So, one thing that I found odd was that (Mosby said) after Gray had been handcuffed and the police found his pocket knife they put him back down flat on the ground and one of them put him into a leg lace until other people arrived. There's also a witness who said they saw something similar. But since as far as I know there wasn't any sign he was resisting (and was already in cuffs) why would they do this?
Yeah that seems like a sufficient explanation to me.
Related:
I was at a packed town hall meeting in Washington, DC, featuring organizers and activists from Baltimore, and one of the speakers was a 17-year-old Baltimore City College high-school student named Makayla Gilliam-Price.
Standing in front of 300 people and speaking without notes like she was alone in her living room, she potently communicated what it has been like to build a movement alongside a youth justice organization called City Bloc amidst the National Guard and curfews enforced at gunpoint. Ms. Gilliam-Price ended, however, not with a challenge to the police or Baltimore's mayor but to the movement:
"I want to ask those standing with the people of Baltimore, did we love Freddie Gray before he was killed or only now that he is gone? This needs to be a 'Black Lives Matter' movement, not 'Black Deaths Matter.' This needs to be a movement of affirmation that expresses our desire to stop these killings before they happen and to love each other enough to do it."
It was almost overwhelming to watch Makayla Gilliam-Price speak, and not only because of her clarity and strength. See, I had met Ms. Gilliam-Price before, but she had yet to become this powerful student organizer with shock-red dyed hair. It was the fall of 1998, and she was barely a baby.
Over the course of that year, Baltimore was my second home because of a man named Tyrone X. Gilliam. Tyrone was on Maryland's death row.... The fight to force the state of Maryland to spare Tyrone's life had been led by his sister Zelda and her husband John... [who had a] baby girl named Makayla.
Also, turns out that one of the charged officers is a certified EMT. Check out the painful quotation from his father.
So, I was just in a room for the past couple hours with a TV that was playing CNN (which is the only way anyone ever watches CNN, I'm convinced). Anyway, it was non-stop coverage of peaceful protesters walking through Baltimore, as though there was nothing else happening in the world right now.
There's no way that Freddie Gray protests would draw that level of attention without the civil unrest we saw on Monday. Maybe burning drug stores is effective after all!
Of course, what CNN is really hoping is that someone starts throwing rocks or some shit. There are perverse incentives here.
This suggests a whole new protest strategy: one night of rioting right at the beginning to get the attention, then peaceful nonviolence from there on out. I would be completely unsurprised if that worked, though I suspect you'd need to refresh the media interest every week and a half or so with occasional lower level burning-things-down.
I'm off momentarily, but one thing remains unclear to me: the police officers have been charged ... but not indicted? as I understand it. Being charged and being indicted is not the same thing, is it? Or, um, I don't know.
Does this now go to a grand jury in order to determine whether indictments will be issued? Or what? We all recall, I assume, that in Ferguson (Michael Brown) and New York (Eric Garner), a big part of the fuss was over whether the grand jury would issue any indictments.
So ... what happens next here?
A "charge" is in lieu of a grand jury indictment, so the case won't go to a grand jury at all. There will be a preliminary hearing where a judge determines if there's probable cause for the case to proceed further. IANA MD Criminal L, but unless things are super weird there that's how it'll work.
To expand on that, the details of when and whether a grand jury is necessary vary state by state.
Not, admittedly, to expand much, or in a terribly informative way.
Thanks. That's what I kept thinking: an indictment amounts to having charges brought against one, so, being charged, they have been indicted. No grand jury. Thanks.
As an incidental follow-up, since this concerns some people here: are the officers in question now no longer on paid suspension, but unpaid? Some people find themselves annoyed if the officers are still on paid leave. This may seem like a piddly thing, but I don't know if, in the way of things, being indicted means, yo, you don't get to get paid, or if you have to be convicted before your pay is revoked. I can see it both ways.
14 to 11.
To 12: That was a question I'd considered asking as well. Thanks for answering it for me.
I think that they were (possibly automatically were)switched to being on unpaid leave when they were indicted.
Anyway, I'm still completely puzzled by Mosby's claim that the arrest was illegal. This goes to the alleged switchblade, I realize, which was discussed at length in the other thread, but I had hoped it was a reference to the chasing-just-because-the-guy-was-running thing. That still bugs me.
being charged, they have been indicted
To be piddlingly technical, indictment requires a grand jury -- if the grand jury is unnecessary, there's never a literal indictment step.
No, wait, I'm being piddlingly technical and apparently wrong. I don't do criminal law, and I get confused. Ignore 18.
