protesters at bay.
Monday's riot was the latest flare-up over the mysterious death of Freddie Gray, whose fatal encounter with officers came amid the national debate over police use of force, especially when black suspects are involved. Gray was African-American. 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.
But Gray's family said violence is not a way to honor him.
"I think the violence is wrong," Grays twin sister, Fredericka Gray, said late Monday. "I don't like it at all."
The attorney for Gray's family, Billy Murphy, said the family had hoped to organize a peace march later in the week.
Emergency officials were constantly thwarted as they tried to restore calm in the affected parts of the city of more than 620,000 people. Firefighters trying to put out a blaze at a CVS store were hindered by someone who sliced holes in a hose connected to a fire hydrant, spraying water all over the street and nearby buildings. Later Monday night, a massive fire erupted in East Baltimore that a spokesman for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake initially said was connected to the riots. He later texted an AP reporter saying officials are still investigating whether there is a connection.
The Mary Harvin Transformation Center was under construction and no one was believed to be in the building at the time, said the spokesman, Kevin Harris. The center is described online as a community-based organization that supports youth and families.
Kevin Johnson, a 53-year-old resident of the area, said the building was to have been earmarked for the elderly. Donte Hickman, pastor of a Baptist church that has been helping to develop the center, shed tears as he led a group prayer near the firefighters who fought the blaze.
"My heart is broken because somebody obviously didn't understand that we were for the community, somebody didn't understand that we were working on behalf of the community to invest when nobody else would," he said.
Earlier Monday, the smell of burned rubber wafted in the air in one neighborhood where youths were looting a liquor store. Police stood still nearby as people drank looted alcohol. Glass and trash littered the streets, and other small fires were scattered about. One person from a church tried to shout something from a megaphone as two cars burned.
"Too many people have spent generations building up this city for it to be destroyed by thugs, who in a very senseless way, are trying to tear down what so many have fought for, tearing down businesses, tearing down and destroying property, things that we know will impact our community for years," said Rawlings-Blake, a lifelong resident of the city.
Police urged parents to locate their children and bring them home. Many of those on the streets appeared to be African-American youths, wearing backpacks and khaki pants that are a part of many public school uniforms.
The riot broke out just as high school let out, and at a key city bus depot for student commuters around Mondawmin Mall, a shopping area northwest of downtown Baltimore. It shifted about a mile away later to the heart of an older shopping district and near where Gray first encountered police. Both commercial areas are in African-American neighborhoods.
Later in the day, people began looting clothing and other items from stores at the mall, which became unprotected as police moved away from the area. About three dozen officers returned, trying to arrest looters but driving many away by firing pellet guns and rubber bullets.
Downtown Baltimore, the Inner Harbor tourist attractions and the city's baseball and football stadiums are nearly 4 miles away. While the violence had not yet reached City Hall and the Camden Yards area, the Orioles canceled Monday's game for safety precautions.
On Monday night, Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings and about 200 others, including ministers and mostly men, marched arm-in-arm through a neighborhood littered with broken glass, flattened aluminum cans and other debris, in an attempt to help calm the violent outbursts. As they got close to a line of police officers, the marchers went down on their knees. After the ministers got back on their feet, they walked until they were face-to-face with the police officers in a tight formation and wearing riot gear.
In a statement issued Monday, Attorney General Lynch said she would send Justice Department officials to the city in coming days, including Vanita Gupta, the agency's top civil rights lawyer. The FBI and Justice Department are investigating Gray's death for potential criminal civil rights violations.
Many who had never met Gray gathered earlier in the day in a Baltimore church to bid him farewell and press for more accountability among law enforcement.
The 2,500-capacity New Shiloh Baptist church was filled with mourners. But even the funeral could not ease mounting tensions.
Police said in a news release sent while the funeral was underway that the department had received a "credible threat" that three notoriously violent gangs are now working together to "take out" law enforcement officers.
Gray was arrested on April 12 after making eye contact with officers and then running away, police said. He was held down, handcuffed and loaded into a van without a seat belt. Leg cuffs were put on him when he became irate inside.
He asked for medical help several times even before being put in the van, but paramedics were not called until after a 30-minute ride. Police have acknowledged he should have received medical attention on the spot where he was arrested, but they have not said how his spine was injured. He died on April 19.
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Associated Press writers Juliet Linderman and Jeff Horwitz contributed to this report.
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The "anger and the selfishness and the brutality" of the rioters in Baltimore disrespects the memory of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old man who died in police custody more than a week ago, writer David Simon said Monday night in a short blog post .
Simon is the creator of the hit HBO series "The Wire," and the author of two books about crime and police in Baltimore.
"First things first," Simon wrote . "Yes, there is a lot to be argued, debated, addressed. And this moment, as inevitable as it has sometimes seemed, can still, in the end, prove transformational, if not redemptive for our city. Changes are necessary and voices need to be heard. All of that is true and all of that is still possible, despite what is now loose in the streets.
