Baltimore Riots

Listening on local news reports during the, I got the following picture:

A (Baltimore) City high school's students decided to go to the nearby mall after class let out and hold a "Purge" (as in the horror movie). The school and police found out about it. The school tried to convince the students to not be raging monsters, and the police moved some units to the mall to prevent a riot from breaking out.



Obviously, both attempts at containment failed. The crowd at the mall engaged police and the spread out northward, outmaneuvering the police and flanking them. Then more people started joining the mob and the whole thing took off. Eventually, the looting became wide-ranging throughout West Baltimore before police were able to contain the mobs and retake most of the city.

Early reports that the local gangs had formed a temporary cease-fire to attack police were contradicted by gang members themselves, who claimed that they were interested in protecting people and restoring order, not targeting police. There were several police injuries as the result of mob action, but there appeared to be no specific targeting of police for assassination.

For the next few days at least, the National Guard and outside police agencies will be supporting local City police in restoring and maintaining order. The reported plan is that the police will secure the neighborhood, and the National Guard will maintain the area. The City police actually had some issues with that during the riot, as rioters would return to areas after police had left.

Finally, the mayor did say that the rioters were given space, but she meant by giving protesters space, inevitably rioters were given space as well. More "The mayor of Baltimore is thick" and less "The mayor of Baltimore tried to create the riot."
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Separately, there's a rumor going around that Gray had spinal surgery a week before the arrest, based on court records of a structured settlement. Proving that it's not only Sovereign Citizens who can't read legal documents, the court records themselves, the basis for the theory, prove it wrong. While the case was dismissed on April 2nd of this year, the original filing was from December of last year. The entire theory is dependent on any surgery related to the settlement happening on or near the day of the dismissal, which is an absurd presumption.

What's more, there was a settlement reached in a lead paint case in which a Freddie Gray was one of the plaintiffs. I can't tell from the record if it is the same person, but nonetheless, the settlement may not even be related to the kind of accident that could produce a spinal injury.

This is nothing more than an attempt to make Gray the victim of something other than police misconduct, to blame the dead man for his own death, and make everyone else feel better since, after all, they aren't running around after spinal surgery.