By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and
RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.MAY 9, 2015
New York Times
BALTIMORE — The first police
officer Freddie Gray encountered on the morning he sustained a fatal spinal
cord injury was Lt. Brian Rice, a seasoned 41-year-old white law enforcement
officer who, several years earlier, had his guns confiscated by deputies who
took him to a hospital after a worried ex-girlfriend expressed alarm about his
well-being.
About 40 minutes later, when
Mr. Gray, who was black, lay shackled in a police van and was no longer
breathing, Sgt. Alicia White — a 30-year-old churchgoing black woman with a
reputation as a rising star — tried to remove him. “She’s not even the type of
person that would jaywalk,” one neighbor said.
In between, Mr. Gray was
subdued and handcuffed by two rookie bicycle officers, each in his 20s, both
white. A 25-year-old black patrolman arrived to check on him. The van driver,
Officer Caesar Goodson, also black, is an old-timer at 45. Described by
colleagues as “passive,” he never moved up the ranks.
In this mix of officers — who
now face criminal charges in Mr. Gray’s death, including, for some, murder and
manslaughter — one can see a portrait in miniature of the Baltimore Police
Department, an agency mistrusted by many black residents, and one suffering
from its own racial divide despite a decades-long effort to integrate. As the
Justice Department begins a full-fledged civil rights investigation, the Gray
case throws into sharp relief the department’s shortcomings and struggles for
change.
“You can’t just label this something racial,”
said Representative Elijah E. Cummings, a Democrat who lives just four blocks
from West North and Pennsylvania Avenues, where a burned and looted CVS store
stands as a symbol of the riots set off by Mr. Gray’s death on April 19. “When
you have three African-American officers involved, you’ve got to say: ‘Wait a
minute, is there a system in place in which they don’t want to tell on each
other? Has it become a routine?’ ”
Over the past three decades,
Baltimore’s roughly 3,000-member police force has undergone a slow, painful
process of integration. In 1984, the year the city settled a lawsuit that
forced the department to hire and promote more minorities and women, 19 percent
of officers were black. By 2007, blacks were 44 percent of the force; the
city’s population is nearly two-thirds black. The commissioner, Anthony W.
Batts, is black, and African-Americans hold other high-ranking posts.
Despite that, tensions between
black residents and the police run deep. Last week’s decision by Mayor
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to request a “pattern or practice” Justice Department
inquiry — something she had long resisted, even as she pushed for changes —
emphasizes that mistrust. Civil rights advocates say it is long overdue.
So do some black police
officers. In 2004, Sgt. Louis Hopson, now the board chairman of the Vanguard
Justice Society, the association that represents the city’s black officers, was
the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit alleging that the department systematically
disciplined black officers more harshly than whites. In 2009, the city settled
the case, agreeing to pay $2.5 million to more than a dozen plaintiffs and to
hire an outside consultant to monitor the internal discipline process for three
years.
But the problems have
persisted, some black officers say. In March, court records show, Baltimore
settled another bias suit, brought by a former officer, Richelle Johnson, a
black woman who complained that she was forced to retire and that the
department was more accommodating to white officers who were injured and
requested light duty than to blacks. The terms of the settlement have not been
made public, and a lawyer for Ms. Johnson would not discuss it.
“There are two Baltimores, and
there are two Baltimore City Police Departments,” said Sergeant Hopson, 63, a
35-year veteran. “This department is a very racist police department. The
issues that you see manifesting themselves on the outside are the same problems
we have been dealing with on the inside for years.”
The relentless drumbeat of
criticism is depressing officer morale. Many police officers are furious with
Ms. Rawlings-Blake, whom their union supported when she ran for mayor in 2011,
for asking for the Justice Department review. They feel undermined as they work
to maintain the peace in a city with a high homicide rate.
“Our police officers have a
number of conflicting emotions, from anger and shock to sadness and
depression,” said Sgt. Robert F. Cherry, a 21-year veteran and former president
of the Baltimore chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3, in an
interview. “It is a tough time to be a police officer.”
The union has stood firmly
behind the six arrested in Mr. Gray’s death; Sergeant Cherry accused Marilyn J.
Mosby, the prosecutor who filed the charges, of “political opportunism” and
wondered aloud if she had “an exit strategy for grossly overcharging our six
officers.” Sergeant Hopson said the Vanguard Justice Society was also planning
a news conference for this week to show support for the three black officers.
Sergeant White, the lone woman
among them, is an example of how the six officers reflect the two Baltimores,
and the two Baltimore Police Departments. After joining the force in 2010, she
caught the eye of Sergeant Hopson, who said he recruited her into a program he
runs to prepare black officers to take tests required for promotions.
She became a sergeant this
year, said Dana Neal, a nondenominational minister who said Sergeant White
regarded her as an adopted aunt. “She is a Christian and wants to be a good
role model for young black women,” Ms. Neal said, adding that Sergeant White
hoped to “bridge the gap between the police and the neighborhoods.”
Sergeant White grew up in
Baltimore and lives here; Sergeant Cherry said 35 percent of the force now
lives in the city. But black residents have complained that too many officers
live outside Baltimore and feel no attachment to it. Sergeant White has worked
for the Police Athletic League, helping young people with homework, and her
church, New Bethlehem Baptist Church, is in Sandtown-Winchester, the blighted
neighborhood where Mr. Gray grew up and was arrested before his fatal injury.
