Lesson Seeds

Page 2: Grades PK-1

Page 5: Grades 2 and 3

Page 6: Grades 4-6

Page 7: Grades 7 and 8

Page 9: Grades 9-12

Lesson for Grade Level: Pre-K – Grade 1

MCCRS Standards: SL.K.1, SL.K.3, SL.K.4, SL.K.5, SL.K.6; SL.1.1, SL.1.2, SL.1.3, SL.1.4, SL.5, SL.6

Theme/Big Question: The focus on anger (or frustration) is important because it is such a common feeling children experience. Often, children are particularly angry because they feel they have no control over what is going on around them, and have little opportunity to express how this makes them feel. If their anger is not channeled in healthy ways, it can lead to problems including fighting, poor grades, destructive friendships, isolation, depression, or volatile “blow-ups.”If you think anger is not happening with your students, you can focus on scared, worried, anxious, etc. Anger was the focus to help build the bridge to what is happening in our communities currently.

The purpose of this session is to validate their feelings of anger and help them identify positive ways to manage and control their anger.

Objective:Students will: 1. Discuss the normality of anger amidst the social injustice surrounding Freddie Gray. 2. Think about and share how their community shows their anger. 3. Identify healthy ways to express anger.Materials:

Graphic organizer (see below) Markers A piece of flip chart paper or blackboard and chalk

Books about Anger or UpsetAlexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith ViorstAndrew’s Angry Words by Dorothea Lackner The Chocolate Covered Cookie Tantrum by Deborah Blementhal How I Feel Frustrated by Marcia Leonard How I Feel Angry by Marcia Leonard Llama Llama Mad at Mama by Anna Dewdney That Makes Me Mad! by Steven Kroll The Rain Came Down by David Shannon When I’m Angry by Jane Aaron When I’m Feeling Angry by Trace Moroney When I Feel Angry by Cornelia Maude Spelman When Sophie Gets Angry – Really, Really Angry by Molly Garrett Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes.

Books about being Scared or WorriedCreepy Things are Scaring Me by Jerome and Jarrett Pumphrey How I Feel Scared by Marcia Leonard No Such Thing by Jackie French Koller Sheila Rae, the Brave, by Kevin Henkes Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes When I’m Feeling Scared by Trace Moroney When I Feel Scared by Cornelia Maude Spelman Engagement:Say to the class, “Today we’re going to focus on one particular feeling: anger. Feeling angry at a situation or an event in your community is very normal when you’re experiencing some big changes at home that you have little or no control over. However, if we do not acknowledge or recognize the angry feelings, we can end up feeling pretty bad and make some unhealthy decisions.”

Using a sheet of flipchart paper, ask the group members to come up with some healthy ways to deal with their feelings of family anger. Examples:

Talk it out with a safe person Call a friend Write a letter to the person you are angry with (even if you do not give the letter to the person,

it can feel good to write it) Try to understand what the other person may be feeling Take slow and steady breaths while counting to 20 Journal about it or draw a picture Ask yourself if this is really worth getting angry about Walk away from the situation until you cool down Go outdoors and play for a while

As you prepare to leave, ask everyone, one at a time, to make their angriest face. Compare the differences and similarities between the various facial expressions. (Example: “Almost everyone’s lips were tight, but Daquan was the only one who crossed his arms.”)

Something else you can do is make copies of the list of healthy ways to handle anger that the group created during the closing activity, and give each participant a copy to keep or put in a folder.Discussion Questions:

What have you seen on TV in the last few days that have made you angry? Why? What could people do when they get angry? How does it make you feel when you see people starting fires in your neighborhood? How do you feel when you cannot go to school? How do you feel when grown-ups are yelling at each other?

Graphic-Organizer/Prewriting: Depending on the grade level, not all questions will be on the graphic organizer. Use your knowledge and understanding of your students to select an appropriate organizer. See below for printable organizers.

Writing:Have students use the graphic organizer as their “writing”. Since students are young it is appropriate for

there to be illustrations, invented spellings, and dictated sentences. If students at the upper end of the grade band require more challenging writing activity below is a writing prompt you can give to students.

The events of this week have evoked many emotions throughout the city of Baltimore. Identify the emotion or emotions you are feeling. What has caused you to feel this way and how will you deal with these feelings in a positive manner?

Additional Links:http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/modules/2006/feelingchart.pdfhttp://clevelandschoolsbookfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Lesson-Plan-When-Sophie-Gets-Angry-Really-Really-Angry-Center-Activities.pdfhttp://kidshealth.org/classroom/prekto2/personal/growing/feelings.pdfhttp://www.eslkidstuff.com/lesson-plans/pdf/feelings-emotions-lesson-plan.pdf

Lesson for Grade Level: 2nd and 3rd MCCRS Standards: RI.2, RI.6, SL.1, SL.2, W.1

Theme/Big Question: What is a protest?

The purpose for this activity is to provide a name and historical context to the protests, both violent and non-violent, which have occurred recently. Students are also given an opportunity to write about their understanding of the situation and share their expectations for the outcomes. Background: For this activity, students will examine the concept of a protest and use biographies and narrative nonfiction text from the Baltimore City Public Schools ELA curriculum to support their understanding of the concept. Students will then have an opportunity to record their own accounts and feelings around current events in Baltimore. Engagement:

Read or refer to texts that are available in 2nd and 3rd grade classroom such as: The Story of Ruby Bridges, MLK and the March on Washington, Freedom Summer, The Bus Ride, Malcolm X: A Fire Burning Brightly, Martin Luther King Jr. (Mara), Cesar Chavez, Cesar Chavez: Protecting Farm Workers, Coretta Scott King, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. (Moore), Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks: First Biographies, Rosa Parks: Civil Rights Pioneer, Time for Kids Biographies

Help students to define the concept of a protest (include conversation about the desired outcome) and share historical protests through grade level texts

Discuss the difference between violent and nonviolent protestsDiscussion Questions:

How can a protest help a community? Can a protest hurt a community? What kinds of emotions might protesters feel? How do you know? What are some examples of outcomes that protesters might want? What happens if a protest doesn’t work? What are some things that people protest about? What do you know about what kept us out of school on Tuesday? How do these events relate to the concept of a protest? What feelings do protesters in Baltimore want to share right now? How do you know? What are your feelings about current events in Baltimore? Why?

Graphic-Organizer/Prewriting: Create a simple web or mind map with students to recall what they have learned about protests,

historical examples, and even feelings connected to current events in BaltimoreWriting:

1) Today we read about ____ (historical protest from one of the texts listed above) and talked about the kinds of protests that are happening in Baltimore right now. Explain the outcomes that you think the protesters in Baltimore want. Do you think that they are going to achieve these

outcomes? Why or why not?