Really depends on the details of their union contract. "Unpaid leave" suggests they're never going to get paid, but around here it's pretty customary for officers to receive back pay when they are reinstated to the force after being acquitted/getting their jobs back in arbitration. Which they pretty much always do.
Here's a related rant (pretty accurate as far as I know).
19: Heh. Okay. I'm outta here. I have more thoughts and things to say! but it's too late for it now.
Even though it won't do any good, and everything is fucked, and people ought to just BURN THIS RACIST SYSTEM DOWN, I was happy to see so many young people demonstrating at the courthouse in dwntwn Mpls yesterday. I guess there were some decent sized school walkouts and stuff too.
REVENGE! REVENGE! WORKING PEOPLE: ARM YOURSELVES AND APPEAR IN FULL FORCE!
The lurkers support me in pamphlets.
24 - definitionally, no working person is reading this blog.
You think cock jokes write themselves?
Hi. So it's beginning to seem to me that Marilyn Mosby's allegation that the Baltimore police officers engaged in an illegal arrest of Freddie Gray is .. a shaky claim. The relevant statute about what counts as a switchblade knife just seems too vague in its definition of a switchblade (sounds like would cover a box-cutter, even) to support the claim that Gray obviously wasn't carrying one of those (unless, I suppose, it turns out Gray was just in possession of Swiss Army knife or something).
So okay. I don't think that matters, though it does suggest that the definition of a switchblade should be tightened up.
What I'm looking for is what might possibly come out of this trial -- assuming the judge in the preliminary hearing finds probable cause to proceed -- that could improve relations between police and citizens. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that an end to rough rides as a form of punishment would be an excellent outcome. Obviously we'd like to see more better investment in impoverished neighborhoods as well, on any number of levels, but I'm speaking strictly in terms of police behavior.
Like maybe there should be closed circuit cameras inside the back of the police vans so that the cops in the front can see what's going on back there, and it can be recorded. Probably expensive, though. Maybe some kind of GPS tracking on the route(s) driven by the paddy wagon driver to see where the hell it went, where it stopped. It's kind of a head-scratcher that the van carrying Freddie Gray apparently stopped 4 times before finally getting to the police station, and took over half an hour to drive what was actually only a couple of miles by any obvious route.
How about an end to compstats, to valuing and rewarding bullshit arrests with overtime pay, etc.? False performance measurement is the plague of our time; it's as if Edwards Deming had never lived.
Probably expensive, though.
Cheaper than a lawsuit, certainly.
30: Performance measurement is always going to be a thing. Just have to get the measurement right. I had never heard of Demings; you'll have to explain to me what he adds.
CompStat I was also not familiar with, though I realize David Simon talked about it. More understanding is needed on my part.
CompStat is known as StateStat, formerly or otherwise known as CitiStat, in Maryland. This is really unknown territory to me. On the face of it, you want to be data-driven, right? On the other hand, every jackass can manipulate statistics. I don't know.
I think we ought to be principle- driven and data-corroborated.
True enough.
You know, there's a program called "The Signal" here on our local public radio station, WYPR. Their current program interviews people in the affected neighborhoods in Baltimore. It's pretty good.
So it's beginning to seem to me that Marilyn Mosby's allegation that the Baltimore police officers engaged in an illegal arrest of Freddie Gray is .. a shaky claim.
Hard to know without access to the knife. But if it's indeed a spring assisted blade then she might be way overreaching on that charge. I'm also curious as to what she has that she thinks she can swing the murder rather than the manslaughter charge.
Probably expensive, though.
Cameras are way cheap these days. The GPS part might already be taken care of if there's a patrol laptop in the van.
If the GPS part is already taken care of, I don't understand why it's come as a surprise that the van stopped a couple more times than was previously known. So I'm guessing that it's not already taken care of.
gswift, are you in favor of cameras in the police vans, then? And also in the back of squad cars in order to keep an eye out for so-called "brake checks"?
The van might not have a laptop mount? Or maybe the other stops weren't announced on the radio and only came to light with GPS data?
We don't use transpo vans here but there's really no reason to not chuck a camera in them. The squad car cam is probably easily done by just having guys keep their body cam running during the trip to jail.
Wouldn't the body cam be pointing forward? I think the idea would be to see what's happening in the back.
Anyway, yes, let's all agree that there should be cameras in the vans. I'm sort of assuming that rough rides would be captured by those, since you'd have shots of people being thrown about and so on.
39: There's still audio and you'd see the braking through the windshield and hear the whack of the guy hitting the partition.
To be piddlingly technical, indictment requires a grand jury -- if the grand jury is unnecessary, there's never a literal indictment step.
