City council president also says he’s sorry with gang members at his side
(NY Daily News) – The barbarians who turned Baltimore into a battle zone and bombarded cops with bricks and bottles got something totally unexpected Tuesday — an apology from one of the city’s top elected officials.
“They’re not thugs,” said City Council President Bernard “Jack” Young, after he apologized for using the term. “They’re just misdirected. We need to direct them on a different path by creating opportunities for them.”
The mind-boggling mea culpa came after President Obama did exactly the opposite in a White House press conference and forcefully denounced the “thugs” and “criminals” who left large swaths of the city looking like a war zone.
Young spoke after Baltimore’s gangbangers signalled they too had enough of the violence that has wracked the city since the April 19 death of an black man named Freddie Gray while in police custody.
Setting aside their longtime rivalry and appearing together at a city council meeting, several Crips and Bloods gangs called for peace as hundreds of city cops backed by the National Guard prepared to enforce a 10 p.m. to 5 p.m. curfew — and braced for another night of fighting.
“If we can stick together doing something negative, then we can stick together doing something positive,” a Blood who identified himself as Trey said. “I need a job. Most of the youths need a job. We need help. It ain’t right what people was doing, but you’ve got to understand. Some people are struggling.”
Before the street battles erupted Monday — following Gray’s funeral — police had warned that the Crips and Bloods were teaming-up with another gang to attack cops.
Young insisted police were wrong. “It is clear that the notion they were planning on harming our police officers is false and simply deterred the resources we needed to focus on the individuals who instigated these riots,” he said.
There was no immediate response to Young’s claim from the Baltimore police spokesman Capt. Eric Kowalczyk, who reported earlier that 21 officers were injured in the overnight clashes — one of them critically.
Young is not the first Baltimore politician to make contradictory and head-scratching remarks since the crisis started.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake may have helped fuel the violence by holding back police and telling reporters over the weekend that “we also gave those who wish to destroy space to do that as well.”
Rawlings-Blake sang a different tune as Baltimore burned on Monday, lashing out at the “thugs who only want to incite violence.” And, unlike Young, she didn’t back away from that language Tuesday.
“This is not a lawless city,” Rawlings-Blake said. “I’m at a loss for words.”
“It’s not going to happen tonight,” he said Tuesday.
-Earlier, Hogan also took a slap at Rawlings-Blake for not calling in the troops sooner.
“We were all in the command center in the second floor of the State House in constant communication, and we were trying to get in touch with the mayor for quite some time,” Hogan said. “She finally made that call, and we immediately took action.”
Hogan later walked back his criticism.
“They’re all under tremendous criticism,” he said. “We’re all on one team.”
-The Baltimore Orioles cancelled Tuesday night’s game against the Chicago White Sox but said the teams would play on Wednesday at Camden Yards — but without anybody watching in the stands.
-Police are expected to explain in the coming days what happened to Gray, who died after an encounter with cops that left him with a severed spine and crushed voice box.
-More than 100 vehicles were destroyed, some 15 buildings were torched, and over 200 people were arrested overnight, police reported.
In the hardest hit parts of West Baltimore, a massive cleanup was underway.
“Time to clean up,” a man with a megaphone just a few feet from a burned down CVS pharmacy preached. “This is our city! It’s the wrong way to go about it.”
“I’m angry!” another man yelled.
“I’m angry too,” the megaphone man replied.
Katrice Gardner worked as a manager at that CVS. And when dawn broke Tuesday, she no longer had a job — or a home, after it was firebombed by rioters.
“I was yelling at them, pleading at them not to burn my house,” Gardner, 30, said outside her boarded-up rowhouse. “They were throwing Molotov’s and very flammable stuff. All I could do was beg them not to burn my house.”
Gardner said she — like most African-Americans in Baltimore — is deeply upset about Gray’s death. But Gardner said she didn’t recognize the people who torched her home.
“These guys aren’t from here, they go from place to place causing trouble,” she said. “This doesn’t accomplish anything. This is our neighborhood.”
Tony Banks, 48, said the destruction makes him sad, but he understands why young men lashed out against the police.
“There have been a lot of Freddie Grays in this neighborhood,” he said. “It’s been going on for years. You have to look past Freddie Gray. Past last week. You need to look back 10 years.”
Banks said many residents fear the six officers suspended after Gray died will never be charged with a crime. “The police do a lot and get away with it,” he said.
As Banks spoke, dozens of residents who had hidden inside their homes during the fighting emerged with shovels, brooms and trash bags.
Tyja Robinson, 27, took cell phone photos of neighbors cleaning up and tow trucks clearing away charred vehicles.
“I want to show this side of Baltimore too,” she said. “Everybody saw the riots and destruction. I want to show that we can come together too to do good.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/baltimore-riots-scar-city-burning-cars-buildings-article-1.2201633
No comments:
Post a Comment