In the days after 25-year-old Freddie Gray was fatally injured in a police van, tension between police and Baltimoreans reached a fever pitch. Video of his arrest showed Gray being dragged into the van, injured and seemingly unable to walk on his own. When news of his death spread, Baltimore residents both young and old took to the streets in droves, some protesting peacefully while others resorted to violent means, setting fires and damaging property. But Gray’s death struck a nerve for young people in particular, who were fed up with police violence in their communities as well as social and economic conditions in the city that set the stage for constant interactions with law enforcement.
Amid the backdrop of massive protests, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby shocked the nation by doing what most prosecutors in similar situations had shied away from: charging six officers for Freddie Gray’s death and voicing support of Baltimore’s young.
“To the youth of the city. I will seek justice on your behalf. This is a moment. This is your moment,” she said during a nationally-televised news conference. “Let’s ensure we have peaceful and productive rallies that will develop structural and systemic changes for generations to come. You’re at the forefront of this cause and as young people, our time is now.”
The charges seized national attention and Mosby, the youngest top prosecutor of any major city in America, was praised as a champion of the people. Few prosecutors choose to file charges against police officers, and Mosby’s stance was characterized as a bold game-changer.
As young people, our time is now
On Thursday, one year after Mosby’s announcement, the second trial is just getting started. Officer Edward Nero, who first apprehended Gray while conducting a bike patrol, will now square off against Mosby’s team and fight the second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, and misconduct in office charges against him.
But since becoming state’s attorney in January 2015, Mosby’s efforts to uphold justice for Baltimore’s young people have been more of a mixed bag than the headlines would suggest.
Brutalizing With Impunity
Freddie Gray’s death in police custody marked a critical political moment for Baltimore and attracted the attention of national media. But other, less publicized assaults by Baltimore police have been met with a comparatively tepid response from Mosby’s office. The rigor with which she brought charges against Nero and his colleagues has been absent from other cases involving other young black men confronted violently by police, before and after Gray’s death.
For instance, Dawan Hawkins was shot five times by Officer David Bodine the day before Gray died. According to the officer narrative, Hawkins was one of two people driving in a car without a seatbelt and tried to run away following a car chase. Bodine says Hawkins appeared like he was going to shoot him, so he fired first. But Hawkins has always maintained he was unarmed and simply tried to get away.
Mosby’s office charged Hawkins with first degree assault for a firearm, without proof that he was armed. In dispatch tapes, Hawkins can also be heard yelling that he wasn’t carrying a gun, and his defense team argued the weapon was planted as a cover-up.
Ultimately, when the police were unable to back Bodine’s narrative, a jury acquitted Hawkins of the assault and gun charges, although he was sentenced to three years in jail for reckless endangerment.
Bodine’s decision to shoot was not subjected to the same scrutiny, despite the lack of evidence that Hawkins was trying to shoot him. The prosecuting attorney on the case dismissed the accusation about the planted gun, calling it a conspiracy theory. Mosby’s office opted not to press Bodine on the matter, despite the murky details about where the gun came from.
A representative from the office informed ThinkProgress that an investigation was conducted and the office “declined to prosecute Officer David Bodine who had reason to believe that his safety was in danger given the actions of the suspect’s behavior.”
A couple months after Hawkins was shot, Keith Davis Jr. was shot in the face and spine when BPD officers gunned him down. According to the officers’ claims, Davis matched the description of an armed robbery suspect who held an unlicensed cab driver hostage. Davis wasn’t the robber, but noticed cops in his proximity and tried to run away. The BPD said that Davis was cornered in a garage and tried to shoot at them from inside, and four officers returned the fire. Cops said they recovered a gun at the crime scene.
Mosby’s office charged Davis with first and second degree assault, attempted armed robbery, and thirteen miscellaneous offenses. He spent eight months in jail before his trial began, because prosecuting attorneys kept asking for extensions to pull their evidence together. Mosby’s office also attempted to withhold key evidence from Davis’ defense team, according to Davis’ fiancé.
While Davis languished in jail, denied adequate medical treatment for his wounds, Mosby’s office declined charges against the four shooting officers without getting their official accounts of what happened during the incident. Officers remained quiet about what happened for six months after the shooting, in large part because Mosby’s office didn’t press them on what happened. When they did divulge their side of the story, officers gave varying accounts of what transpired, down to who had eyes on Davis at the time of the shooting.
Except for unlawful possession of a firearm, all of the charges against Davis were dropped. In April, he was sentenced to five years in prison without the chance of parole.
