Writing at Daily Beast John McWhorter has an interesting take on the inner city black social dysfunction that has lead to the situation in St. Louis and Baltimore:
First, the Black Power ideology that proliferated in the 1960s and ’70s discouraged black communities from maintaining the old-time mantra that adversity meant that blacks have to try twice as hard. The wise insight was that after centuries in the United States, the persistent double standard was demeaning, and while that made basic sense, it changed black America’s orientation towards individual initiative. That helps explain, for example, why only in the ’60s did it become common for poor blacks to burn their own neighborhoods in protest. Even amidst Jim Crow, black people did not do this.
Second, in the late ’60s, partly in response to the riots of the Long Hot Summers, welfare was transformed from a time-limited program intended for widows to an open-ended program that didn’t care whether recipients ever got jobs. This had the unintended consequence of discouraging marriage, and made it easier for women to raise kids without the father around. This, a story too little told (read it here), decisively impacted the black experience nationwide.
Finally, the War on Drugs created a black market alternative to legal work for poor black men underserved by bad schools. Frankly, The Wire explained this dynamic better than any academic analysis.
There’s an aspect of this whole thing that I haven’t seen pointed out by anyone. St. Louis (of which Ferguson is a close-in suburb) and Baltimore have something in common. Each city is its own county. That means that whites were able to flee the increasingly black city centers by stepping across the city line.
My thinking about St. Louis was more that it stopped expanding early, leaving a larger, closer inner-circle of independent suburban cities like Ferguson that lacked the resources to provide adequate social services. I’m not sure how this tracks with Baltimore.
This is an interesting article about the Boom in Public Housing in Ferguson, which changed the city from majority white to majority black, from working class to high poverty. Basically, a low-income housing project was developed in the late 80s with local support, which had large rooms, nice landscaping and day care. (Note attractive elements for single moms). To reside, one needed to be earn less than the community’s median income. As people moved in, likely from the City, median income dropped, and working class people that previously qualified had to move, further dropping median income. When additional housing projects were proposed, the city opposed them, but weren’t heard. Ferguson ended up with more Section 8 renters than any census tract in the State, with which came more troubles in the schools and substantially increased police calls to the public housing units. The downward incentives of increased concentrations of poverty in a small community are mind-boggling.
BTW/ I noticed that Freddie Gray had something like 15 arrests for drug possession, frequently with “intent to distribute,” which suggests the narrative of locking up young blacks for one or two minor drug charges is not entirely accurate.
Charges filed against the six officers, up to & including second degree murder for one of them.
Any bets on whether or not this leads to more riots?
Any bets on whether they actually get convicted?
Without even knowing the prosecutors narrative? No, I wouldn’t bet on that at all yet.
Also, let me know the jurisdiction first.
Listened to part of the prosecutor’s press conference. That hinted at the narrative. Basically they’re going to say he shouldn’t have been arrested, was assaulted during the arrest, was improperly restrained and died of negligence in the police van due to injuries resulting either from improper restraint and/or reckless driving.
As for the officers, based on names it wouldn’t surprise me if one of them was Hispanic and if the woman were black. But we’ll see.
What I am surprised by is that Baltimore is apparently being run by black women in their late 20s or early 30s, based on looks. (Okay, the mayor is allegedly 45, and the prosecutor is 35, but damn, they look young.)
Maybe there’s more to the case than meets the eye. IMO a Chicago jury wouldn’t convict on that.
Liek I said, still don’t know their narrative, much less their evidence. But that’s what they seemed to be hinting at.
I wouldn’t bet on it either. When I worked at the Death Penalty Appellate Defender’s Office, I didn’t think any of the cases were actual “first degree” murder cases.
The arrest stuff seems specious. With so many contraband laws, I cannot imagine it could be criminal misconduct for a police officer to bring back to the station a suspect, whose knife turns out to be three inches, not three-and-a-half, or misunderstands the opening mechanism, or thinks the baggie of coffee is drugs. People get arrested, and its up to the prosecutor to determine whether there is evidence to charge. This line of discussion is going to completely weird out the Baltimore PD.
