Riots In Baltimore

Freddie Gray had been accused of being in the drug business in order to support his family and had been arrested a couple of other times before. On April 19 he was arrested because he had taken off running after he made eye contact with the police and he was accountable for possession of a switchblade, which was later discovered that in Maryland a switchblade was not illegal. When the policeman finally caught him, he asked for an asthma inhaler but was not given one and was put in a white van (Karimi). His death caused major protests in Baltimore, people were burning buildings, destroying cars, shooting people and blaming the policemen that were involved with his death while chanting that "Black Lives Matter". This was the second biggest riot that happened in Baltimore, the first was after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. After Gray's death, the number of violent crimes in Baltimore increased tremendously, almost 50 shootings, more than one person was being killed a day, and the number of homicides this year in the past month is almost twenty more than what it was in 2014 (Mac Donald

For decades racial discrimination has been a reoccurring issue that has shaped the relationships across the country. Riots, in the case of the L.A. riots, are a form of venting and a negative form of freedom of expression. Almost immediately after the jury`s decision to seize the officers of charges that included assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force towards King, riots broke out across Los

Race riots are one of the major news items we hear about via the media when a social crisis occurs. The riots in Baltimore, however, were not so much about race, but more about economic and social class separations. The riots began as a peaceful protest amongst the citizens of Baltimore over the death of one of their own, Freddie Gray. Gray was a young, African-American, from a financially lower class area of Baltimore. Unfortunately, he died while in custody of the Baltimore Police. While this is a tragic loss, he was unlawfully detained by the police (Sarlin, 2015) during this ordeal. On the surface, the riots may appear as a cut-and-dry race provoked, once they are looked into further, that is not necessarily the case.

Social and economic disparities are plaguing the city of Baltimore. There are numerous issues that the city of Baltimore is facing, many of which did not come to light until the case of Freddie Gray. On April 2015, a 25-year-old black man by the name of Freddie Gray fell victim to police brutality. After the discovery of his death and the unreasonable way he was treated, Baltimoreans began to protest. The anger and frustration began to escalate due to other social and economic problems the city faces regularly.

The shooting of sparked a nation-wide movement not only demanding justice for Mike Brown, but also protesting the racial discrimination deeply embedded in the criminal justice system as well as various institutions in the larger American society. Furthermore, jfdkjfjdakljk something about international recognition. Similar protests and riots have been springing up in other cities since 1960s, and police killings of unarmed black men happen once every 28 hours (Kahle, 2014). However, Michael Brown’s killing has led to the most sustained uprising against police violence in at least two decades, centered among the African American residents of Ferguson, and has rallied significant nationwide support as well as international attention (Kahle, 2014; Taylor, 2014). The killing of Michael Brown is by no means an isolated event, and presence of racial tensions, especially in the St. Louis area, was already present long before. The large-scale pushback that the killing of Michael Brown has set in motion, then, seems to have been the last straw, prompting the eruption of decades of pent up frustration at a racist and oppressive system. That being said, what are the previous straws that have slowly pushed the black community in Ferguson to the breaking point? What are the factors that have caused these tensions to boil over and erupt into such a large-scale upheaval? This paper will explore some of the

In the weeks that followed the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of the Baltimore police, a group of protestors known as BlackLivesMatter, gathered with the intentions of demanding public awareness over the persistent discrimination and violence that African Americans are subjected to by Police Officers around the Country. Following Mr. Gray’s death, on April 25th of 2015, a small number of protestors attending the B.L.M. protest turned an otherwise non-violent protest into a violent bout of civil disorder which led to several dozen arrests, an estimated 15 officer injuries and mass rioting, looting and burning of the local businesses including a CVS pharmacy. Ultimately, a state of emergency was declared and the National Guard was brought in to resolve the conflicts.

A state in a stage of peace was brutally ended on April 12th, 2015. The streets of Baltimore were crowded as a crowd of people filled the streets. Freddie Gray was one of the many in the crowd at the corner of W. North Avenue and N. Mount Street. Four officers on bicycles were patrolling a crowd that had formed. Slight tension was felt in the air as the police presence was felt by all.

Some Ferguson protesters burned stores and threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at heavily armored police, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse crowds — all under the lens of live, national media coverage. The protests again turned violent when a Missouri grand jury decided not to charge Wilson. And similar riots broke out in Baltimore in April following the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died after being injured in police custody.

On November 19th, 2015, a fatal shooting of an unarmed black male, Jamar Clark, by two white police officers pushed the relatively small population of black individuals in Minneapolis to protest the legality of the shooting. The shooting took place on the north-side of Minneapolis, where there is a higher poverty rate with a majority black population (Baenen, Glass, and Karnowski, 2015). Police officers said the individual allegedly committed and assault and was interfering with the paramedics treating the victim. The two police officers shot Clark once in the head. The protests took place over the days following the shooting at a police precinct in Minneapolis.

What began as a peaceful demonstration over a week ago in Ferguson, Missouri, following the fatal shooting of an 18 year-old African-American man, quickly descended into violence and vandalism as protests turned into riots. On Saturday, August 9, Officer Darren Wilson confronted Michael Brown. The incident led to the shooting death of Brown, which sparked protests calling for an investigation of the confrontation. On Sunday August 10, however, the demonstrations turned to chaos as crowds began looting and vandalizing parts of the town, drawing national attention.

The arrest and death of Freddie Gray has recently ignited protests, riots, and accusations of such police brutality. In this application I will be investigating and discussing case facts and information I have obtained from research on the internet. I will also be discussing the issues that have stimulated from such protests, riots and accusations across the state of Maryland and also across the country. I will give insight on responses from the Baltimore community and then will also give some information on precautions and measures that should and/or have to be taken when events like these occur.

After the unrest of Freddy Gray’s death in April of 2015 and the aftermath of the Baltimore City riots, the inner-city communities are in the process of regrouping, repairing, and reorganizing its neighborhoods. Many businesses suffered vandalism and loss of merchandise that their livelihood had to come to a standstill. During the dilemma, those residents who destroyed their communities never contemplated at the time what they were doing to their neighborhoods. Several pharmacies and corner stores were impaired. Some of these locations were the only places convenient for senior citizens to travel for their medication. So many people were fed up with the police department and the manner in which they were being treated that they used this

The article spoke about the Freddie Gray murder and the affect it had on the community. It specifically addressed the actions of the baltimore community once Freddie Gray was laid to rest and how the black community in baltimore felt unheard and needed to retaliate in order show the higher authorities of how they feel social injustice. The article truly describes the tension between the police and the black community and attempt to figure out why the community was essentially destroying their future and their own neighborhoods.

The people of Baltimore lost their complacency though, and along with it their ability to rationalize, with yet another case of police brutality. While their decisions to begin setting fires, looting, and throwing bricks was not a positive one, these people were determined to be heard once and for all.

On April 15th, 2015, Freddie Gray became another victim of police brutality against the African American population in the United States. His killers, including William G. Porter, were suspended with pay and can still serves as officers of the Baltimore Police Department today. Gray, like so many others, are in constant danger of systematic racism that could eventually end their lives. However, long before the officers “failed to follow safety procedures "through acts of omission"” and their not-guilty or mistrial verdicts spiked widespread protests in Baltimore City, Gray was the victim of lead exposure. In 2008, a lawsuit was filed by the Gray family against Stanley Rochkind, the owner of a home they lived in for four years, arguing that