Now, she faces charges of
involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault and misconduct in office; Ms.
Mosby alleges Sergeant White “did nothing” to help Mr. Gray even though he was
lying on the floor of the van and unresponsive.
The encounter that led to Mr.
Gray’s death began around 8:40 a.m. on April 12, when the three white officers
— Lieutenant Rice, Officer Edward Nero and Officer Garrett Miller — were
patrolling the streets around the Gilmor Homes, a public housing development in
West Baltimore. Lieutenant Rice spotted Mr. Gray, making eye contact with him,
police have said, and Mr. Gray ran off.
Three years earlier, amid a
dispute with his ex-girlfriend over custody of their child, Lieutenant Rice had
been taken to a hospital by sheriff’s deputies in Carroll County, Md., who —
apparently fearing he was unstable — confiscated his weapons and contacted his
Baltimore police commanders, according to sheriff’s records and court filings.
The documents were previously reported by The Guardian newspaper and The
Associated Press.
In court papers, the
ex-girlfriend’s husband, Andrew McAleer, a Baltimore firefighter, accused the
lieutenant of a pattern of stalking and intimidation; at one point, he wrote
that he feared he was “about to be killed by Brian Rice.” In January 2013, a
judge granted Mr. McAleer a temporary “peace order” — a type of protective
order — finding “reasonable grounds” that Lieutenant Rice had committed
harassment and had trespassed. The order was rescinded a week later because of
a lack of proof needed to make the protective order final, records show.
Baltimore police officials
declined to comment on the court filings, or to say what, if any, medical
treatment or disciplinary action Lieutenant Rice received. He now faces one
count of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree assault, two
counts of misconduct in office and one count of false imprisonment.
The two bicycle officers who
arrested Mr. Gray, Officers Miller, 26, and Nero, 29, have been on the force
for just three years. Both face two counts of second-degree assault, two counts
of misconduct in office and two counts of false imprisonment. The prosecutor
asserts that Lieutenant Rice and the two officers failed to establish probable
cause for Mr. Gray’s arrest and then, after placing him in handcuffs and leg
shackles, did not secure him with a seatbelt in the police van, as required by
police policy. The medical examiner has concluded that Mr. Gray’s fatal neck
injury occurred in the van, according to a person with knowledge of the
investigation.
All six officers have filed
motions asserting that Ms. Mosby has multiple conflicts of interests in the
case and asking that she be required to step aside or that all charges be dismissed.
In a brief interview outside
his modest two-story beige brick home in the distant Baltimore suburb of Bel
Air, Officer Nero declined to address the charges against him. Standing in his
doorway, he said he and his family were going through a difficult time, and
were getting by with “a lot” of support from relatives and friends and by
concentrating on their young daughter.
Officer Nero’s neighbor Seth
Ranneberger, a high school science teacher, said that on one of the rare
occasions when the officer spoke of his work, he described being a Baltimore
police officer as “one of those jobs — the doormat job — you do it and get no
thanks for it.”
Officer William G. Porter, who
arrived on the scene as backup when the van carrying Mr. Gray made the second
of several stops — seemed to be coming to grips recently with just how tough
his job was. Officer Porter grew up in North Baltimore, in a transition
neighborhood of simple brick rowhouses, just one block away from Guilford, a
neighborhood of stately single-family homes. One neighbor, Keysha Waters, 40,
described how, as a teenager, the future officer smelled a fire that had
started in her home and rushed inside to grab her children and hustle them out
the door. When he dropped out of college and joined the police academy, he told
Ms. Waters that he wanted to “make a difference.”
She and others described
Officer Porter as quiet and respectful, but said he lately had seemed a bit
worn down by his job. When Olivia Whitlock, a childhood friend, sent him a
Facebook message in August saying another neighbor had seen him on the
television news, he replied, “I’m surprised you don’t see me more often,”
because there is so much crime in the tough Western District, where he worked.
Now Officer Porter faces
charges including involuntary manslaughter and second degree assault. Ms. Mosby
says that although Mr. Gray complained he “could not breathe” and twice asked
for a medic, Officer Porter and Officer Goodson, the van driver, ignored the
request.
Officer Goodson, whose
neighbors in the Baltimore suburb of Catonsville describe him as friendly and
kind, faces the most serious charge, second-degree depraved-heart murder — in
effect, murder with callous indifference, or an intent to cause an injury that
could lead to death. This has led to speculation in Baltimore that Officer
Goodson, who faces other charges as well, was intentionally giving Mr. Gray a
“rough ride,” meaning he intended to jostle him and cause serious injury —
though Ms. Mosby has not used that term.
As Baltimore tries to make
sense of what happened to Mr. Gray, and the Justice Department inquiry gets
underway, some say city leaders are awakening to problems that black residents
knew existed all along. Even Representative Cummings, who said he had asked for
a “pattern or practice” review before Mayor Rawlings-Blake, said he had learned
something about Baltimore’s police. Never before, he said, had he heard the
term “nickel ride,” another term for “rough ride.”
On the wall of his home, Mr.
Cummings said, he keeps pictures that ran in The Baltimore Sun of people who
have been beaten by the police. “That,” he said, “seems to cry out for a deep
dive.”
