Allergies dragged me into that resigned space where you know the price of every swivel of your head. My throat was raw, my eyes wept, and I was too dull to finish the Wednesday crossword puzzle. So through a vague delirium I watched the Baltimore Orioles play the Chicago White Sox in a nearly empty ballpark through a browser window in the corner of my screen.
You no doubt have heard about the game: It was unremarkably executed, sloppily pitched and genuinely eerie in the way it sounded. You could hear the snort of the pitcher, the pop of glove leather, the rattling of foul balls against vacant seats, and even the cheering of a smattering of fans gathered outside the stadium gates.
They were locked out because it seemed an unnecessary risk to invite thousands of people to Camden Yards given the civic turmoil in Baltimore. Once again an American city has erupted in violence; once again curfews have been installed and police kitted out in riot gear. And yet the Orioles played a game on a Wednesday afternoon; and yet people showed up to loiter on the periphery of the event. I wasn't hallucinating.
The nominal reason for the violence in Baltimore is the death of a 25-year-old black man, Freddie Gray. Gray died under still mysterious circumstances while in police custody on April 19, a week after he was arrested. He suffered a spinal injury--his family says he fractured three vertebrae--that could be described as a broken neck. While Gray had a criminal record, it's not exactly clear why he was arrested; he was on a West Baltimore street corner when he made eye contact with police and "fled unprovoked."
If you are like me, most of what you think you know about street corners in West Baltimore arrives courtesy of David Simon's HBO television series The Wire which, despite being a made-up narrative, is probably as accurate as any other source. Baltimore has a grievous illegal drug problem, and for decades police in the city have waged an aggressive campaign against street dealers. Judging from his rap sheet, Gray apparently had been a foot soldier in these wars, and he recognized the police as enemy combatants. It's not hard to imagine why he ran, or why they chased him, or why the police report that states Gray was arrested without "force or incident" doesn't exactly jibe with other accounts of Gray's arrest.
We've all seen the movies where the police give a little extra business to a suspect who has caused them a little extra trouble. And while we might prefer that all peace officers use restraint in extreme situations, it's never surprising when human beings abuse their power. If you don't want to be accosted by the police, you probably shouldn't run from them. If you do bolt, expect to be chased. We can argue about whether fleeing the police can elevate "reasonable suspicion" (which isn't grounds for arrest) to "probable cause" (which is) but any real-world decision ought to factor in the consequences of being caught. If you've got something to hide it may be prudent to run; otherwise you'd probably be better off hanging around.
That's easy to say if you're not a 25-year-old black man with a criminal record on a street corner in a tough part of town. When I see the police in my neighborhood, I understand they're unlikely to give me any sort of hassle. They will be cordial and non-threatening. I do not automatically present as a suspect to them; they do not automatically present as a threat to me. I would be very surprised if I had an exchange with a police officer who was dismissive or belligerent or insinuated I was less than law-abiding.
I'm sure I get profiled as much as anybody else--the difference is most of the cues mark me as probably harmless and potentially deeply vested in the social and political fabric of our little town. I might be a cousin to somebody who counts. I don't happen to look like the perps in the movies and the TV shows; I look like some bourgeois Hillcrester. (Any crime I might be involved in is probably carried out somewhere above street level.)
It might be fair to presume that I might be more likely to want to talk to the police than they are to talk to me: I might complain that no one understands how crosswalks are supposed to work, or that people drive too fast down my neighborhood's side streets, or that there are "suspicious" people in the neighborhood. I might be a jerk who wants to remind them that they're paid from public funds and therefore ought to affect a certain humility in their dealings with my grand self. I don't know what they'd presume; I only know I don't look like a young black man.
I would guess that nearly every interaction Freddie Gray had with the police was difficult, that they wanted to talk to him far more often than he wanted to talk to them. He looked as he did; he lived as he did. It was much more difficult for him to stay out of trouble than it is for most of us. It's not wrong to say that Gray was disadvantaged compared to most of us. It's not wrong to say that most of the people who took to the streets after his funeral were similarly disadvantaged.
That doesn't mean some of them aren't opportunistic looters, that some of them aren't using the tragedy of Gray's death as an excuse to engage in a hedonistic rampage. Not everyone who participates in the sacking of a liquor store or the burning of a check-cashing stand operates from a politically enlightened place. We can assume that for a lot of the rioters, the death of Freddie Gray is merely an excuse.
And it's unfortunate this lawlessness diverts public attention away from the systemic problems of fighting a war with one's own citizens via a paramilitary siege on our poorer precincts or highlighting the economic and social injustices at the roots of these problems. Instead, in some minds, it reinforces the idea that the only way to deal with people like Freddie Gray is roughly.
As I'm writing this, the six officers involved in Gray's arrest have been suspended with pay pending the results of the city's investigation. There are allegations that Gray was injured during the arrest and, according to CNN, another prisoner in the van that was transporting Gray to the police station says that Gray may have caused the injuries himself by banging against the walls of the van. (The prisoner was separated from Gray by a metal wall and couldn't see him, but he could hear him rattling around.) And the police have acknowledged that Gray was not buckled into the van, in violation of department policy.
We don't know what happened. I don't blame the officers for pursuing Freddie Gray and I'm not sure I blame him for running either. In a better world they wouldn't have recognized each other as enemies. In a better world we wouldn't be so ungenerous and stunted, so convinced of our virtue and dismissive of the pain of others.
In a better world we'd open up the gates and let everyone in. In a better world we'd let everybody play.
pmartin@arkansasonline.com
www.blooddirtangels.com
Perspective on 05/03/2015