"But now in this moment the anger and the selfishness and the brutality of those claiming the right to violence in Freddie Gray's name needs to cease. There was real power and potential in the peaceful protests that spoke in Mr. Gray's name initially, and there was real unity at his homegoing today. But this, now, in the streets, is an affront to that man's memory and a dimunition of the absolute moral lesson that underlies his unnecessary death.
"If you can't seek redress and demand reform without a brick in your hand, you risk losing this moment for all of us in Baltimore. Turn around. Go home. Please."
BALTIMORE — Hundreds of rifle-toting National Guard members began deploying here on Tuesday morning, lining one of the city’s main thoroughfares and taking up posts around a police station in western Baltimore that had been the scene of earlier protests.
The guardsmen were expected to be joined over the course of the day by thousands of police officers from outside the city as Baltimore struggles to recover from rioting, arson and looting that left 15 police officers injured — six seriously — and damaged or destroyed dozens of businesses, homes and cars. It is not known how many rioters have been injured.
Gov. Larry Hogan, who visited injured officers and damaged neighborhoods, said that while the city was under control, officials were concerned about what tonight might bring. “It’s not going to happen again,” Mr. Hogan said of the violence.
While the rioters largely dispersed during the night, fire engines raced across this city early Tuesday as the Fire Department strained to extinguish blazes. Some firefighters were reported to have had cinder blocks heaved at them as they responded to emergencies. As a result, police officers were deployed overnight alongside weary and harried firefighters to ensure their work was not disrupted by people with “no regard for life,” the Police Department said.
As dawn broke, the city was relatively calm. Overnight, the police said, two people were shot, each in the leg, in separate incidents. One victim, a woman, was shot on Fulton Avenue near where some of the worst rioting and looting had occurred hours earlier. The other victim, a man, was shot about two miles west of the Mondawmin Mall, where the rioting began.
At the mall early Tuesday, a few police cars sat in the parking lot, but the rioters seemed long gone. Governor Hogan walked through the mall, which is closed, to see the damage. The police said that a flier circulated on social media had called for a period of violence on Monday afternoon to begin at the mall and to move downtown toward City Hall.
Near the debris-strewn corner of Pennsylvania and North Avenues, scene of some of the worst rioting on Monday, including the burning of a police car and the looting of a CVS drugstore, state police troopers in riot gear were lined up in a human barrier across two intersections as the sky began to lighten. No rioters were visible. Some people had begun to clean up, with a pickup truck full of scrap metal parked near one line of police officers.
But fire engine sirens could still be heard and acrid smoke wafted from some of the areas hardest hit by arsonists who have left the Baltimore Fire Department stretched to its limits. One early-morning fire struck a large pawnshop in a commercial strip on the west side of the city, and several fire companies were called to put out the blaze.
Members of the National Guard began to arrive on the streets just after dawn, wearing tan and earth-green military fatigues and driving sandy-color humvees. They took up posts around the city’s Western District police station, while more than a hundred other guardsmen lined the street in front of Baltimore’s inner harbor.
State and city officials said they hoped that measures scheduled to be put into effect on Tuesday— including the National Guard deployment and a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.— would reduce the chances of a repeat of Monday’s unrest, where the police acknowledged that, at least early on, they had been outflanked and outnumbered.
Violent confrontations between police and youths follow Freddie Gray’s funeral.
By the early hours of Tuesday, it was clear that in addition to the many rioters fueled by fury over the death of Freddie Gray — who died of a spinal cord injury sustained while in police custody — there were many other residents who, while also upset by Mr. Gray’s death, were troubled by Monday’s violence.
These included members of Mr. Gray’s own family, who said he would not have approved of the rioting. It also included people like Katrina Carter, who grew up near the Mondawmin Mall, a place, she said, “where they had pageants and everything you could do with kids.”
Standing in the mall’s parking lot late Monday night, Ms. Carter said she understood the anger of the teenagers who had thrown rocks and bricks at the police. “I’m 38, but had I been 12, I probably would have been out there,” she said. But she said the teenagers needed to learn a better way to protest.
“They need to understand how to push pens, not people,” she said.
Mr. Gray’s death on April 19 has opened a deep wound in this majority-black city, where the mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, and the Baltimore police commissioner, Anthony W. Batts — both of whom are black — have struggled to overhaul a police department that has a history of aggressive, sometimes brutal, treatment of black men.
Mr. Gray was chased and restrained by police officers on bicycles at Gilmor Homes on the morning of April 12; a cellphone video of his arrest showed him being dragged into a police van, seemingly limp and screaming in pain. The police have acknowledged that he should have received medical treatment immediately at the scene of the arrest and have also said that he rode in the van unbuckled.
After his arrival at the police station, medics rushed him to the hospital, where he slipped into a coma and died. His family has said that 80 percent of his spinal cord was severed, and that his larynx had been crushed.
The death spawned a week of protests that had been largely peaceful until Saturday night, when demonstrators — who had spent the afternoon marching through the city — scuffled with officers in riot gear outside Camden Yards, the baseball park.
