The Vidocq Society is a small but legendary group of experts
who gather to solve mysteries of the ages. I wish they could find the answer to
an unexplained death that took place a few miles from me, last spring. This is
the death of 25-year-old named Freddie Carlos Gray, Jr.
On April 12, 2015, Freddie made eye contact with a police
officer in his Baltimore neighborhood. He ran, and a group of cops that
included some bicycle officers caught him. He was searched, found to have a
small switchblade (legal for the state of Maryland but not for Baltimore City)
and was taken into custody. Some spectators observed police sitting on his neck
and bending his legs backward. A civilian-shot video shows him being dragged
and loaded into the back of a police van. In the van, the police put him in
wrist and ankle restraints—but the seatbelt that was also in this section of
the van wasn’t used.
The van made five stops before reaching the Western District
police station. Freddie asked for medical help several times. When the van reached the police station more than 45 minutes after
loading up Freddie, he was unresponsive. Freddie was taken to hospital, where
doctors discovered he was in a coma and had severe spinal cord injuries. He
died April 19, 2015.
This death, coming on the heels of so many other police-on-civilian
killings nationwide, was not going to fade into oblivion. For a few weeks, the
city’s reaction was many protest marches, rallies and discussions. But the
night following the funeral, a protest became aggressive, with bottles being
thrown at police. Thirty-four arrests were made and fifteen police officers suffered
injuries.
The next day, the Metro Transit Administration made the fateful
decision to stop bus and light rail service in an area where several high schools
converged. Some frustrated students grew into a bloc that began vandalizing
cars. Earlier that day, some students had spread word through social media that
there would be a “purge” with violent behavior.
The students’ riot was quickly augmented by other, older
people, who joined in burning buildings and cars, looting stores, and attacking
some drivers of cars. Throughout this, the police stood back, and the violence
spread like wildfire throughout city neighborhoods. What was happening was
about much more than the death of Freddie Gray. It had become an uprising of
disenfranchised people frustrated by city government and a lack of opportunity.
The National Guard arrived and the city went under a 10 pm
curfew for almost two weeks. The Baltimore State’s Attorney, Marilyn Mosby,
announced that her department had launched an independent investigation and
would be prosecuting the six police involved on numerous charges. The most
serious charge, depraved heart murder, was leveled at the driver. What was
unusual about the prosecution was that Mosby announced the charges without waiting
for results of the police department’s investigation or sharing the results of
the autopsy, wherein an assistant medical examiner declared the death a
homicide, due to injuries sustained through omission of safety procedures. The
autopsy also revealed the presence of cannabis and opiods in Freddie’s system,
which could be argued might have led to Freddie being restless and physically
panicking in the back of the van. The autopsy was the only factor presented to
convince a grand jury to bring the officers to trial.
The State’s Attorney’s thesis was the officers had conspired
to give Gray a “rough ride” to prison, and that was equivalent to homicide. Yet
as three officers of the six officers have come to trial over the last eight
months—none of them testifying against each other—no evidence of violence has
appeared. The result is one officer had a mistrial; and two were acquitted. The
three officers remaining to be tried are asking for charges against them to be
dropped.
With a supposed absence of violence, how
did Freddie Gray die? Was it just a crazy accident in the van the man caused to himself by moving around?
Another possibility might be that his neck was broken by
one or two of the officers before being loaded into the van, and the long delay
in medical help proved the final death blow. Apparently, the prosecution had a piece of extra evidence
they wanted to present in the recent trials. This information was ruled inadmissible,
because prosecution apparently hadn’t gone through the standard process of
sharing the information with the defense.
The mystery boils down to how a man who was fit enough to run
away from the police without any trouble would lie unconscious with a broken
spinal column, less than an hour later.
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