Lesson for Grade Level(s): _4th-6th_ MCCRS Standards: CCRA. SL.1, CCRA.W.10

Themes/Big Question: Human Rights, Equality- What are human rights and do people react when they feel as if their rights have been violated? How are communities affected when people feel like their human rights have been violated? Background: This activity can be used to help students process the recent events in Baltimore City as well as other events involving human rights, social injustice and equality. Engagement: Read a passage from a previous text around human rights or equality (make sure the chosen selection fits the overall theme). Create a web with the words human rights and equality in the middle. Have students quickly write 3 words or short phrases that they think about when hearing these words and connect to these topics (Possible words: justice, peace, protest, race, freedom, opportunity, fair, constitution, violence . discuss what they know about human rights and equality. Define the terms if needed. Have students Create a web with injustice and human rights Position students in circle or where they can all see each other and pass out one human rights card to each student. Proceed around the room and randomly remove someone’s human rights. Discuss how they feel having their human right taken away and how this would impact their life. Materials: Selection to read aloud from previous module text, human rights cards- http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/documents/EqualRightsRespect/worksheet32-human_rights_cards.pdf Discussion Questions: What do we know about human rights? How did you feel when your human right was taken away from you? How do you feel about the recent events that have taken place here in Baltimore? What human rights do you think people feel have been violated here in Baltimore? Graphic-Organizer/Prewriting: Create a mind map to capture student thinking around human rights and equality (continue to build upon the map as students discuss and share ideas)

Possible Writing Prompt: How have the communities in Baltimore been affected as result of people feeling like their human rights have been violated?

Teacher Notes:

Choose the reading selection from previous module text Prompt students to think about past texts, articles or multi-media they have seen in previous

modules. Draw on student background knowledge of previous curriculum modules. Students in

grades 4,5 & 6 have already been exposed to texts such as Teammates (4th), We Are the Ship (5th) and Flesh and Blood so Cheap (6th).

Grades 7-8 Lesson Seed: Protest Songs as Meaningful Outlet for Social Justice

Objective: Students will reflect on recent Baltimore events through a variety of activities, culminating in a written argument around the effectiveness of protest songs as an outlet for social justice.

Connected Common Core Anchor Standards: RI 1, 6, 7; W 1; SL 1

The teacher may want to begin by unpacking the term “social justice” either at the beginning of this lesson, or prior to the written product.

Word Association and Reflection: Ask students to brainstorm a list of 5 words that articulate their feelings about the recent events in

Baltimore. For students who need some starter words, consider the following as options: o frustrated, confused, empowered, angry, hopeless, hopeful, enraged, distraught,

powerless, powerful, purposeful, justice. Ask students to switch their list with a partner. Once the other students have the words, as they to

write one sentence incorporating the words, one sentence for each word. They should write their sentences on index cards or strips of paper.

We will continue using the words, but will listen to a song first. Audio/Visual Connection: Play students a clip of a protest song, asking them to pay attention to the emotions that the song

evokes. Below are two suggestions that are available online. o 2Pac – Changes

http://www.vevo.com/watch/2pac/Changes/USUV70502228 o Sam Cooke – A Change is Gonna Come

https://vimeo.com/42382933 After eliciting feedback from students, play the song again, asking students to listen and write down

words that stand out. Following the second listening, ask students to discuss the words and emotions with their table

mates. Solicit a larger group discussion.

Inform students that the song they listened to is considered a protest song. This song and others like it are created in response to situations of social injustice. They express the opinions of the artist in non-violent, expressive ways.

Text Connections: Using the website Newsela, access the article “Protest Songs make a comeback”

o https://newsela.com/articles/protest-songs/id/6400/ *Please note: on the right hand side of the page is a slide bar where teachers

can select to change the Lexile level of the article. Please select an level appropriate for your students.

o Students’ purpose for reading is to consider the benefits of protest songs as an outlet. Students should annotate the text for this purpose.

o Students can share annotations with pairs and the class. o The teacher can push students to consider the following questions, or create their own:

What is the purpose of a protest song? Do protest songs affect change? How? Why? Are protest songs accessible to all people? How?

Tying Things Together: In pairs or table groups, students should revisit their words/sentences from earlier in the class.

Students can create their own protest song, using these lines. Students should add and revise these sentences as necessary, creating a product that articulates their feelings in a structured way.

Written Product: Individually, students should consider their protest song drafts, the article and the audio clip from

today’s lesson. Students are asked to write an argument to support the claim below. They should include clear reasons and relevant evidence from today’s work.

o Protest songs are an effective outlet for social justice.

Grades 9-12 Lesson Seeds

Standard: RI.9-10.2: Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

Standard RI.11-12.2: Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.

Final Assessment: How do the actions of a few impact the relationships between law enforcement and citizens? Use evidence from the texts and images you will study as well as your own experience to support your position.

1. Choose a word that articulates your feelings about the recent events in Baltimore.

Frustrated Confused Empowered Angry Hopeless Hopeful Enraged Distraught Powerless Powerful Purposeful Justice

2. Explain why you chose this word. In what ways does it describe your emotions or state of mind?

3. Provide students with the opportunity to share with their partner(s) or the class.

4. Have students read the article “Undue Force.” Use the guiding questions in the graphic organizer below.

Note: Model the process of completing the graphic organizer for the first section. Implement guided practice as necessary.

Article Section What key idea plays an important role throughout this seciont?

What does the author say or suggest about this idea throughout the section?

Summary:

Note: This is a long article. Consider using excerpts or jigsawing. Please note that the word “bitch” is used as a quote in the Sun article. Teachers should use their discretion as they feel necessary.

UNDUE FORCESTORY BY MARK PUENTE | PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALGERINA PERNA

September 28, 2014

The city has paid about $5.7 million since 2011 over lawsuits claiming that police officers brazenly beat up alleged suspects. One hidden cost: The perception that officers are violent can poison the relationship between residents and police.

On a cold January afternoon, Jerriel Lyles parked his car in front of the P&J Carry Out on East Monument

Street and darted inside to buy some food. After paying for a box of chicken, he noticed a big guy in

jeans, a hooded sweatshirt and a baseball cap.

“What’s up?” the man said to Lyles. Others, also dressed in jeans and hoodies, blocked the door to the

street — making Lyles fear that he would be robbed. Instead, the man identified himself a police officer,

frisked Lyles and demanded he sit on the greasy floor. Lyles objected.

“The officer hit me so hard it felt like his radio was in his hand,” Lyles testified about the 2009 incident,

after suing Detective David Greene. “The blow was so heavy. My eyes swelled up. Blood was dripping

down my nose and out my eye.”

The Baltimore detective offered a different version of events in court, saying that Lyles’ injuries might

have resulted from poking himself in the face. He also couldn’t say why officers stopped Lyles, who was

not charged with any crime.

But jurors didn’t buy the officer’s explanation. They ruled in Lyles’ favor, and the court ultimately

ordered the city to pay him $200,000, the statutory limit in Maryland for most lawsuits against a

municipality.

The beating Lyles received from Baltimore police officers — along with the resulting payout from city

funds — is part of a disturbing pattern, a six-month investigation by The Baltimore Sun has found.

Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to

allegations of brutality and civil rights violations. Victims include a 15-year-old boy riding a dirt bike, a

26-year-old pregnant accountant who had witnessed a beating, a 50-year-old woman selling church

raffle tickets, a 65-year-old church deacon rolling a cigarette and an 87-year-old grandmother aiding her

wounded grandson.

Those cases detail a frightful human toll. Officers have battered dozens of residents who suffered broken

bones — jaws, noses, arms, legs, ankles — head trauma, organ failure, and even death, coming during

questionable arrests. Some residents were beaten while handcuffed; others were thrown to the

pavement.

And in almost every case, prosecutors or judges dismissed the charges against the victims — if charges

were filed at all. In an incident that drew headlines recently, charges against a South Baltimore man

were dropped after a video showed an officer repeatedly punching him — a beating that led the police

commissioner to say he was “shocked.”

