MD - Freddie Gray dies in police custody #2

[octobermoon]

For some reason, I have doubt about the heroin in his system deal. There would be no reason for that to not be clearly stated. If true why would they just not state the tox results?

[h=3]Urine[/h] Generally, heroin can show up on a urine test for as little as two and half hours or as much as two days, according to MedlinePlus. However, heavy users can fail a drug urine test for as long as seven days.
[h=3]Blood[/h] Blood tests are another way to detect drug use, but it's the least reliable. Many opiates, like heroin, leave a person's blood stream within 6 hours, according to a drug treatment center.

http://addiction.lovetoknow.com/wiki/How_Long_Does_Heroin_Stay_in_Your_System

Did they run a tox screen before treating him and trying to save his life? He most likely had all kinds of meds/drugs in his system when he died a week later.

 

[popsicle]

[h=3]"I want Baltimore back:" Group helps clean up city, hopes to lead by example[/h]
http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/28962035/baltimore-clean-up

 

[CARIIS]

Did they run a tox screen before treating him and trying to save his life? He most likely had all kinds of meds/drugs in his system when he died a week later.

Have heard on and off about heroin and weed in his system -- some disguised cop on Hannity made the claim, but it seems to me real authorities would just release that - why not if true?

 

[Woodland]

That's what I am saying. Stop mixing it up. If you know it's not a color thing then what is with all this talk of statistics? Who cares? Get to the source of the damn problem and start to fix it. Stop spending trillions going to war and spend some money building peace. It's not rocket science folks.

Just jumping off this post - only my opinion, but if there is a lack of peace in the US then the US can't hope to bring peace to others - something I thought the US prided themselves on. Sincerely think those trillions would have been better spent at home.

 

[SCHMAE]

This case is not about race, imho. The arrested officers are proof of that. We should not stoop to the level of those who are trying to make this case about race. I will concede that some of the recent cases indeed could be, but this case is about whether or not police stepped over the line of treatment of someone in custody. We're better than this, ws'ers

 

[octobermoon]

Have heard on and off about heroin and weed in his system -- some disguised cop on Hannity made the claim, but it seems to me real authorities would just release that - why not if true?

Agree. I just can't imagine the ER taking the time to worry about that before getting his heart and breathing stabilized. We need a medical person on this thread. Any opiates given in the hospital would test the same as heroin.

 

[SStarr33]

The first thing they should do is scrap these vehicles. Human beings are not cargo. They should not be transported in a cargo van. The best as I can tell these vehicles have about eight seats in them. They could transport the same number of people in the back seats of four patrol cars. It's not like we have a shortage of cops to drive suspects to jail. There were six cops involved in arresting Gray. One of them could have driven him to jail in a patrol car.

Good idea!! To pay for that, lets have every single person in that area pay some taxes.

Oh wait.....

 

[Woodland]

I can understand why you would not want to say anything about the stats I have linked. It shows that 99.99.9/10% of ALL the 98 million arrests they examined went off without a hitch. But you have nothing to say about that. I am not surprised. :no:

With all due respect, that was not the original question. Not that it matters now, but you were going to proved a link that the majority of the 4,800 death related arrests between 2003 and 2009 were by people that were armed. No one cares what went off without a hitch imo.

 

[octobermoon]

This case is not about race, imho. The arrested officers are proof of that. We should not stoop to the level of those who are trying to make this case about race. I will concede that some of the recent cases indeed could be, but this case is about whether or not police stepped over the line of treatment of someone in custody. We're better than this, ws'ers

They definitely didn't give him medical treatment. They knew he was in trouble and did nothing. Unresponsive and still took the time to unload the other guy before calling EMTs.

 

[CARIIS]

Who was Freddie Gray?

In life, friends say, Freddie Gray was an easygoing, slender young man who liked girls and partying here in Sandtown, a section of west Baltimore pocked by boarded-up rowhouses and known to the police for drug dealing and crime.In death, Mr. Gray, 25, has become the latest symbol in the running national debate over police treatment of black men — all the more searing, people here say, in a city where the mayor and police commissioner are black.


....., went by the nickname “Pepper.” Gray, 25, grew up in the impoverished neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester on Baltimore’s west side. Freddie C. Gray was the 25-year-old son of Gloria Darden. He had a twin sister, Fredericka, as well as another sister, Carolina.[

In 2008, a lead-paint lawsuit was filed on behalf of Gray and two of his sisters against the owners of the home in which they grew up. Court papers described his difficult upbringing: a disabled mother addicted to heroin who, in a deposition, said she couldn’t read; walls and windowsills containing enough lead to poison the children and leave them incapable of leading functional lives; a young man who was four grade levels behind in reading.