Seeing calls for the police to be disarmed after this. I’ll not bother pointing out why that’s funny.
PD, I thought the charges about the alleged contraband were strange. If that’s the case, every arrest that doesn’t lead to a prosecution or a plea could be called official misconduct.
With such a quick and adamant indictment from the prosecutor, a public restless for the kind of outcome they want will probably accept nothing less than a full conviction of charges — whether or not further evidence disputes the charges.
The prosecutor is newly elected, and apparently beat out the incumbent by stating she was going to go after police malefactors. She’s just delivering on her campaign promise.
Ellipses: The NYTimes story says the prosecutor did not claim that the driver intentionally gave a rough ride. It sounds to me like it’s failure to seatbelt and failure to seek medical attention.
A state trooper around here drove 120 mph to an accident scene, while emailing on his computer and talking to his girlfriend on the phone, when he crossed the line , killing two teenage sisters. He was convicted of reckless homicide and was sentenced to 30 months probation.
2nd Degree murder requires proof of intent to inflict serious bodily harm. For example, I attack a man with a knife only intending to wound him in his arm but accidentally stab him in the chest and he dies. Usually, there is no intent to kill because the actor is acting in the heat of passion to harm someone.
Motor vehicles, guns, knives and fists are all potentially dangerous instrumentalities, and your handling of them has more obvious dangers, whereas seatbelts and taking someone to the hospital are safety/precautionary measures. I’m curious whether the courts have reviewed similar cases.
Full disclosure: I’ve been placed in the back of a police car without a seatbelt more than once. The first time, I was the victim of an aggravated assault; beaten unconscious and awoke to find my attackers fleeing far away. I was bleeding profusely in the face and nose where I had been kicked and beaten. Walked home and checked in with my housemates, who insisted on calling the cops. It turns out the guys fleeing weren’t my attackers, they were my rescuers, they had chased down the thugs, surrounded them and called the cops.
The police had arrested them but nobody knew where the victim was. A cop came to take me to the hospital, but insisted I not clean myself up and he would stop by the station and get a camera to document my injuries. While in the backseat, I rolled a bit and he may or may not have joked about how it would help with the photograph. At the last moment at the hospital, the cop snapped a couple of Polaroids of me. Would love to have them now.
Ice, It’s good to deliver on one’s campaign promises, but only if circumstances truly reflect the aggrieved injustice upon which such promises were made.
However, in most of the recent protests/riots the crowds seem to have been in charge of what was deemed due process and ultimate justice, rather than what the eventual forensic evidence actually showed and the verdict from juries who had access to it. Possibly Baltimore may be following a similar pattern as it seemed to me the female prosecutor’s statements were too confident of conviction, too early in the game, to be considered “unbiased” or cautiously going forward on the presumption of “innocent until proven guilty” — the mainstay of our justice system. Instead the tone and intent appeared focused on short-term crowd appeasement, something that might back fire, should what is revealed later differ from what is claimed now.
Even in looking over Baltimore’s stats, there are a few ironies. The city is almost 2 to 1 black over white, with it’s governance almost entirely in African American hands. Even the police department is something like 43% black, which is a respectable ratio when compared to other municipalities. However, the most “despised” officers on the police force, identified as such in black neighborhoods, are also black, while the media continues to mirror news more in terms of black versus white.
IMO, the problems at play here are more deeply embedded in uncomfortable issues no one wants to talk about, let alone address, least they be called a racist.
It turns out the guys fleeing weren’t my attackers, they were my rescuers,
PD, it’s called “the fog of crime.”
Prescient predictions applicable to today’s unrest, from The Kerner Commission — a National Advisory Commission of Civil Disorders convening in 1967, almost 50 years ago.
Two years after chairing that commission Gov. Kerner was convicted of mail fraud, conspiracy, perjury, and related charges, the start of a great Illinois tradition of governors serving time for offenses during or after their terms of office. It’s not specifically relevant to the quote in question but it’s something to keep in the back of your mind.
Fox News is reporting that members of Baltimore PD are upset that the medical examiner changed opinion from accidental death to homicide after “meetings.” If true, it will come out in the trial.
