National troops roam Baltimore streets after bloody night of chaos
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NATIONAL Guardsmen fanned out across the city, police with riot shields blocked streets, and firefighters doused smoldering blazes yesterday after looting and arson erupted following the funeral of a black man who died in police custody.
It was the first time the National Guard was called out to quell unrest in Baltimore since 1968, when some of the same neighborhoods burned after the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
The rioting started in West Baltimore on Monday afternoon — within a mile of where Freddie Gray, 25, was arrested and placed into a police van earlier this month — and by midnight had spread to East Baltimore and neighborhoods close to downtown.
At least 15 officers were hurt, including six who were hospitalized. There were 144 vehicle fires, 15 structure fires and nearly 200 arrests.
The streets were calm yesterday morning. Residents came out to sweep up the broken glass and other debris. Firefighters sprayed the burned-out shell of a large building. The city was under a 10pm-to-5am curfew, and all Baltimore public schools were closed.
“We’re not going to leave the city unprotected,” Maryland Governor Larry Hogan vowed during a visit in the morning to a West Baltimore intersection that on Monday was littered with burning cars, a smashed police vehicle and glass.
Gray’s death under still-mysterious circumstances has become the latest flashpoint in the debate over the police use of force against black men.
The rioting was the worst such violence in the US since the turbulent protests that broke out over the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed black 18-year-old who was shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer.
“I understand anger, but what we’re seeing isn’t anger,” Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake lamented. “It’s disruption of a community. The same community they say they care about, they’re destroying. You can’t have it both ways.”
The rioters set police cars and buildings on fire, looted a mall and liquor stores and hurled rocks, bottles and bricks at police. Police responded occasionally with pepper spray or cleared the streets by moving in tight formation.
Maryland National Guard spokesman Lieutenant Charles Kohler said that about 2,000 members would be deployed through the day and that the force could build to 5,000.
“We are going to be out in massive force, and that just means basically that we are going to be patrolling the streets,” said Major General Linda Singh, adjutant general of the Maryland National Guard.
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