Such beatings, in which the victims are most often African-Americans, carry a hefty cost. They can

poison relationships between police and the community, limiting cooperation in the fight against crime,

the mayor and police officials say. They also divert money in the city budget — the $5.7 million in

taxpayer funds paid out since January 2011 would cover the price of a state-of-the-art rec center or

renovations at more than 30 playgrounds. And that doesn’t count the $5.8 million spent by the city on

legal fees to defend these claims brought against police.

“These officers taint the whole department when they create these kinds of issues for the city,” said

City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young. “I’m tired of the lawsuits that cost the city millions of

dollars by some of these police officers.”

City policies help to shield the scope and impact of beatings from the public, even though Mayor

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake acknowledges that police brutality was one of the main issues broached by

residents in nine recent forums across Baltimore.

The city’s settlement agreements contain a clause that prohibits injured residents from making any

public statement — or talking to the news media — about the incidents. And when settlements are

placed on the agenda at public meetings involving the mayor and other top officials, the cases are

described using excerpts from police reports, with allegations of brutality routinely omitted. State law

also helps to shield the details, by barring city officials from discussing internal disciplinary actions

against the officers — even when a court has found them at fault.

The Rev. Jamal-Harrison Bryant, a local pastor who has railed against police brutality, was surprised to

hear that the city has spent millions to settle police misconduct allegations.

“I am absolutely stunned,” said Bryant, who leads a Northwest Baltimore mega-church. “I had no idea it

was this bad. I had no idea we had this volume in this city.”

Among the findings of The Sun’s investigation, which included a review of thousands of court records

and interviews with victims, along with audio and video recordings of trials:

Since 2011, the city has been involved in 102 court judgments and settlements related to allegations of

civil rights and constitutional violations such as assault, false arrest and false imprisonment, making

payouts that ranged up to $500,000. (The statutory cap can be exceeded when there are multiple claims

in a lawsuit, and if there is malice the cap may not apply.) In 43 of the lawsuits, taxpayers paid $30,000

or more. In such settlements, the city and the officers involved do not acknowledge any wrongdoing.

Many of the lawsuits stemmed from the now-disbanded Violent Crimes Impact Section, which used

plainclothes officers to target high-crime areas. Officers frequently wrote in charging documents that

they feared for their safety and that residents received the injuries when resisting arrest.

Department officials said some officers were exonerated in internal force investigations, even though

jurors and the city awarded thousands of dollars to battered residents in those incidents.

For years, leaders in Baltimore’s Police Department, the nation’s eighth-largest, didn’t track or monitor

the number of lawsuits filed against each officer. As a result, city officials were unaware that some

officers were the target of as many as five lawsuits.

The Sun’s findings include only lawsuits that have been settled or decided in court; dozens of similar

cases are still pending. The city has faced 317 lawsuits over police conduct since 2011 — and recently

budgeted an additional $4.2 million for legal fees, judgments and lawsuits, a $2.5 million increase from

fiscal 2014.

“This is not something I take lightly,” Rawlings-Blake said. “I’ve worked hard, very hard, to have a

dialogue with the community about how do we build trust and send the message that law enforcement

that acts outside of the law will not be tolerated.”

Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts, who took over in late 2012, has publicly vowed to eliminate

misconduct among the city’s 2,800 officers. Other police officials say the department has begun to track

such allegations more closely to punish officers in the wrong.

“I can’t speak to what was done before, but I can certainly tell you that’s what’s being done now, and

we won’t deviate from that,” said Deputy Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez, who joined the agency in

January 2013 to lead the new Professional Standards and Accountability Bureau.

Rodriguez, who once worked in Internal Affairs at the Los Angeles Police Department, said the mandate

is to provide policing in a professional manner that doesn’t violate constitutional rights.

“We will not let officers get away with any wrongdoing,” Rodriguez said. “It will not be tolerated.”

The department would not allow The Sun to interview officers named in the lawsuits, saying that would

violate department policy. Annual base salaries for the officers ranged from $61,000 and $67,000.

But Robert F. Cherry, president of the city’s Fraternal Order of Police lodge, cautioned that some people

file frivolous lawsuits against officers who work to keep the city safe.

“Our officers are not brutal,” he said. “The trial attorneys and criminal elements want to take advantage

of the courts.”

THE GRANDMOTHER

Eighty-seven-year-old Venus Green heard the scream while rocking on her porch on Poplar Grove Street

in West Baltimore’s Walbrook neighborhood.

“Grandma, call the ambulance. I been shot,” she thought she heard her grandson say on that morning in

July 2007. As he lumbered closer, she spotted blood from a wound in his leg and called 911.

The retired teacher was used to helping others. Green had moved to Baltimore decades earlier from

South Carolina after working at R.J. Reynolds and Westinghouse. Once here, she worked at Fort Meade

and earned two degrees at Coppin State University.

The mother of two and grandmother of seven dedicated her career to teaching special-education

students, but couldn’t sit still in her retirement years. She had two hobbies: going to church and raising

foster kids. Dozens of children funneled through her home. They, like her own grandchildren, called her

“Grandma Green.”

Paramedics and police responded to the emergency call, but the white officer became hostile.

“What happened? Who shot you?” Green recalled the officer saying to her grandson, according to an

11-page letter in which she detailed the incident for her lawyer. Excerpts from the letter were included

in her lawsuit. “You’re lying. You know you were shot inside that house. We ain’t going to help you

because you are lying.”

“Mister, he isn’t lying,” replied Green, who had no criminal record. “He came from down that way

running, calling me to call the ambulance.”

The officer, who is not identified in the lawsuit, wanted to go into the basement, but Green demanded a

warrant. Her grandson kept two dogs downstairs and she feared they would attack. The officer

unhooked the lock, but Green latched it.

He shoved Green against the wall. She hit the wooden floor.

“Bitch, you ain’t no better than any of the other old black bitches I have locked up,” Green recalled the

officer saying as he stood over her. “He pulled me up, pushed me in the dining room over the couch, put

his knees in my back, twisted my arms and wrist and put handcuffs on my hands and threw me face

down on the couch.”

After pulling Green to her feet, the officer told her she was under arrest. Green complained of pain.

“My neck and shoulder are hurting,” Green told him. “Please take these handcuffs off.”

An African-American officer then walked in the house, saw her sobbing and asked that the handcuffs be

removed since Green wasn’t violent.

The cuffs came off, and Green didn’t face any charges. But a broken shoulder tormented her for months.

“I am here because of injuries received to my body by a police officer,” Green wrote on stationery

stamped with “wish on a star” at the bottom of each page. “I am suffering with pain and at night I can

hardly sleep since this incident occurred.”

In June 2010, she sued the officers; an April 2012 settlement required the city to pay her $95,000.

Green died six weeks later of natural causes

THE PREGNANT WOMAN

Many Baltimoreans who reached similar settlements declined to be interviewed about the alleged police

misconduct — with good reason.

A clause in the city’s agreements prohibits any public statement about the incident that triggered the

lawsuit. Limitations on “public statements shall include a prohibition in discussing any facts or

allegations … with the news media” except to say the lawsuit has been settled, it states.

The penalty for talking? City lawyers could sue to get back as much as half or more of the settlement.

That amount is negotiated in each case, depending on the severity of the allegations, said David Ralph,

deputy city solicitor. The amount of money involved is shielded from the public because the clause

might never be triggered, he said, adding that in “99.9 percent of the cases it’s never an issue.”

Such “non-disparagement” clauses are common in legal settlements, he noted. “We don’t want to pay

taxpayers’ money and then have people saying things that they couldn’t say in court. Some facts are

hotly disputed.”

In such settlements, the city and the officers involved do not acknowledge any wrongdoing.

