Baltimore celebrates as six police officers charged for homicide of Freddie Gray

Thousands of people took to the streets of Baltimore on Saturday as anger over the death of a young black man turned to hopes for change following swift criminal charges against six police officers.

There was an upbeat mood at the march from the housing projects where 25-year-old Freddie Gray was arrested last month to a plaza in front of city hall where the city's chief prosecutor announced charges on Friday ranging from murder to assault in his death.

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who has largely been absent from demonstrations over Gray's death, mingled with the crowd on Saturday near the West Baltimore intersection that saw the worst of rioting on Monday after Gray's funeral. He died on April 19, a week after suffering a fatal spinal injury while in police custody.

Many in the largely black city erupted with joy after the officers involved in the arrest were charged, in contrast to what happened after the deaths of unarmed black men over the past year in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York, where authorities found police broke no laws and officers involved were not charged.

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On Friday, (Prosecutor Marilyn) Mosby said the Maryland state medical examiner had ruled Gray's death a homicide. She said he was unlawfully arrested and the officers repeatedly ignored his pleas for medical help while he was handcuffed, shackled and lying face down in the back of a police van.

Original Quill wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:So if white officers are heavy handed with a white person, is that because they're racist?

No, because that is not a part of the cultural history which defines racism.  To be sure, there are many whites with bad attitudes--hillbillies that get drunk and beat their wives, rob 7/11's or are just unpleasant personalities around the water cooler--but we don't associate that with racism because there is no racial causative element.  There is no history of racism, slavery or social ostracism in the white-on-white situation.

As I was saying to eds above, there are social and economic elements around racism, but race must have been a part of the unique cultural mind and history in order to be a cause.