A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
Freddie Gray, a black man, died of a severed spine, an injury he suffered in the custody of the Baltimore police department. The incident is under investigation, but no charges have been filed, at least not yet.
After Gray’s funeral yesterday, protests turned into anti-police riots with many police officers suffering serious injuries. Police cars were vandalized, drug stores were looted and burned down, some thugs using the occasion to steal and commit assault and battery. Baltimore officials imposed a curfew and the governor of Maryland sent the national guard to keep order.
The pattern repeats itself. A black man is killed or manhandled by the police. Sometimes the killing is justified, but usually it is not. Protests follow. Then thieves and thugs appear, stealing, vandalizing, throwing rocks and firebombs, sometimes shooting. Often, more people die. More than 30 died in the Watts riots during August, 1965, the first, but not the last, race riot of which I have an adult memory.
Reports follow the riots, as do good intentions. Yet nothing seems to change. Before long, there’s another incident, another riot, another report, more good intentions.
Will good somehow emerge from Baltimore’s ordeal? We hope so. But I have little faith anything will change. One wrong will follow another. There will be more deaths, more funerals, more protests, more riots. Many believe they know why these events happen, but few or none know how to break the cycle. The best we can hope for in Baltimore is some kind of reform in the police department — the same police department that now must hunt down and lock-up the thugs and thieves who sullied that city. I hope that when these scoundrels are arrested and loaded into the paddy wagon, their backs aren’t broken like Freddie Gray’s was.