Oh, did you all think the OP title was all on the same topic? I meant "indictments" as an...analogy.
We live in the Village of the Banned.
You don't need a weatherban to see which way the wind blows.
The pump don't work cause the bannedals took the bandle.
The problem with the claim that the knife was spring loaded (and the reason to think that Mosby is right when she disagreed with the police report) is that the reports given by the officers involved have already turned out to have at least two falsehoods - that he had been taken into custody without force, and the number of stops the van took (both of which were things where the evidence disproving them turned up afterwards). I'm guessing that at least part of those misconduct charges are going to have to do with writing down demonstrably false stuff in the police report. So I'm very willing to believe that the disagreement about the knife may not be a tricky legal call about the precise mechanism involved.
Just to say: If Mosby gets convictions here I betcha she'll be running for national office in five years.
since you'd have shots of people being thrown about
sorry, couldn't help myself.
That clip is twice as awesome in slow motion.
Is it just me or does anyone else here keep reading Mosby as Moby?
Paddy rollers wuz out in force tonight! To no avail, I suspect, as the mood on the street was mostly pretty chill.
54: Nope, I'm getting "Mosley," "Mos Def," and "Mos Eisely" but no Moby.
Also, on the assisted opening vs. switchblade question, personally, I'd go with the assisted opening every time, all other things being equal. As Powell points out in The Anarchist Cookbook, switchblades depend on a spring, and springs are exactly the kind of thing that fails when it is most inconvenient. No, give me a good liner-lock assisted opener from a reputable manufacturer and leave the switchblades for the police and gangsters.
Speaking of switchblades, I was in Target tonight buying May Day (Parade) supplies, and there was a young black skinhead all done up in perfectly trad Fred Perry shirt, Sta-Prest slacks, braces and cherry Docs. It did my old heart proud to see it. I didn't shout "Oi! Oi! Oi!" at him, but perhaps I should have.
Went to the street fest on Rittenhouse today to protest. Very white, upscale crowd. Still got about 80:20 positive reactions. Zero hassle from police. My twitter has details.
Oh! Or I could have said "Hey man, what's your number?" and he could have replied "54-46!" and we would have shared a chuckle.
59: Huh, that's my sister's neighborhood (more or less). She may well have been at the protest.
Nah, it was a one-person protest. The "official" protests were on Thursday, Friday, and possibly tomorrow.
Ah, okay. Anyway, she's probably gone to some protest or other.
And I keep thinking I should introduce her to you. I think you'd get along well.
I've been spending most of the day trying to figure out what the hell my upstairs neighbors are doing. My best guess: they first simulated the Kentucky Derby by running laps around the apartment, then had an extended dinner party that eventually turned into an orgy.
they first simulated the Kentucky Derby by running laps around the apartment, then had an extended dinner party that eventually turned into an orgy
Modest Mussovertextorgsky
Dude its Derby Day+Clippers/Spurs Game 7+the fight of the century. It's the drunk TV sports day holiday of the year, so I assume things are noisy in Boston.
I'm pretty sure I know who wrote 68 from the content alone.
And it appears evil has triumphed over good in the fight of the century.
Just kidding; they're actually both evil. Luckily they'll both suffer from long-term neurological problems resulting from decades of being hit in the head. Woo, boxing!
Evil has triumphed, and so has running away like a little bitch. But apparently that's considered "technical skills" or whatever.
like a little bitch
Deprecated, (frat) bro.
I get the impression that that was the first fight a lot of people had ever really watched, and certainly the first Mayweather fight they'd ever watched. It was classic Mayweather: be unhittable and counterpunch. And guess what? He threw and landed more punches.
The one who failed to live up to expectations was Pacquiao. People thought he might give Mayweather trouble because he's quick and a "volume puncher" who historically threw so many punches that counterpunchers were overwhelmed, but either because he's old and slower, or because Mayweather rocked him a bit early, Pacquiao never managed the volume people expected.
The first fight I ever watched was the one where Tyson kept biting the other guy's ears off.
One ear! Two ears! Three ears! Four ears! How many ears can he bite off before they stop the fight? This is a travesty!
How did a welterweight bout become "fight of the century" anyhow? I recognize that both these guys probably punch a lot harder than I ever could -- and blah blah, win all the time, masters of the technical aspects of boxing, blah blah -- but welterweight bouts are typically a whole bunch of of two little tiny dudes swatting at each other to no obvious effect unless you're a boxing judge. There's a reason heavyweight bouts typically get (got) all the attention.
It is pretty funny that Mayweather is only 5'8", 146lbs.