Starr Brown, an East Baltimore woman who reached a settlement agreement, wanted to talk about her

arrest — an encounter with police that left the pregnant accountant face down, bleeding and bruised,

on the sidewalk. (Her baby was unhurt.)

Starr Brown said officers slammed her to the ground on Sept. 18, 2009. She was pregnant.

But Brown, a Morgan State University graduate, said the clause prevented her from sharing details, so

the events of Sept. 18, 2009, can only be reconstructed from court transcripts.

Returning home with her young daughter as the sun set, Brown was on the front steps of her brick

house when she spotted two girls walking along North Luzerne Avenue.

Suddenly, a group of about 20 girls came from the other direction and attacked the two girls.

Brown, who went into her house to avoid the fighting, watched the beating through a window. Other

neighbors called 911, but by the time officers Karen Crisafulli and Andrew Galletti arrived, the attackers

had fled.

Brown, who was then 26, could hear the officers yelling at the victims and came outside to urge the

officers to chase the girls who had fled. An argument started, and Galletti lunged at her, she later

testified in court.

She grabbed the iron railing, but Galletti wrapped his arm around her neck. She said she screamed that

she was pregnant, but Galletti responded, “[We] hear it all the time.”

“He comes and grabs my arms,” Brown, who had no criminal record, testified. “He’s like, ‘You’re getting

arrested. You’re coming with me.’”

“They slammed me down on my face,” Brown added, her voice cracking. “The skin was gone on my face.

...

“I was tossed like a rag doll. He had his knee on my back and neck. She had her knee on my back trying

to put handcuffs on me.”

The officers arrested her for obstruction, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and assault. She fought the

charges in District Court in March 2010.

The officers minimized the incident and Brown’s injuries, telling the judge that her screams drew a

crowd and she refused to go back in her house. Crisafulli said Brown hit the ground after letting go of

the railing.

“It was like a sling shot,” Crisafulli testified. “The resistance stopped. We all fell off the porch.”

Brown then kicked and flailed, Crisafulli added, noting that bystanders told the officers that Brown was

pregnant. Crisafulli said Brown scratched her with fingernails; Galletti said Brown bit his arm and

knuckle.

But the testimony of two witnesses confirmed Brown’s version of events.

“Mrs. Brown was standing up in her doorway,” said neighbor Ruby Lee. “They threw her to the ground,

and [Galletti] put his knee in her back.”

The judge acquitted Brown of all criminal charges. She sued in April 2010 and settled the case in March

2011 for $125,000.

VIOLENT CRIMES IMPACT

Scandals have plagued Baltimore’s Police Department in recent years. Sixteen officers were convicted in

a kickback scheme with a towing company, and another was convicted of selling heroin from the

Northwest District police station’s parking lot.

When Rawlings-Blake hired Batts in 2012, the mayor talked about Baltimore becoming “the safest big

city in America.” Batts earned a reputation of building community engagement during his 30 years of

leading departments on the West Coast.

But ridding the Baltimore agency of misconduct may not be easy. The agency’s strategic plan, released

late last year, said discipline “has not always been a priority for the Baltimore Police Department,” and it

has been common “for cases in this department to take as many as three years to resolve.” A more

recent consultant’s report on the Internal Affairs Division said detectives lack training and often take

shortcuts when investigating officers suspected of misconduct.

Many complaints have focused on the Violent Crimes Impact Section, which had more than 260 officers

in 2012. City Council members and community activists said those officers used heavy-handed tactics

and had no accountability.

In addition to the allegations of excessive force, officers in the unit were accused by prosecutors of lying

on a search warrant and working to protect a drug dealer in order to make arrests. One received six

months of home detention; the other went to prison for eight years for protecting the drug dealer.

Three other members were charged in 2010 with kidnapping two city teens and leaving one in a Howard

County state park without shoes, socks or his cellphone. A jury acquitted two officers of assault,

kidnapping and false imprisonment but convicted them of misconduct.

In September 2012, the unit sparked outrage when a detective threw Anthony Anderson, 46, to the

ground during a drug arrest. Anderson’s spleen ruptured, and he died a short time later.

The state medical examiner’s office said the death was a homicide caused by blunt force trauma. But

Baltimore State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein declined to bring charges, ruling that the officers did not use

excessive force and followed police guidelines. The family filed a federal lawsuit, alleging that three

detectives kicked Anderson for several minutes; the case is ongoing.

Batts disbanded the Violent Crimes Impact Section in December 2012 in response to complaints and

created the Special Enforcement Section to address spikes in serious crimes. The unit has about 130

officers.

The name change brought a new direction, Rodriguez said. New leaders have been appointed and

officers are wearing uniforms that identify them as police.

“It’s not just a philosophical and name change,” he said. “What is acceptable has changed.”

Still, misconduct persists.

This year, other officers have been accused of killing a dog while off-duty in February and of an

attempted homicide in April. An officer went to jail in April for 45 days for beating a drug suspect who

had broken into his girlfriend’s home. Another officer was arrested in June and charged with slitting a

Shar-Pei’s throat while on duty; he has pleaded not guilty.

AFTER THE CARRYOUT

The Violent Crimes Impact Section detectives who testified in Lyles’ lawsuit — which accused police of

hitting him at the P&J Carry Out in East Baltimore — appeared confident on the witness stand as

Domenic Iamele, Lyles’ attorney, pressed for answers on the injuries.

Detective Greene told jurors Lyles became hostile in the carryout and tried walking away. Lyles lifted his

hands up as Greene tried to stop him, the officer said.

“Did Mr. Lyles touch his face?” Iamele asked.

“I don’t know if Mr. Lyles touched his face,” Greene replied, noting that he blinked and could have

missed it. He suggested Lyles injured himself. “That’s the only thing that could’ve happened. I don’t

know how he broke the bridge of his nose.”

“You didn’t punch him in the nose?”

“No sir.”

Sgt. Michael Guzman told jurors he didn’t recall being in the store or seeing anything suspicious.

Lyles then told jurors about another incident: Three weeks after his nose was broken, Lt. Christopher

Nyberg and Detective Paul Southard stopped him near his apartment on Moravia Park Road.

The officers ordered Lyles to drop his pants and underwear. He did. They told him to squat and cough.

He did — out of fear. Lyles testified that an officer then searched his genitals for drugs and rammed a

gloved finger in his rectum.

He told jurors the incident wasn’t a “coincidence.” He believed the officers were retaliating because he

had complained about his broken nose.

Jurors awarded Lyles $500,000 for the incident at the carryout, but the judge reduced it to $200,000 to

comply with a state law that caps damages in suits against municipalities.

The city also paid Lyles $24,000 to settle a separate lawsuit related to the street search.

Today, Lyles, who served probation for credit card theft in 1999, is reluctant to talk about the civil trial.

“I’m afraid of the police,” he said. “I want to speak out, but it could be dangerous. These people are

dangerous. Internal Affairs is not like they say they are. I complained. They said it was unsustained.”

Rodney Hill, who took over the Internal Affairs Division in May 2013, confirmed that Lyles’ complaint

was not sustained — meaning investigators could not prove it was true. Police said Southard left the

force in May 2012, but would not say whether it was related to Lyles’ case, noting that state law

prohibits the disclosure of personnel matters. Police would not say whether the other officers were

disciplined.

‘WE HAVE TO FIRE THEM’

Civil rights abuses can tarnish a police department’s image in any city, experts say. Strained relationships

make it difficult for officers to gain trust on the streets — from getting tips to solving crimes to winning

taxpayer support to hire more officers.

