BALTIMORE — The first police officer Freddie Gray encountered on the morning he sustained a fatal spinal cord injury was Lt. Brian Rice, a seasoned 41-year-old white law enforcement officer who, several years earlier, had his guns confiscated by deputies who took him to a hospital after a worried ex-girlfriend expressed alarm about his well-being.
About 40 minutes later, when Mr. Gray, who was black, lay shackled in a police van and was no longer breathing, Sgt. Alicia White — a 30-year-old churchgoing black woman with a reputation as a rising star — tried to remove him. “She’s not even the type of person that would jaywalk,” one neighbor said.
In between, Mr. Gray was subdued and handcuffed by two rookie bicycle officers, each in his 20s, both white. A 25-year-old black patrolman arrived to check on him. The van driver, Officer Caesar Goodson, also black, is an old-timer at 45. Described by colleagues as “passive,” he never moved up the ranks.
In this mix of officers — who now face criminal charges in Mr. Gray’s death, including, for some, murder and manslaughter — one can see a portrait in miniature of the Baltimore Police Department, an agency mistrusted by many black residents, and one suffering from its own racial divide despite a decades-long effort to integrate. As the Justice Department begins a full-fledged civil rights investigation, the Gray case throws into sharp relief the department’s shortcomings and struggles for change.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/us/suspects-in-freddie-gray-case-a-portrait-of-baltimore-police-in-miniature.html?_r=0
No comments:
Post a Comment