The authorities attributed the scattered violence that night to outsiders who, Ms. Rawlings-Blake said, “were inciting,” with “ ‘go out there and shut this city down’ kind of messaging.”
But the violence on Monday was much more devastating and profound, a blow for a city whose leaders had been hoping Mr. Gray’s funeral would show its more peaceful side. At the New Shiloh Baptist Church, Mr. Gray lay in an open white coffin in a white shirt and tie. There was a pillow bearing a picture of him in a red T-shirt, against a backdrop of a blue sky and doves, with the message “Peace y’all.”
The service was more than a celebration of Mr. Gray’s short life; it was a call for peace and justice — and for residents of Baltimore to help lead the nationwide movement for better police treatment of black men that emerged last August after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
The Rev. Jamal Bryant, who delivered Mr. Gray’s eulogy, insisted that Mr. Gray’s death would not “be in vain.” He vowed that Baltimore residents would “keep demanding justice,” but he also issued a pointed rebuke to the congregation, telling members that black people must take control of their lives and force the government and the police to change.
Mr. Bryant came back to the neighborhood after the burial on Monday afternoon to appeal for calm.
“This is not what the family asked for, today of all days,” Mr. Bryant said. “For us to come out of the burial and walk into this is absolutely inexcusable.” He said he was “asking every young person to go back home,” adding, “it’s frustration, anger and it’s disrespect for the family.”
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(CNN)The day Baltimore planned to lay Freddie Gray to rest, the city went up in smoke.
Riots have broken out throughout Baltimore less than three weeks after a 25-year-old man died in police custody.
What started as peaceful protests days ago have turned violent, with stores being looted, rocks being thrown at police and buildings and cars set on fire.
Here's what we know happened on Monday leading up to the violence
11:00 a.m. -- The funeral for Freddie Gray is set to begin.
1:42 p.m. -- The casket holding Freddie Gray's body is loaded onto the hearse.
3:00 p.m. -- A so-called flier from a local high school says that a "purge" is scheduled to start, according to the Baltimore Sun. The film "The Purge" is about a dystopian society in which crime is low in the United States because all laws are suspended for one 24-hour period every year.
3:30 p.m. -- Dozens of police can be seen gathered on the streets of Baltimore.
3:34 p.m. -- Protesters begin to confront riot police.
3:41 p.m. -- CNN reports that protesters are beginning to throw bottles at police officers and journalists.
3:49 p.m. -- CNN cameras show a police officer being carried off.
3:51 p.m. -- Helicopter footage from CNN affiliate WJLA captures white smoke billowing up from the street. Neill Franklin, a former Maryland state police officer, tells CNN "it's like the perfect place for something like this to occur."
4:27 p.m. -- WJLA's helicopter records people wrecking a police car.
4:29 p.m. -- Baltimore Police tweet out first reports of bottles and bricks being thrown at officers.
4:44 p.m. -- People begin entering a CVS pharmacy. The store was closed at 3 p.m., the company said.
5:51 p.m. -- Baltimore police report a massive fire at Federal Street and Gay Street.
6:19 p.m. -- The gates at Camden Yards, home of Major League Baseball's Baltimore Orioles, can be seen being closed.
6:26 p.m. -- The CVS that was looted goes up in smoke.
6:47 p.m. -- Gov. Larry Hogan's office announces that all previously scheduled events on his calendar on Tuesday will be canceled.
6:50 p.m. -- A man can be seen on CNN stabbing a hose that firefighters are trying to use.
7:01 p.m. -- Gov. Larry Hogan's office announces that he has declared a state of emergency and will active the National Guard to address the unrest in Baltimore.
7:20 p.m. -- The Orioles announce they've postponed Monday night's game.
7:58 p.m. -- Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announces that a citywide, nightly curfew will be imposed starting Tuesday from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. It will be in effect for one week, Rawlings-Blake said at a press conference.
8:51 p.m. -- Col. William Pallozzi of the Maryland State Police announces that up to 5,000 law enforcement officials will be requested from the mid-Atlantic region to help quell the violence in Baltimore.
9:23 p.m. -- Public schools will be closed on Tuesday in Baltimore, a city official says.
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President Obama(Photo: Charles Dharapak, AP)
is being updated on the riots in Baltimore, and has spoken with officials in Maryland, the White House says.
New Attorney General , who was just sworn in on Monday, briefed Obama late in the day on efforts to stop the violence.
Lynch "assured the President that she would continue to monitor events in Baltimore and that the Department of Justice stands ready to provide any assistance that might be helpful there," the White House said in a statement.
The president also spoke with Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Gov. .
"The President highlighted the Administration's commitment to provide assistance as needed and will continue to receive updates on the situation from Attorney General Lynch and White House Senior Adviser ," the White House said in a statement.
The Justice Department is also investigating the death of Freddie Gray, who was killed while in Baltimore police custody. Gray's funeral preceded Monday's violence.
Hogan, who activated the National Guard, said Obama urged him to have law enforcement officials exercise restraint, and the governor said he would.
"But," he added, "I assured him we weren't going to stand by and allow our city of Baltimore to be taken over by thugs."
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