“All of those things are put in jeopardy,” said David A. Harris, an expert at the University of Pittsburgh

Law School on police misconduct and accountability. “People will tend to view [police] as illegitimate.

This is a real problem for police departments.”

Good, solid policing requires mutual respect between officers and residents, he added.

Rawlings-Blake acknowledged the importance of that relationship in an interview about the costly

settlements. “It is a sacred covenant that each officer makes with members of the community, and when

it’s broken, it’s devastating for not just the victim, but it’s devastating for our ability to move forward as

a city.”

She said the relationship between the community and police has improved since Batts was hired, noting

that residents are providing more tips to Crime Stoppers and making fewer complaints about

discourteous officers.

But more than a dozen bystanders who were named in court records or who testified in court declined

to talk to The Sun about the arrests and altercations that they witnessed — saying, like Lyles, that they

feared retaliation from police.

City Councilman Brandon Scott, vice chairman of the council’s Public Safety Committee, said police

leaders need to cleanse the force of bad officers.

“We have to expedite the process,” Scott said. “We have to fire them. We can’t afford to keep paying

these settlements. These folks that are beating people have to go.”

The Sun’s findings come as the nation’s attention has been focused on a white officer’s shooting of an

unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo. — an incident that triggered days of violent protests. The

officer said he acted in self-defense, but many area residents saw the shooting as a symptom of racially

biased policing.

The shooting triggered a nationwide debate on the use of force by police, and U.S. Attorney General Eric

H. Holder Jr. announced an investigation of the town’s police department. Published reports noted that

five current and one former member of the 53-officer agency faced pending federal lawsuits that

claimed they used excessive force.

Such broad inquiries by the Department of Justice’s civil rights division examine whether officers have a

history of discrimination or using force beyond standard guidelines. They typically lead to consent

decrees and years of court monitoring. Twenty federal probes have started in the past six years, in cities

that include Cleveland, New Orleans and Portland.

Attorney A. Dwight Pettit questions why the Department of Justice hasn’t opened an investigation into

the Baltimore Police Department.

He has filed scores of lawsuits against officers, and his office gets dozens of calls each week from people

alleging police abuse. He says he only takes the cases in which injuries are visible.

“It’s absolutely called for,” Pettit said, noting the long list of settlements and court judgments involving

city police. “Baltimore City is so much out of control, the Police Department, in my opinion, warrants

federal intervention and investigation.”

FACE DOWN ON CONCRETE

Barbara Floyd gazes out her window at the spot on North Montford Avenue where she says a detective ground her face into the concrete in 2009. She reached a $30,000 settlement 2011.

Five years after an incident that left her injured, Barbara Floyd still wonders what happened to the

officer she said attacked her.

“I believe in justice,” Floyd said, recounting a confrontation with undercover officers who were making a

drug sweep in her McElderry Park neighborhood. “That’s what I believe in. I don’t think people should

be treated like animals — even guilty ones. But I was an innocent one.”

On a Tuesday afternoon in March 2009, Floyd spotted a crowd of officers and bystanders up the street,

her lawsuit stated. She then heard a detective threaten to fire a stun gun at her 20-year-old grandson.

Floyd, who was 58 at the time and without a criminal record, climbed down the four steps of her gray

brick rowhouse to usher her grandson away from the drug operation.

After being told to leave, she said she walked home and leaned on a tree. Someone suddenly wrapped

an arm around her neck and threw her to the ground.

“I was struggling ’cause I didn’t know who it was,” Floyd recalled in an interview that mirrored her

descriptions in court records. “He was trying to grab my arms. He put his knee on my neck. He put

another leg in the small of my back. He was grinding my face to the pavement.”

Though she was face down on the sidewalk, she heard Detective Joseph Grossman, a member of the

Violent Crimes Impact Section, scream at her to lie down.

Floyd, who is 4-foot-11 and 107 pounds, couldn’t breathe with Grossman on her back. A struggle ensued

and Floyd tried standing, but Grossman kept her down while handcuffing her.

Her vision faded.

“After that I thought I was gonna die because I had tunnel vision,” she said in the interview, fighting

back tears. “Everything had gotten dark, dark and black.”

When the altercation ended, Floyd had gashes on her forehead, face and knees. Paramedics treated her

before she was taken to jail.

But because her blood pressure topped 200, jailers declined to admit her to the Central Booking and

Intake Facility, according to court records. Medics rushed her to Mercy Hospital.

After she was released from the hospital, Grossman charged her with resisting arrest and obstruction.

In charging documents, he gave a different account of the incident, accusing Floyd of stepping between

officers and her grandson. When officers ordered the grandson to leave, he refused. Floyd then

“adopted a hostile and aggressive posture” and tried to pull him away, Grossman wrote. Officers then

tried to arrest her, but she tried breaking away and fell face-first to the ground. When officers

handcuffed Floyd, she scraped “her forehead on the sidewalk, causing a minor laceration.”

Floyd soon received a letter from Internal Affairs stating that Grossman and another officer were being

investigated for misconduct.

Still, Floyd was ashamed to go outside after the melee.

“My face was a mess,” she recalled, her voice dropping as she stared at the street from a kitchen chair.

“My hair was gone on that side. I was bruised up. Not only my face, my arms, my legs. My whole body

was sore.”

She is still upset that officers ignored her questions that day. “All they do is tell you to shut the hell up.”

Floyd, who reached a $30,000 settlement in 2011, initially declined to discuss her case when The Sun

contacted her in May. The next day, she changed her mind and agreed to an interview, even though she

fears retaliation from police and city lawyers for speaking out, and has moved out of the city.

Hill, the Internal Affairs chief, said her complaint against Grossman was not sustained. Grossman left the

force in July 2012, but officials declined to say why, noting the legal restrictions on releasing personnel

records to the public. He joined the Baltimore County Police Department the same month; that agency

would not make him available for comment.

COMPLAINTS AND AWARDS

Although the city’s settlements and judgments have totaled $5.7 million since 2011, a state law may

have saved Baltimore taxpayers millions of dollars. The Local Government Tort Claims Act caps damages

against local governments at $200,000 per claim.

Taxpayers in other cities aren’t as lucky. Cleveland and Dallas have paid between $500,000 and more

than $1 million to settle individual police misconduct cases.

The Dallas Police Department has paid $6.6 million in 26 settlements and judgments since 2011; the

Miami-Dade County department paid $1.8 million over that period in an unspecified number of cases.

Both agencies are similar in size to Baltimore’s.

In addition to the settlements and jury awards, Baltimore has paid $5.8 million to outside law firms to

defend those lawsuits and others since July 2010.

According to city policy, officials are bound to defend officers as long as they follow departmental

guidelines when using force to make arrests. An agreement between the city and police union

guarantees that taxpayers will pay court damages in such cases.

Although police officials declined to release individual personnel records, they did discuss the issue in

broad terms, saying that from 2012 through July, the department received 3,048 misconduct complaints

against officers. Of those, officials sustained 1,203 complaints — 39 percent — meaning investigators

could prove the claims were true.

That led to 61 resignations and discipline for more than 850 officers, measures ranging from written

reprimands to suspensions.

But in some cases that resulted in settlements or judgments, officers were not disciplined even after

they were found liable in court.

Cherry, the union president, said it would be unfair to discipline officers if they were cleared in internal

investigations. He stressed that nobody can predict how a jury will decide cases.