Such lawsuits are so common in Gray’s neighborhood that the resulting settlement payments — which Gray lived off — are known as “lead checks.”

Close friends of Gray, who was 5-foot-8 and 145 pounds, described him as loyal and warm, humorous and happy. “Every time you saw him, you just smiled, because you knew you were going to have a good day,” said Angela Gardner, 22, who had dated him off and on over the past two years.


Court records show he was arrested more than a dozen times, and had a handful of convictions, mostly on charges of selling or possessing heroin or marijuana. His longest stint behind bars was about two years.

Why is there so much anger?
The violent, fiery riots that consumed Baltimore on Monday began days earlier as peaceful protests of what activists say is a much larger national issue: police mistreatment of black men.
Police-involved deaths over the past year include Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Eric Garner on Staten Island and Walter Scott in North Charleston, S.C.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...was-he-how-did-he-why-is-there-so-much-anger/

All three of the children — Carolina, now 27, and twins Freddie and Fredericka — were born "preemie," Gloria Darden said in a deposition.
"They were real small and they had to keep them inside the hospital for a couple months, like until they gained five pounds," Darden said of the twins. "I had them too early, had to have them like when I was seven months pregnant."


Among the evidence were the results of blood tests conducted on the siblings as children that showed all of them had lead levels above the 10 micrograms per deciliter (mg/dL) that state law defines as the threshold for lead poisoning. (Experts say there are no safe levels of lead, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider anything above 5 mg/dL cause for concern.)
Freddie Gray, for example, was tested as having between 11 mg/dL and 19 mg/dL in six tests conducted between 1992 and 1996, court documents show.

Gray had been involved in 20 criminal court cases, five of which were still active at the time of his death, and was due in court on a possession charge on April 24.[SUP][11][/SUP][SUP][12][/SUP]


The house had three bedrooms, for Darden, the two girls and Freddie. But in Freddie's June 2009 deposition, he said that because he was so young then, he mostly remembers sleeping with his mother.
"I used to end up in my mother's bed," he said. "She always used to say like I used to sleep with her. She used to call me 'the mama's boy.'"

2002 the family came to the attention of Child Protective Services, which reported they were living in a house without food or electricity.


She said she had never been to high school, and when asked if she had been told to leave middle school, responded, "Yeah, something like that." She also said she couldn't read, which hampered her ability to help Freddie and his siblings.
Darden said she helped her son learn to count, but "that's it, you know. I can't teach him nothing else. … I can't help him with nothing else but raise him."
Under questioning, she said she began "sniffing" heroin when she was 23, according to the deposition transcript. She said she had used it perhaps once a day but then entered treatment.
"Now I don't do it," she said. "Since I went into a program and I'm doing good now."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/ma...ie-gray-lead-paint-20150423-story.html#page=2

The formal charge filed by Officer Garrett Miller accused Gray of violating statute 19 59 22 - "unlawfully carry, possess, and sell a knife commonly known as a switchblade knife, with an automatic spring or other device for opening and/or closing the blade within the limits of Baltimore City." This was found to be false during the investigation, as the knife was a pocketknife which is not illegal.[SUP][19]

Another witness told the Baltimore Sun that they had witnessed Gray being beaten with police batons.

Gray was placed in a transport van within 11 minutes of his arrest, and within 30 minutes, paramedics were summoned to take Gray to a hospital.

a private security camera, shows the van stopped at a grocery store.

Gray suffered from total [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_arrest"]cardiopulmonary arrest at least once but was resuscitated without ever regaining consciousness. He remained in a coma, and underwent extensive surgery in an effort to save his life.

As of April 30, 2015, 22 demonstrations had been held nationwide in direct response to Gray's death or in solidarity with Baltimore.[SUP][49]

[/SUP]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Freddie_Gray
[/URL]


[/SUP]

 

[epiphany]

They definitely didn't give him medical treatment. They knew he was in trouble and did nothing. Unresponsive and still took the time to unload the other guy before calling EMTs.

“He was a certified E.M.T. with the state of New Jersey, and that’s why I know for a fact that my son did not hurt this kid,” said Mr. Nero, 49. “And if this kid needed medical attention my son would have been the first one to give it to him.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/02/u...ackage-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

 

[SStarr33]

Good. Right now police are 28 times more likely to stop and search black people. Until the number gets to about 1 to 1, I'm not going to be too concerned about that being a problem. The lengths some people will go through to justify discrimination.