More recently, eighth grader Dedric Colvin was carrying a BB gun when he was confronted by two plainclothes officers. Fearing for his life, Colvin tried to run and cried out that the gun wasn’t real. But police say the boy lifted the toy gun in their direction, so an officer shot him in the shoulder and leg. Colvin survived, but was subsequently blamed for his own shooting.
Despite Mosby’s’s decision to seek justice for Baltimore’s youth, her office has not launched an investigation of Smith. That job has been left to BPD’s own Special Investigations Response Team.
Seeing no changes to the culture of policing in the city, young activists in Baltimore have continued mobilizing and exposing incidents of police violence that Mosby has pushed aside.
Small Signs of Change
Although cracking down on cops’ use of force hasn’t yet become the norm under Mosby, her pledged commitment to seek justice for Baltimore youth has played out more promisingly in the juvenile justice system.
That system was also thrust into the national spotlight recently, thanks to viral videos of police officers assaulting students. The videos raised questions about how the city treats kids confronted by law enforcement, leaving them with a criminal record that dooms kids to a life of crime and poverty.
Since Mosby took office, juvenile arrests have continued to drop, although black kids account for more than 90 percent of those arrests. When kids are arrested they are generally booked at a police station and sent to the Department of Juvenile Services, unless they’ve allegedly committed one of 33 offenses for which juveniles are automatically charged as an adult, such as robbery, assault in the first degree, or gun-related misdemeanors.
Melanie Shapiro, the chief attorney for the Office of Public Defender’s Juvenile Court Division, told ThinkProgress that Mosby’s office has shown a willingness to divert low-level, first-time offenders who enter the adult system to rehabilitative community programs, instead of convicting them and imposing harsh sentences.
However, all it takes is one court appearance to make the likelihood of dropping out of school four times more likely. And Shapiro pointed out that youth are typically diverted from the adult system after they’ve been charged and brought to court at least once.
http://archive.thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/03/03/3756169/baltimore-school-police-officers/ In the past fiscal year, there has also been a small uptick in the number of juveniles the state wants to move to the adult system. Under those circumstances, young people are prosecuted as adults and face harsher sentencing, jail time with older, more hardened offenders, and almost no chance of diversion.
Shapiro said her team hasn’t been able to pinpoint why the state’s attorney’s office targets some kids but not others. There’s no objective formula, from the perspective of juvenile defenders.
At the same time, Mosby hired a community resource expert for the juvenile office to develop and optimize diversion programs to keep kids out of detention and get them back on track. She’s also prosecuted three school officers who were recorded beating up public school students.
But Baltimore still has a robust school-to-prison pipeline. Kids are regularly arrested by school officers for minor disciplinary infractions (dress code violations) and low-level misdemeanors.
“Police [make] arrests, the Department of Juveniles formalizes charges, the state’s attorneys file charges, and the courts find them delinquent — all for behavior that law says is not delinquent,” Jennifer Egan, a juvenile public defender in Baltimore, explained to ThinkProgress in March.
Police violence is common in schools, and with approximately 140 officers stationed on school grounds, students are constantly fearful of what could happen to them. Egan noted that officers’ assaults are hard to prove, so kids don’t feel comfortable filing charges against them.
That ultimately means that the culture of tough policing is still thriving with impunity under Mosby’s leadership. http://archive.thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/04/30/3653270/baltimore-thinking-long-term/
“When you take a kid for a low level offense, especially a black kid in Baltimore, and put them in handcuffs and tell them they’re a criminal because they got in a scuffle at school or because they’re not wearing their uniform, you’re sending that child a message,” Egan previously said. “You’re telling them what they’re worth in our society. That affects how kids think about themselves and how they think about their futures.”
Shapiro said that Mosby can take a more active role in improving the juvenile justice system by focusing even more on community programs and services that can help children before they enter into the system. Because juveniles have to disclose criminal records on college applications and some job applications, the state should try to divert them from the system before they enter it at all, she said.
“Once kids become system-involved, it sets them up for failing out of school, not returning to school, not graduating, having a juvenile record — which can have a life-long impact,” Shapiro concluded.
Whether or not she’ll seek justice for more Freddie Grays in the city is still up in the air, but Mosby has a few more years to make her mark as Baltimore’s top prosecutor. When her term ends and she’s up for re-election, the city’s youth will determine if she kept her promise.
Update:
A statement from Baltimore’s State’s Attorney’s office has been added to the original post.