“The [officers] who get the most complaints are the ones who are doing their work,” he said. “These

may be some of the best officers.”

Salahudeen Abdul-Aziz was awarded $170,000 in 2011 by a Baltimore jury as compensation for a beating

by police in West Baltimore’s Upton area. But he remains haunted by the incident and fears the police.

The nightmare began on a warm day in September 2009 as he walked out of a corner store and headed

toward Westwood Street, sipping on a cold soda and munching on potato chips.

Abdul-Aziz, then 24, was hurrying back to his aunt’s air-conditioned home. On the way, he joined up

with a neighborhood acquaintance.

Officers Robert Stokes and Marvin Gross spotted them leave an alley in a well-known drug area,

according to charging documents. As the officers neared, the man with Abdul-Aziz tossed a glass vial

with white powder.

Abdul-Aziz was questioned, handcuffed and put in the back of a cruiser as officers quizzed the other man

on the curb. As Abdul-Aziz wriggled his hands, trying to adjust his wristwatch, he was yanked out of the

car.

The officers slammed him onto the ground and started punching him in the face, two witnesses testified

at a 2011 civil trial over police misconduct allegations. One witness said the officers switched positions

“probably six times” during the beating, as Gross “hit him five or six times with his fist.”

Abdul-Aziz was helpless. “I was unable to do anything. I was handcuffed,” he testified.

He described a broken nose and facial fracture, along with severe swelling and a hemorrhage in his right

eye — injuries that took more than three weeks to heal.

“What was your state of mind that day?” his lawyer asked.

Abdul-Aziz replied, “I thought I was gonna die that day.”

Gross’ account of the incident was different. He said he saw Abdul-Aziz, hands cuffed behind his back,

wiggle around in the cruiser. Gross thought Abdul-Aziz was hiding drugs, so he pulled him from the car

and told him to open his hands. But Abdul-Aziz tried to head-butt Gross and run, the officer testified.

The officers said they feared for their safety and tackled Abdul-Aziz.

Abdul-Aziz tried getting up, but the officers ordered him to stop. Gross placed a forearm across Abdul-

Aziz’s chest and Stokes pinned his legs to the ground, Gross said, adding: “He just refused to stay still.”

“What was Mr. Abdul-Aziz doing that was illegal?” Abdul-Aziz’s lawyer asked.

“He wasn’t doing anything,” Gross replied. “That’s why I conducted a field interview.”

Stokes told jurors he didn’t hit Abdul-Aziz. “I didn’t really do anything except hold his legs down,” Stokes

said, adding he didn’t see Abdul-Aziz do anything illegal before the stop.

Abdul-Aziz was vindicated by the court system. After a two-day civil trial in February 2011, jurors

awarded him damages. And a judge dismissed criminal charges of resisting arrest, assault, drug

possession and disorderly conduct.

Still, Abdul-Aziz, who was found guilty of carrying a firearm in 2005, is upset that despite his complaint,

police officials said the two officers were cleared by an internal investigation.

“If I fight on any other job or beat up anybody, I’m terminated,” Abdul-Aziz, 29, said recently in his

Baltimore home.

“You beat up a citizen for no reason and had no real probable cause, and you still have your jobs. That’s

crazy. These cops still have jobs.”

REFORMS IN PROGRESS

Police officials say a host of department reforms are underway to address misconduct.

For example, months after taking over, Batts created the Professional Standards and Accountability

Bureau, which oversees training, policies and all internal issues, and pushed to eliminate a backlog of

more than 130 disciplinary cases.

He moved to toughen trial boards, which hear disciplinary cases after complaints are investigated

internally, by changing their makeup. They now consist of two command staff members and a lieutenant

instead of a command staff member, a lieutenant and a person of the same rank as the accused. As a

result, the rate at which officers are held responsible has jumped from 57 percent to 88 percent, officials

say.

A computer system implemented five months ago tracks lawsuits filed against officers, Rodriguez said.

The information is combined with another tracking system in use since 2010. That system tracks matters

such as injuries from arrests, citizen complaints and use-of-force reports. It is designed to enable police

leaders to intervene with counseling, better supervision, training and, if appropriate, disciplinary action.

“We’re monitoring them where it was not done before,” Rodriguez said, adding that “bugs” are being

worked out as the department studies the best national standards to measure officers. Other police

agencies, including the Maryland State Police, already use the same system.

Still, the tracking system has shortcomings. For example, police officials acknowledge that it does not

include lawsuits that concluded before the agency started tracking them this year.

Samuel Walker, emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska, isn’t surprised that

Baltimore lacked a system to track lawsuits. “It has a national reputation of not being a professional and

effective department.”

Former Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, who retired from the department in 2012,

declined to be interviewed about the issue, but said through a spokesman that he had worked to

eliminate misconduct and improve the agency’s relationship with residents.

“Commissioner Bealefeld was committed to making Baltimore a safer city while building a professional,

community-focused and accountable police department,” said the spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi.

Asked about investigations into allegations of police brutality, Baltimore State’s Attorney Gregg

Bernstein said his office has prosecuted 10 officers for assault and 10 others for less serious offenses

since 2011. In some high-profile deaths, officers were not prosecuted because they had only seconds to

make decisions, Bernstein said. That’s very different from cases where officers are more deliberate and

assault handcuffed suspects, he added.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein says his office has been tough on police misconduct.

He said that improved training and recruitment, a better discipline process, and greater transparency

would enhance the Police Department’s trust with the community.

“It’s a real issue for us in Baltimore,” Bernstein said.

Young, the City Council president, says many African-American residents have an uneasy relationship

with the police force.

“Every black male or every African-American in this city are not criminals and shouldn’t be treated as

such,” Young said. “I was stopped myself a couple times, and I am the president of City Council.”

He wants officers trained to communicate better with residents. He’s heard too many complaints about

them not allowing people to talk to defend themselves.

“They violate your civil rights and tell you you can’t talk,” Young said.

He added: “[Residents] fear the police more than they fear the drug dealers on the corner.”

Baltimore Sun research librarian Paul McCardell contributed to this article.

Contact Mark Puente:

mpuente@baltsun.com | twitter.com/MarkPuente

Now share the following articles with students. The first article focuses on the peaceful protest organized on Saturday April 25th and will provide students with a more profound insight into the events of the past two weeks. The other articles provide additional information and perspectives.

AL JAZEERA, APRIL 25TH 2015HUMAN RIGHTSThousands protest over US custody death of Freddie GrayProtest at Baltimore baseball game against death of black man in police custody ends relatively peacefully.

Several thousand protesters converged in the US city of Baltimore on Saturday to protest over the death of 25-year-old black man Freddie Gray while in police custody.

Gray died on Sunday after sustaining multiple injuries which included three fractures in his neck vertebrae, a smashed voicebox and the severing of 80 percent of his spine from his neck.

Gray had been in police custody for a week, having been arrested in a high-crime neighbourhood after he made eye contact with police and fled. After he was caught he was found to be carrying a knife.

Melissa Ealey, Gray's cousin, told Al Jazeera that no crime perpetrated could warrant such abuse.

"There is no reason the police had to conduct themselves in a manner to where … it cost him his life," Ealey said. "I can understand breaking the law is wrong but the way they apprehended him and the things they did were completely against protocol and just inhumane as a whole."'National epidemic' of violence

Signs in hand, with slogans such as "Jail Killer Police" and "Unite Here," demonstrators from different racial backgrounds flooded two city blocks and marched to city hall, where the crowd overtook a plaza.