Yeah, I don't understand how this fight got so much press. Somebody's a marketing genius.
I don't think you should be able to declare anything "of the century" until the century is over. Like, we can look back now at the 20th century and say yeah, Ali-Frasier was the fight of that century. But calling it that at the time was premature.
Then again, maybe this was the fight of the century, because I don't see that boxing is ever really going to recover, in terms of being a thing that people care much about. Boring fights like the one last night are just one part of the reason.
I don't understand how this fight got so much press
These are both guys who have had a legitimate claim to being the "best pound for pound fighter in the world" and have had long, hall-of-fame careers. (You know Mayweather is the highest paid athlete in the world?) They were going to meet five years ago, when it would have been awesome, but they finally got together last night and Mayweather was still undefeated, so in boxing terms, it was still a big deal.
The fight of any contiguous 100 year period that includes this event!
Mayweather has won titles in five different weight divisions, though. So there's that.
That was pretty disappointing. I love Pacquiao, but he just couldn't get a fight started. I have to say, Mayweather is amazing at what he does.
I can beat both of them in the long division. Maybe.
73 is the most succinct and clear explanation of the fight strategy I've read. Too bad Ogged is a terrible person for following boxing so closely.
On Baltimore: as devotees of The Wire, we knew that Sonja Sohn is awesome, but I didn't know that she's this awesome.
She certainly a better person than me. If I had 200,000 dollars in the bank, the only reason I would take it out would be to spread it over my bed and roll in it. And then I would take it back.
That fight was a fucking joke. This pretty much captures my feelings.
Mike Tyson either knocked you out, or got knocked out trying. Floyd Mayweather is his diametric opposite...The only time he ever goes on the offensive is when he's fighting a woman. To watch Floyd Mayweather box is to witness an elaborate exercise in self-preservation. There's not much passion. There's certainly not much flair. There's just Floyd moving around, doing his best to preserve a rote decision, and preserve the potential rematch, and preserve an unbeaten record that holds more historic value to him that it does anyone else. And yes, his style works, if only in the most cynical sense. Really, it's the perfect boxing strategy for a man who is a documented wife-beater and shitbag: always doing just enough to get away with it.
So you'd prefer they take turns hitting each other until one falls down? (Says someone who's never watched any.)
The thing in 90 is bullshit. Mayweather is a genuinely horrible person but also one of the greatest fighters of all time, precisely because he is unhittable and can land counterpunches. That's not because he's cheating or manipulating the system but because he has incredible footwork and absolutely unbelievable timing in landing punches. Going up against Pacquiao Mayweather was facing someone who (had been) one of the best guys in history at throwing fast punches and gaining the offensive momentum but Mayweather was (except for a few moments) able to completely outbox him, totally put him off his game, and make it not look like a fair fight. That's a pretty incredible skill set.
What sucked about the fight wasn't that it wasn't more like Tyson knocking out some chump in two rounds; it was (a) Manny is awesome and Mayweather is a for real woman-beating villain, so it sucks to see him not only walk away with $200 million but also win; (b) the fight wasn't close, because Mayweather really is just that much better and also Manny is in decline and has lost some explosiveness.
So Mayweather is the neutral zone trap of boxing?
91: In the Ali-Foreman fight, Ali let Foreman hit him repeatedly until Foreman was tired, and then Ali knocked him out.
I don't really follow hockey, so I can't judge the analogy, but Magary's point is basically like saying "the 2000 Baltimore Ravens figured out a sneaky, evil trick -- using defense so that their offense didn't have to do as much work as some NFL offenses! That makes them like wife beaters, doing just enough to get away with it." Footwork, defense and counterpunching aren't exactly novel parts of boxing, and are important parts of the novel "hit your opponent a bunch while avoiding getting hit" strategy.
I mean both Mayweather and boxing generally are morally indefensible and that wasn't a great fight, but.
I want to know how Mayweather made the decision to come out with Justin Bieber in his corner. It doesn't seem like an association that reflects well on either Bieber or Mayweather.
I don't follow hockey anymore, so I was shocked to hear that this year's point leader only needed 87 points to lead the league. In the ten times Gretzky led the league in points, his lowest total was 130. Other than lockout years, I think you have to go back to the late 60s for a point total that low.
one of the greatest fighters of all time
Eh, he wouldn't last thirty seconds against Rhonda Rousey.
"One of the greatest at exploiting the rules of boxing to out point his opponents" is more acceptable.
He clearly isn't a physical coward, though, even if he is a complete shitbag.
29, 38, 40 - It turns out there was a camera back there, but it was broken at some point beforehand and wasn't fixed.