At least two people were arrested as dozens of people violated the 10 o’clock curfew still being enforced in Baltimore set to expire early Monday, after a day of large, peaceful demonstrations where many called for the order to be lifted.
Malik Shabazz, the president of Black Lawyers for Justice and one of the organizers of a march to City Hall today that drew hundreds, called the continued curfew “oppressive.”
More than 1,000 marchers arrived a little before 6 p.m. at the corner of North and Pennsylvania avenues, the scene of Monday’s looting and rioting after the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died after being seriously injured while in police custody last month.
The presence of thousands of camouflage-clad National Guard troops and armored vehicles was a sign that the city was not quite back to normal. While many protesters called for an end to the citywide curfew but the Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts said it would remain in effect “for everyone’s safety.”
Baltimore’s top prosecutor acted swiftly in charging six officers in the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered a grave spinal injury as he was arrested and put into a police transport van, handcuffed and without a seat belt.
But getting a jury to convict police officers of murder and manslaughter will be far harder than obtaining arrest warrants.
Legal experts say the case is fraught with challenges. A widely shown video that captured the nation’s attention shows Gray, 25, being loaded into the van, but not what happened once he was inside. Other than the accused officers, the only known witness is a convicted criminal later placed in the van’s other holding cell, unable to see what was happening with Gray.
By bringing charges less than two weeks after Gray’s death, Mosby, 35, said her decision showed “no one is above the law.” State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby announced the charges Friday amid a backdrop of a city in turmoil.
Within hours, the city’s police union questioned the prosecutor’s impartiality, accusing her of a rush to judgment and demanding she recuse herself from the case. Even some of those who support Mosby’s stand worry further violence might erupt if she fails to win convictions.
Alan Dershowitz, a well-known criminal lawyer from New York and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, suggested that “The decision to file charges was made not based on considerations of justice, but on considerations of crowd control.