Hold on. Before that we need the crimes per percentage of populations stats to be the same.

Only then do we move to your point.

But you know what? It won't happen. Because, just like the article posted earlier said, it is too politically important to keep black people where they are.

Makes me sick.

 

[SophieRose]

i just got curious Police Commis makes 190K a year!

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/20...1_baltimore-police-chief-batts-baltimore-area

Guess he wanted to go back where he has lots of family. He made more as chief of Oakland, which I've read has the second highest paid police force in the US. His successor at Oakland made $276k in salary but went out on medical retirement in 2013 at the age of 47.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/ma...i-batts-contract-approved-20120912-story.html

The contract calls for Batts to receive a salary of $190,000, the same that Batts' predecessor Frederick H. Bealefeld III received when he was appointed to the post five years ago. It's a pay cut for Batts, who has a doctorate of public administration and made about $250,000 commanding a smaller force in Oakland, Calif., and about $225,000 in Long Beach, where he spent his 30-year career.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Police_Department

The salary of Oakland officers is another controversial issue. Police Officer Entry Level current annual salary is $69,912 to $98,088, the second highest in the country.[27] Additional pay increases are granted to higher-ranking officers. Average total compensation for an OPD employee is $162,000.[28] In 2012, 179 Oakland police officers took home over $200,000 in total compensation.[29] Three patrol officers, a sergeant, and a captain each took home over $300,000.[29] In 2011 the Police Department's costs make up 44% of the city's $400 million general budget.[

 

[Woodland]

IMO< it is a two way street. And I agree something has to change. But when I listened to the speeches just now in Baltimore I have little faith it will anytime soon. I don't see any of the locals taking any responsibility for their part in the mistrust. Cops are on edge in their hood because of the VIOLENCE surrounding them. There are a lot of violent armed robbers/drug dealers/gangbangers hanging out there. And these speakers seem to attribute ALL of the problems to the big mean bully officers. :no:

Have always like Dr Phil's thinking wrt a standoff with people that have developed a lot of hate between them - the situation requires a hero. Who is it going to be in this case?

 

[Viper]

Who was Freddie Gray?

In life, friends say, Freddie Gray was an easygoing, slender young man who liked girls and partying here in Sandtown, a section of west Baltimore pocked by boarded-up rowhouses and known to the police for drug dealing and crime.In death, Mr. Gray, 25, has become the latest symbol in the running national debate over police treatment of black men &#8212; all the more searing, people here say, in a city where the mayor and police commissioner are black.


....., went by the nickname &#8220;Pepper.&#8221; Gray, 25, grew up in the impoverished neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester on Baltimore&#8217;s west side. Freddie C. Gray was the 25-year-old son of Gloria Darden. He had a twin sister, Fredericka, as well as another sister, Carolina.[

In 2008, a lead-paint lawsuit was filed on behalf of Gray and two of his sisters against the owners of the home in which they grew up. Court papers described his difficult upbringing: a disabled mother addicted to heroin who, in a deposition, said she couldn&#8217;t read; walls and windowsills containing enough lead to poison the children and leave them incapable of leading functional lives; a young man who was four grade levels behind in reading.


Such lawsuits are so common in Gray&#8217;s neighborhood that the resulting settlement payments &#8212; which Gray lived off &#8212; are known as &#8220;lead checks.&#8221;

Close friends of Gray, who was 5-foot-8 and 145 pounds, described him as loyal and warm, humorous and happy. &#8220;Every time you saw him, you just smiled, because you knew you were going to have a good day,&#8221; said Angela Gardner, 22, who had dated him off and on over the past two years.


Court records show he was arrested more than a dozen times, and had a handful of convictions, mostly on charges of selling or possessing heroin or marijuana. His longest stint behind bars was about two years.

Why is there so much anger?
The violent, fiery riots that consumed Baltimore on Monday began days earlier as peaceful protests of what activists say is a much larger national issue: police mistreatment of black men.
Police-involved deaths over the past year include Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Eric Garner on Staten Island and Walter Scott in North Charleston, S.C.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...was-he-how-did-he-why-is-there-so-much-anger/

All three of the children &#8212; Carolina, now 27, and twins Freddie and Fredericka &#8212; were born "preemie," Gloria Darden said in a deposition.
"They were real small and they had to keep them inside the hospital for a couple months, like until they gained five pounds," Darden said of the twins. "I had them too early, had to have them like when I was seven months pregnant."