March organiser and lawyer Malik Shabazz described violence against blacks by American police officers as "a national epidemic against black men".

Al Jazeera's Shihab Rattansi, reporting from Baltimore, said the marchers had then headed towards Baltimore's Oriole Park Major League Baseball stadium at Camden Yards where Baltimore's Orioles were later set to take on the Boston Red Sox.

Rattansi said the protest outside the stadium ended relatively peacefully, although a few cars appeared to have been vandalised, as police warned protesters that they would face arrest if they didn't disperse.

"There was not very much in the way of heated scenes, about 20 minutes for the whole day but what we did see today was a few thousand people gather in city hall demanding answers over questions including why he was even arrested in the first place," Rattansi said.

The police had earlier kept a safe distance, as the protesters called for sweeping national policy changes on how cases of police brutality should be dealt with.

Their demands included the establishment of an independent civilian review board in every city to review the cases, immediate suspension without pay for police officers accused of violence and protection for whistleblowers so they could freely speak about police brutality without retaliation.

"Speaker after speaker keep saying here, when a genocide is happening against you, why would you ask the people committing it what is going on," our reporter said.

Stafford Sutton, an activist who attended the march, said changes to federal policies were required to defuse anger after a spate of recent cases of police brutality.

"I've seen a lot of individuals who have been done wrong. A federal mandate needs to be brought down. We have to go through the process, we have to follow it through and go to Washington," Sutton said.

Demonstrators have flooded the streets of Baltimore almost every day since Gray's death, although Saturday's rally was the largest.

Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said roughly 1,200 officers were deployed downtown and across the city to try and keep the peace. At least five police officers were injured and 12 people were arrested. Batts said he believes the "very violent agitators" are not from Baltimore.

Gray's death has been compared to those of other unarmed black men who died at the hands of police in New York City and Ferguson, Missouri, and has intensified a national debate over police treatment of African Americans.

The US Department of Justice is conducting a separate probe into Gray's death. The result of an official police investigation into his fate will also be released on Friday. A wake for Gray is scheduled for Sunday, with his funeral to be held on Monday. Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Posted in: NewsPosted: April 28, 2015

Baltimore Riots Interview: Rival Gangs, Bloods & Crips, Unite To Rebuild The Community — Not To Harm Cops

While major networks broadcast the carnage of the Baltimore riots, it hasn’t shown how the community

has come together. Rival gangs, Bloods and Crips, have united to help rebuild Baltimore. Things don’t

seem to be exactly how they’ve been portrayed.

The Baltimore riots have brought out the worst and the best in people. In a twist of events, it’s shown

the truth about “who’s who,” as far as character is concerned. The rioters were far outnumbered by

the peaceful protesters. To further peaceful demonstrations, even the Bloods and the Crips set their

rival issues aside to come together. However, this doesn’t seem to be something that would get mass

coverage, given the nature of news networks.

Regardless, as can be seen from the photos, the Baltimore gangs are in truce as they help get the

community back together. It’s similar to what happened during the L.A. riots in the 90s. Many are

hopeful that the truce remains.

Unfortunately, major media slanted the reasoning for the gangs’ truce. As the media pointed out, the

two gangs joined forces to “take out” the Baltimore police. But that was the furthest from the truth. In a

private interview, gang members spoke with local Baltimore news authority, WBAL, to clarify their

reasoning for the truce.

“Man, we just want to tell the people of the city of Baltimore that the image they’re trying to portray of

the gangs, the BGF (Black Guerilla Family), the Bloods, the Crips, we did not make that truce to harm

cops. We did not come together against the cops. We’re not about to allow y’all to paint this picture of

us. We’ve got soldiers out here. We’re dirty. They threw bombs at us for trying to stop what’s going on

right now. Y’all are not about to do that to us.”

“To stop what’s going on, that’s all we’re trying to do. We just want justice for Freddie Gray. We believe

in that. [The violence and looting] It’s just making us look bad, and it’s backing up what they’re saying

about us. They’re saying we’re animals and we’re acting like savages out here. I don’t agree with what’s

going on, but I understand why and why people are mad. But we’ve got to handle things another way.”

100 Years: The Riots of 1968

Part of our "100 Years: The Twelve Events That Shaped Baltimore" series

By Michael Yockel - May 2007

The first plate-glass window was smashed around 5:30 p.m. at the Fashion Hat Shop in the 400 block of N. Gay Street.

Half an hour later, roving bands of black teens, itching for more action, looted their first business, Sun Cleaners, at Gay and Monument streets, spiriting away clothes wrapped in plastic bags. At 6:15 p.m., they set their first fire, torching the Ideal Furniture Company in the 700 block of Gay Street.

Alerted to the growing unrest, city cops, on- and off-duty, surged into Baltimore's modest East Side shopping district, setting up headquarters at the nearby Belair Market. While one plainclothes officer characterized the scene as "pretty festive" at 7 p.m., the situation quickly turned malicious, as store after store in the vicinity—groceries, appliance shops, furniture outlets, dry cleaners, five-and-dimes, tailors, taverns, liquor stores, pawn brokers—was broken into and ransacked.

At 8:45 p.m., the evening's first serious blaze (four alarms) consumed an A&P supermarket and three adjacent shops in the 1400 block of N. Milton Street, and, within the next hour, the disturbances spread to the commercial strips along North and Greenmount avenues. Around the same time, a suspected looter was shot and killed in a bar at Harford Road and Lafayette Avenue, while throughout the area, truculent young men pelted policemen and firemen with bottles and stones.

At 10 p.m., city police admitted their inability to contain the chaos, and Governor Spiro Agnew, at the request of Baltimore Mayor Thomas D'Alesandro III, called in the National Guard, simultaneously issuing an 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew for the city.

By late evening on Saturday, April 6, 1968, the Baltimore riots were in full swing.When the sun rose the next day, 5,500 National Guardsmen, 400 state troopers, and 1,200 city cops occupied Baltimore. Three people were dead; 70 injured; more than 100 arrested; and 250 fire alarms had been reported. On the East Side, still-smoldering buildings lined streets and sidewalks that were flecked with shards of broken glass.

Sparked by the April 4 assassination of civil-rights patriarch Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, and fueled by decades of repressed anger and resentment over perceived political, social, and economic injustices, African-American communities erupted in violence in Baltimore and many other U.S. cities—New York, Boston, Detroit, Cincinnati, and Tallahassee—with Chicago and Washington, D.C., suffering the most extensive damage.

When similar rioting also engulfed Baltimore's West Side on Sunday, April 7, it was Agnew's turn to ask for help; he turned to the White House for assistance. President Lyndon Johnson sent in nearly 3,000 U.S. Army soldiers, a force that ultimately would swell to approximately 5,000 troops. Despite the reinstitution of a curfew on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, the looting contagion continued to spread, striking businesses along York Road, Harford Road, and Edmondson Avenue. Worse, throughout the city, snipers fired on beleaguered police, firemen, soldiers, and National Guardsmen, while taunting groups of blacks and whites squared off on street corners.

Finally, on Tuesday night, the fever broke, and calm began to return. Devastation unlike anything seen since the Great Fire of 1904 stretched from Patterson Park Avenue to the east, W. Belvedere Avenue and 33rd Street to the north, Hilton Street and Hilton Road to the west, and Pratt Street and Washington Boulevard to the south.