The reason for the “eye contact” was not because it is illegal. It was to establish that he actually saw the police. Otherwise, he could have been running from his ex-girlfriend. This gives the police a reasonable suspicion to stop him.
I said before the arrest did not smell right. I would have expected there to have been a resisting arrest charge at least, but I am sure they could have found some other bullshit charges to throw at him.
From the news reports, there was no illegal knife. (Either, the knife was legal, or there was no knife.) If you are going to charge him with an illegal weapon, you “find” an illegal gun, and while you are at it, you “find” illegal drugs.
It looks like there was a procedure to use a seat belt, and they did not follow the procedure. Did the other prisoners that were transported by the driver get seat belted?
Whatever the cops did or did not do, Freddie Gray was in the game, and he knew how it was played. He did not deserve to die, but he knew the game could be deadly. If he did not want to end up being killed by the police, he should have gotten a job at McDonalds.
PD, if they fuck this up and don’t get some felony convictions, that city will burn.
Also, starting to look like the guy with the murder charge against him may be black. Doh!
Two years after chairing that commission Gov. Kerner was convicted of mail fraud, conspiracy, perjury, and related charges,
Sigh…are there no honest people in government?!!
It looks like there was a procedure to use a seat belt, and they did not follow the procedure.
The policy to strap prisoners into seat belts, for protective reasons, went into effect only days before Gray was picked up. The police are supposedly countering that not all officers got the memo regarding this new policy.
Also, as was to be expected, the police unions are refuting these charges, as is a John Banzhat, of George Washington University. The latter has made his reputation as a public interest law activist, who successfully argued against big tobacco. In reference to the State Attorney’s indictment, he feels that Mosby “overcharged” the six officers, and consequently will have difficulty making her case against each individual officer. It’s reminiscent of the Zimmerman trail, where another state attorney appeared to overreach on another controversial death with racial overtones, ending in an inability to get a conviction.
Tastybits: The stop appears to have been based upon being in a high crime/drug transaction neighborhood, in which officers saw Gray talking w/ another guy and when they made eye-contact Gray ran. The fact that Gray had 18 prior arrests (he may have had more as a minor) suggests that he was a known quantity, but I’ve not seen it claimed that any of the officers knew this. The stop seems to pass muster barely.
They padded him down (which the Courts say they have a right to do at this point) and found the knife. They probably thought they would get drugs, but were disappointed. They arrested him on the basis that the knife violated what I think is an ambiguous municipal code that made possession finable by $500 or up to 1 yr in jail. Here is what is an illegal knife: “any knife with an automatic spring or other device for opening and/or closing the blade, commonly known as a switch-blade knife.” If he had a spring-assisted knife, it may not be clear if it falls under that definition. From some perspectives, no, a switch-blade is commonly understood to be opened by an exterior button that triggers the spring mechanism, not just any spring mechanism that helps open the blade. It’s a municipal ordinance that probably rarely results in much imprisonment and is written like crap. No doubt it has been abused historically.
“Did the other prisoners that were transported by the driver get seat belted?” I think it’s one prisoner, but I think this is the million dollar question.
“He did not deserve to die.” I agree. I guess the question is what next. I think Baltimore has just agreed to a large civil judgment against itself, and maybe that is just, but it will hurt the city’s financial ability to make some of the positive changes that need to happen.
“Also, starting to look like the guy with the murder charge against him may be black. ”
To Dave’s earlier observation that it’s a black and blue problem. This is now officially a total effing mess, and set into motion when people who should know better (like our president) get into the business of enabling race baiters to control the dialogue. Yes, no conviction and Baltimore looks like it will burn.
The female officer and two of the male officers are black, looking at their pics. The other three are white. So much for the narrative.
PD, I’ve got a good friend who lives not far outside of Baltimore. One of his neighbor’s is in the Baltimore City PD. According to him 100 cop cars were destroyed in the main action the other night. I wonder if the city can say, “We would have paid gray’s family $3,000,000, but now we need it for new cop cars”? Probably not.
When you listen to the street comments it sounds like the “wild west” kind of justice, where they would drag the officers out on the street and over to the gallows without a blink of an eye.
It’s totally out of control.