POLICING - Rage and Distrust

"Tracing rage and distrust in Freddie Gray’s neighborhood" PBS NewsHour 4/28/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In Baltimore, 25-year-old Freddie Gray's videotaped arrest and death has exposed a crisis long in the making.  In the poor, high-crime neighborhood where Gray lived -- and others like it in the city -- a history of mass arrests and harsh tactics employed by police have alienated residents, and worse.  Special correspondent Jackie Judd reports.

JACKIE JUDD (NewsHour):  Baltimore often lives up to its nickname of Charm City. But after a week of peaceful protests, Baltimore is now showing itself to be an angry and volatile city.

MAN:  Baltimore, we don’t have a good relationship with the police.  They whipped our ass every day.  This is nothing new to Baltimore.

JACKIE JUDD:  Freddie Gray’s videotaped arrest April 12, and his death a week later from a severe spinal cord injury, has exposed a crisis long in the making.

The city’s police commissioner, Anthony Batts, acknowledged that broken relationship in a remarkably candid interview.

ANTHONY BATTS, Commissioner, Baltimore Police Department:  Where we thought we were doing God’s work, where we’re going out trying to make the community safer, we have made mass arrests, we have locked people up, we have taken people to jail in numbers, and we have obliterated this community.

JACKIE JUDD:  If there is a ground zero, it is here where Gray lived, Sandtown in West Baltimore, pockmarked by vacant buildings struggling with higher-than-average unemployment and poverty and a robust heroin market. It is a place empty of what usually constitutes a neighborhood.

There are no grocery stores, no banks, no restaurants, but plentiful liquor stores, a place seemingly without a future for its young men and women.

Ray Kelly had run-ins with local police as a young man and is now a community activist.

RAY KELLY, No Boundaries Coalition:  You’re dealing with a population here trying to eat, trying to survive.  And it’s not really about black or white in this country.  Right now, it’s about survival.

"Should government play a role in addressing root causes of Baltimore’s upheaval?" PBS NewsHour 4/28/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  At the White House, President Obama condemned the violence in Baltimore and called for reflection on systemic troubles driving the anger.  Gwen Ifill sits down with Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina -- where another police department came under fire recently for the death of a black man -- to discuss increasing police transparency and improving prospects for struggling communities.