By: VOA News
Source: VOA News
Another day of protests in Baltimore over the death of a young black man while in police custody ended peacefully Wednesday night as residents observed an overnight curfew imposed after riots broke out earlier this week.
Community leaders, including U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings, whose district includes Baltimore, were on hand to encourage protesters to return to their homes before the 10 p.m. curfew took effect. Hours earlier, more than a thousand demonstrators marched through downtown Baltimore, from the city’s main train station to city hall, and back again. Baltimore’s police commissioner described the protest as “extremely peaceful.”
Life is slowly returning to normal in Baltimore, which has been under a state of emergency since Monday, when protesters burned stores and cars, and looted a shopping mall after the funeral for 25-year-old Freddie Gray. Commuters packed buses and subways Wednesday, and public schools reopened, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra played a free outdoor concert.
But the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox played a baseball game in an empty stadium, closed to fans. Police said they needed to deploy elsewhere in the city and could not provide enough security at the game.
Other marches in support of the demonstrations in Baltimore were held in Washington, D.C., Boston and New York City, where police arrested more than 60 protesters after they began blocking streets in Manhattan’s Union Square. Demonstrations also took place in Ferguson, Missouri, where similar protests broke out last year after the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed black male who was shot and killed after a confrontation with white police officer Darren Wilson.
Gray died earlier this month of a severe spinal injury a week after police arrested him and threw him into the back of a van. They drove him to jail without securing him with a seat belt as required. They allegedly ignored his pleas for medical attention.
The Washington Post says it has obtained a police document in which a prisoner in the van with Gray told investigators he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the van, and believed that he was “intentionally trying to injure himself.” An attorney for Gray’s family said the family disagreed “with any implication that Freddie Gray severed his own spinal cord.”
The six officers involved in the arrest are on paid administrative leave while the investigation proceeds. Baltimore police plan to turn over the results of their probe to the state’s attorney’s office Friday, which will decide whether to file charges against the officers. The information will not be made available to general public.
In a Wednesday interview with radio talk show host Steve Harvey, President Barack Obama said the Baltimore rioting shows that police departments need to build more trust in black neighborhoods.
He said his heart goes out to Baltimore police who were injured trying to put down the riots. He praised them for showing “appropriate restraint.”
Obama said there was no excuse for the violence, but he called for action to confront issues that lead to unrest. They include poor schools, limited job opportunities and drugs.