Among the evidence were the results of blood tests conducted on the siblings as children that showed all of them had lead levels above the 10 micrograms per deciliter (mg/dL) that state law defines as the threshold for lead poisoning. (Experts say there are no safe levels of lead, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider anything above 5 mg/dL cause for concern.)
Freddie Gray, for example, was tested as having between 11 mg/dL and 19 mg/dL in six tests conducted between 1992 and 1996, court documents show.


The house had three bedrooms, for Darden, the two girls and Freddie. But in Freddie's June 2009 deposition, he said that because he was so young then, he mostly remembers sleeping with his mother.
"I used to end up in my mother's bed," he said. "She always used to say like I used to sleep with her. She used to call me 'the mama's boy.'"

2002 the family came to the attention of Child Protective Services, which reported they were living in a house without food or electricity.


She said she had never been to high school, and when asked if she had been told to leave middle school, responded, "Yeah, something like that." She also said she couldn't read, which hampered her ability to help Freddie and his siblings.
Darden said she helped her son learn to count, but "that's it, you know. I can't teach him nothing else. &#8230; I can't help him with nothing else but raise him."
Under questioning, she said she began "sniffing" heroin when she was 23, according to the deposition transcript. She said she had used it perhaps once a day but then entered treatment.
"Now I don't do it," she said. "Since I went into a program and I'm doing good now."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/ma...ie-gray-lead-paint-20150423-story.html#page=2

Wow, that's a lot of information. But I'm disappointed because there are no quotes from any of the nurses that cared for the premmie born Freddie saying what a sweet baby he was.

 

[CARIIS]

They definitely didn't give him medical treatment. They knew he was in trouble and did nothing. Unresponsive and still took the time to unload the other guy before calling EMTs.

and do some paperwork, and stop at a grocery store...................................................................not ok IMO!

 

[dandy]

From what I've read, Officer Goodson was driving the van w/o another officer with him. And apparently there was no screen near Goodson showing him what was happening in back. How can that be in this day and age? I think school buses in GA all have cameras, and it's helped school admins enormously when irate parents complain about their kids getting picked on or figuring out who started a fight on the bus. Surely police departments have the capability to put cameras that can't be monkeyed with in all police vans, especially those driven by a lone officer. I'd like to see some Baltimore LE higher ups who make such decisions publicly named and questioned about this.

according to this article - quote: They discovered that the van's video camera was broken http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/ma...gray-investigation-20150502-story.html#page=2

i remember reading an article that baltimore city council approved l/e body cams - but the former mayor wanted her advisory board to do some more reviewing. iirc this was in dec. '14.

 

[SStarr33]

Personally, I don't feel that these 6 cops were just doing 'whatever they wanted to do.' I think it was the perfect storm for a tragedy. It was wrong that they had a routine of allowing passengers to bounce around on the floor of the van. That was a bad habit for them to allow and it was obviously WRONG. However I do understand how it came to be. The suspects routinely resist, fight them, bite them, spit, kick, scream. So the cops get used to that kind of behavior and tune it out. they do what they need to do to get through their shifts.

I think it is sad that it is all looked at one sided right now. Like the cops are vicious bullies and the people they are surrounded by are ALL lovely peaceful beings. NO, the cops are on the defense when they are in certain neighborhoods. And they are doing so day after day.

There are a dozen innocent people being shot every week in Baltimore. And NOT by the cops.

I actually have no problem with them allowing an irate prisoner to bounce around the van. I want LE safe and don't want them to take the risk of some crazy irate person biting them or spitting on them and giving them some horrible disease.

 

[CARIIS]

Wow, that's a lot of information. But I'm disappointed because there are no quotes from any of the nurses that cared for the prebbie born Freddie saying what a sweet baby he was.

do you think i should have made it two posts? In all stories we do here, I like the background and nuance - its adds so much to any story compared to MSM, who are now get all excited - hoping it gets nasty

 

[KEVINinTO]

It will be interesting to see how police handle the curfew tonight.

The first two nights the curfew was in effect police did not really enforce the curfew when the action was centered around North/Penn . The first night they arrested only 7 people despite the fact hundreds were on the street past 10 PM.

Last night when the main action was centered around city hall and a completely different demographic of demonstrators was involved (mostly OWS, "social justice" warriors ) police wasted no time encircling the protesters in a "kettling" operation and making scores of arrests.

Now that the action is back at North/Penn will police strictly enforce the curfew as they did last night? Somehow I doubt it.