Over four nights and three days, Baltimore experienced its greatest unnatural disaster of the second half of the 20th century—looting and arson on a massive, unprecedented scale. The grim toll: six dead; more than 700 people injured; 5,500 arrested; 1,050 businesses looted, vandalized, or obliterated by fire; and an estimated $13.5 million in property damages (which equates to nearly $79 million in today's dollars).

"The riots," as everyone called them, remain a watershed event, indelibly imprinted in the memories of those who witnessed the turmoil. Jazz singer Ruby Glover, who, in addition to her nightclub gigging back then, also worked as an administrator in the emergency room at Johns Hopkins Hospital, was out with friends and several co-workers "having a wonderful time" at a Pennsylvania Avenue club early on the evening of April 7. Unaware of the curfew, Glover was on stage performing when "the door burst open and there were all these soldiers with their sergeant, and he said, 'Outside, all hell has broken loose.'"

As the troops hustled everyone out of the club, Glover was thrust into a raging melee. "It looked like everything was on fire," she recalls. "It appeared that everything that we loved and adored and enjoyed was just being destroyed. It was just hideous."

On the night the riots began, James Bready, then an editorial writer for The Evening Sun, piled into a car with two newspaper colleagues in order to survey the escalating situation: "We drove along North

Avenue, and I remember seeing kids running along from store to store with lighted torches to touch them off. But nobody ever tried to stop the car or interfere with us."

In the months following the riots, various reports analyzed the disturbances, in part examining the underlying societal forces that catalyzed the unrest. In June, the suitably staid Maryland Crime Investigating Commission Report of the Baltimore Civil Disturbance of April 6 to April 11, 1968 explained that "social and economic conditions in the looted areas constituted a clear pattern of severe disadvantage for Negroes compared with whites . . . Our investigation arrives at the clear conclusion that the riot in Baltimore must be attributed to two elements—'white racism' and economic oppression of the Negro. It is impossible to give specific weights to each, but together they gave clear cause for many of the ghetto residents to riot."

That September, the Middle Atlantic Region American Friends Service Committee's left-leaning "Report on Baltimore Civil Disorders, April 1968" declared that "different people were acting various roles in the disorders. Some were simply stealing desired goods. Some were seeking revenge upon storekeepers who, they felt, had exploited them and other black people. Some were consciously demonstrating the power of black people. But regardless of their roles, people knew that this was a shared experience and a shared act of black people, a shared expression of rage, grief, and frustration in the face of white dominance and obtuseness."

Tommy D'Alesandro, mayor for a mere 75 days when the riots exploded, sensed those same conditions. "There was a hurt within the black community that they were not getting their fair share," D'Alesandro notes now. "We were coming from a very segregated city during the 30's, 40's, and 50's—and it was still a segregated atmosphere."

Reflecting on the civil unrest, Bready suspects that "black people felt release after generations of 'You mustn't do this, you mustn't go there, you can't say that or think that.' Suddenly, the lid was off."

According to both the Crime Investigation Commission and the Friends Service Committee reports, the riots consciously sought to tilt the city's entrenched black/white economic imbalance. "Black militants weren't trying to start a race riot but trying to establish the machinery whereby Negroes were to run their own neighborhood stores," the former theorized. "The first phase of the plan was to burn out the white merchants." The latter study agreed that "almost all of the property damaged was owned by whites, not blacks," while positing that "this selectivity in the choice of targets seems to demonstrate that a prime motive was to get back at merchants known to have humiliated or exploited black people."

Post-riots, some merchants took their insurance money and rebuilt their businesses; others simply boarded up their establishments. Simultaneously, the housing market dove south. "What little confidence there had been among investors that they could ride out the weak market before the riots waned away as the scale of vandalism after the riots increased," contended Michael Stegman in his 1972 book Housing Investment in the Inner City: The Dynamics of Decline (A Study of Baltimore, Maryland, 1968-1970). "The seeming inability of city authorities to control it in any way became evident, and the polarization of landlord and tenant intensified. Values, which had been moving downward before, seemed to plummet sharply."

So did the city's population. People poured out of Baltimore, especially whites. The incipient urban depopulation that occurred between 1950 and 1960—from 950,000 to 939,000 residents, the city's first decrease since 1800—snowballed after the riots. From 1970 to 1980, Baltimore's population declined from 906,000 to 787,000. Left behind in the whirlwind of "white flight" to the suburbs, the percentage of black residents increased substantially. Pegged at only 24 percent in 1950, the city's "non-white" population steadily increased, registering at 65 percent by 2000, among 651,000 total residents.

Not surprisingly, this exodus dramatically affected commerce, particularly along the city's traditional Howard and Lexington streets shopping nexus, where a quartet of department stores—Stewart's, Hecht Co., Hutzler's, and Hochschild-Kohn—had thrived for decades, catering primarily to white ladies in white gloves.

Slowly, these behemoths withered and expired, their customer base severely undermined by a tsunami of suburban malls that opened in the 1970's and 1980's: Columbia, Golden Ring, White Marsh, Security Square, Hunt Valley, Owings Mills, among others.

Ultimately, perhaps the riots' most significant impact lies in something intangible: the way they forced Baltimoreans, both black and white, to reassess the city's prevailing racial dynamic.

"In some instances, the riots brought the races closer together; in some instances, they scared whites," says Dr. Charles Simmons, founder and president of Sojourner-Douglass College. Active in 1968 in the city's civil-rights movement in association with his job as a field representative for the Teamsters Union—while also attending Morgan State—Simmons emphasizes that "the riots really weren't personal: They were against the system, not individual white people. There was only property loss."

Pondering the turmoil now, D'Alesandro considers it "an awakening, a recognition that some in our society were being shortchanged, and they had to be brought in through the legitimate channels of government and commerce and education and jobs and housing.

"A lot of people thought the riots knocked us out. But we redoubled our efforts, and we accelerated the change that was needed, a change in people's attitudes—to give an acknowledgement throughout the community that all people are welcome."

And yet, nearly 40 years after the riots, Ruby Glover still laments that "so much in the city today almost brings back those memories—with the gangs, and the way that police have to work on streets where I grew up, where I laughed and entertained. There's still great fear, but it's coming not just from whites to blacks—now it's blacks to blacks."

The Washington Post Morning Mix

Baltimore riots evoke memories of aftermath of MLK’s assassination

By Nick Kirkpatrick April 28 at 5:53 AM

Fires and riots in Baltimore on Monday reminded some of the another major civil disturbance the city

once faced.

“We cannot let this be a repeat of 1968,” Brandon Scott, Baltimore City councilman in the third

district, said on Monday. “The neighborhood they’re in right now is still burned down from 1968.”

Scott was not alone. Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young also said that Monday’s events reminded

him of the two weeks that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., when Baltimore and

cities across the country burned.

“Many of the areas where we’re seeing disturbances today actually never recovered from the 1968

riots,” Lawrence Brown, an assistant professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore who studies

housing, told the Los Angeles Times.

Baltimore was hit hard in 1968: Six killed, 700 injured, 1,000 small businesses looted or burned and

5,800 people arrested. Here’s a look back:

A young boy ran from a Baltimore grocery store with a box of candy. (AP)

A fire on Gay Street amid looting. (AP)

Baltimore police pinned down a curfew breaker on April 9, 1968. (AP)

A Baltimore policeman stops an African American after a breaking-and-entering at a grocery store on April 8, 1968. (AP)

A looted Baltimore liquor store on Pennsylvania Avenue. (AP)

A National Guardsman with three men suspected of looting a Baltimore business. (AP)