The Baltimore Police Department backtracked Wednesday and said its internal investigation of the Freddie Gray death will not be released publicly Friday, as an anxious city tried to regain normalcy and protesters hit the streets again, both in Baltimore and other cities around the nation.
At a news conference, Commissioner Anthony Batts said police will turn over the findings on Friday to the state’s attorney’s office and “from there, they will take the ball.”
He declined repeatedly to say when or whether his own department would release anything, except to note that doing so “may jeopardize the case if anyone needs to be prosecuted.”
While such language suggests criminal charges are expected against at least some of the six officers who have been suspended, CNN also reported that city officials were planning for the possibility that no charges would be filed.
Gray died April 19 of a broken neck, apparently suffered while in police custody. State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby had pledged during her election campaign to address aggressive police practices.
As the 10 p.m. hour fell, Baltimore’s citywide curfew largely emptied its streets, with little overt action from the police beyond warnings. Community and church leaders, local politicians and even many fellow demonstrators urged people to disperse.
At the intersection of Pennsylvania and North avenues, the epicenter of unrest in recent days, U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Maryland Democrat, noted that most of the people on the street at around 10:10 were journalists. “All you’re doing is taking pictures of each other,” he told them.
The apparently successful curfew capped another day of marches against police brutality and an unprecedented spectacle at its Camden Yards baseball field.
The Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox contested the first game in major-league history to be played behind closed doors — with no spectators.
“Today’s official paid attendance is zero,” the public announcer said in one of many game day rituals that seemed, in the words of the White Sox manager, “surreal.” There was a seventh-inning stretch, during which the organist played the iconic fan singalong “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” — with no fans present to sing along.
The Orioles won a quick two-hour game by a score of 8-2.
Otherwise, the daylight hours were mostly a return to something like normality, though there also were a few gatherings of a handful or a few dozen protesters, including one outside Ms. Mosby’s office building, demanding that she bring criminal charges.
One large march, led by activists in black T-shirts that read “Black Lives Matter,” led thousands through the city’s downtown, to and from Penn Station during rush hour. “Tell the truth. Stop the lies. Freddie Gray didn’t have to die,” they chanted.
But, according to reporters embedded with the marchers, organizers were telling people to respect the 10 p.m. curfew, and nothing like the mass burning and looting that happened Saturday night or Monday night happened or was expected.
Commissioner Batts agreed with that assessment and said there were no further injuries of officers Wednesday and only 18 new arrests all day.
There were solidarity marches in several major cities Wednesday evening, including New York, Washington, Boston, Indianapolis and Minneapolis.
The New York march, according to CNN reporter Alexandra Field, had “hundreds and hundreds” of people crammed shoulder to shoulder in Union Square Park for a planned vigil.
But she said there were “a lot” of arrests as several groups later spontaneously broke off. Numerous arrests occurred on Eighth Avenue as the crowd tried to take over the busy thoroughfare and march against the flow of traffic. There were further arrests in Times Square, as a couple of hundred people chanting “no justice, no peace” tried to block the street as Baltimore’s curfew, meanwhile, emptied its streets peacefully.
In Washington, hundreds of people marched down Pennsylvania Avenue before gathering in front of the White House. There were no immediate indications of arrests or violence.
The Baltimore curfew, which will last the rest of the week, largely quelled violence late Tuesday and early Wednesday, and elected officials were left to quarrel about political matters.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake denied that she had waited too long Monday to ask state officials to call out the National Guard, saying she kept state officials, including Maryland’s Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, abreast of things the entire time.
“When he has people right there in the (emergency operations) center with us, the notion that he didn’t get a call back from me directly, and that was of concern — that’s absurd when you have people in the room,” she said Wednesday.
Mr. Hogan later called such issues “not worth quarreling over.”
At Mondawmin Mall, where Monday’s rioting began, the students, whose schools reopened Wednesday, got on their buses and went home as police in riot gear guarded the closed mall. Also guarding the area were members of rival street gangs — the Crips, Bloods and Black Guerillas — who had reached a temporary truce.
“We got the right people out here today,” Kinji Smith of West Baltimore told The Associated Press. “The people they try to vilify are the ones making things calm.”
Still, some glowing embers remained. Mr. Hogan pointed out that about 200 businesses remained closed Wednesday evening.
Baltimore City Firefighters’ Union President Rick Hoffman told reporters on Wednesday that many of his workers are still feeling endangered by people throwing rocks and missiles at them, and often must wait for the arrival of police to protect them so they can concentrate on fighting fires.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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