The sound system was blasting from a street corner, two blocks from
the church where Freddie Gray’s funeral had taken place six hours
earlier.
Gospel singing had provided the backdrop to the funeral ceremony, but now people were moving to a different tune.
A slowed-down version of Michael Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel blasted out of the speakers.
One man, a white glove on one hand, was dancing on the roof of a yellow truck. Another was dancing in the middle of the intersection between North Avenue and Monroe Street, drunkenly pouring looted vodka on the road.
People were laughing, squealing, cheering. The music changed to Aerosmith’s version of the Beatles song Come Together.
It was 7.10pm on Monday night, and residents on Baltimore’s west side stood on porches and outside boarded-up houses, shaking their heads in disbelief. Two blocks away, around the corner from where Gray, a 25-year-old African-American man, was arrested by police on 12 April – setting in train a series of events that culminated in his death seven days later – two men stood in the doorway of a liquor store that had been looted moments earlier.
“They bust the lady and the man in the head,” said a man who gave his name as James. “She was lying on the floor and they were just walking right over her.”
Seconds earlier, he and the other man had tried to protect the owners from the mob that raided the store. As he spoke, teenagers walked casually behind him, clearing the shelves of the few remaining cans of beer.
Two police armoured personnel carriers had come, in the end, to rescue the liquor store owners. They had fired rubber bullets and flash bangs into the crowd. One man was still walking around dizzy and showing off the lump on his head from a bean bag round.
Scenes like this were unfolding across the city through the night, as
rioting spread from the suburbs around where Gray was arrested to engulf
a large swath of Baltimore.
By 1.45am on Tuesday, looters were fanning out across the city, exploiting a police focus on containing the fires that dotted sprawling terraced streets.
The disturbances had begun nearly 12 hours earlier after some 2,000 residents attended Gray’s funeral at the New Shiloh Baptist church. The slogan Black Lives Matter – adopted by a protest movement that has spread across the US since the fatal police shooting last August of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which sparked two bouts of rioting last year – was emblazoned on a neon sign outside the church.
Despite pleas from Gray’s family for peace, police knew trouble was coming. Reports had been circulating on social media of expected unrest and locals reported that drug gangs had agreed to suspend their rivalries and territorial disputes to unite in anger at the police.
Similar agreements were forged between gangs in London four years ago, when rioting spread through the city following the police shooting of a black man, Mark Duggan.
The Baltimore riots were not on the London scale, but authorities will be nervous about the possibility of a spread to other cities also blighted by fraught relations between police and local communities. For hours on Monday, teenagers threw rocks and bottles at police who gathered on intersections, cowering behind their shields and occasionally arresting stray rioters or disabling them with pepper spray. It was, one local resident said, “wild shit”.
After initially targeting a shopping mall, the crowd turned to a row of liquor stores and a pharmacy, which was later set on fire. When firefighters arrived to put out the blaze, someone cut through the hose with a knife.
By late afternoon, the intersection of North Avenue and Fulton Avenue had been turned into what one man – bottles of cognac in each hand – called an “open bar”.
Nearby, a group used part of a wooden fence to break the window of a corner store. Moments later, looters were streaming out clutching bags of chips and cigarettes.
Many residents tried to stop the violence and theft, pleading with children to stay indoors. Some even braved the streets themselves, urging people not to take part in the aggression.
One group of clergy had spent the evening marching through the west side, pleading with people to remain peaceful. Donte Hickman, a pastor, said he was marching with others to “quell the chaos and bring about peace” when he received a phone call urging him to head back to his church, five miles away on the east side of the city.
The trouble had spread to Baltimore’s downtown area and then east, to the deprived streets just north of the industrial harbour. Hickman arrived to find a 60-unit affordable home complex for senior citizens, built by his church, in flames. “This is not the justice that we seek,” he said, walking toward the flames. “This is chaos and confusion. But it is going to work for our good. Because we will rebuild this community.”
Hickman added moments later: “It hurts my heart,” as the magnitude of the fire sank in.
The $16m (£10.5m) site had taken eight years to build with support from the church. It was due to open this year, providing mortgage-lending, drug testing and other services to the impoverished area. “They were about to put the roof on it,” Hickman said.
A few blocks away, a thin line of police had blocked off one of the many roads that had been looted.
Two women stood on a street corner, offering very different interpretations of Baltimore’s night of destruction. One, Cynthia Brooks, runs a local homeless shelter. She said Monday’s destruction reminded her of the Baltimore riots in 1968 – when she was in fourth grade. Those riots happened in April, too, she said, and were triggered by the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King.
She criticised the “senseless” destruction of shops the community depended on for food. “I love my city and it hurts,” she said. “The shoe store was looted, and I see people running up and down passing shoes out. What a waste. What do you do tomorrow if you can’t fit the shoes?”
Quatiarra Bonaparte, 14, took a more defiant stance. Although she did not take part in the disorder, Bonaparte said the unrest was a vent for the rage young people in her neighbourhood felt over Gray’s death.
She pointed out that the six officers involved in his arrest, who are
under investigation, have been suspended on full pay. “When we kill
each other, we get consequences,” she explained. “But when they kill
each other they just get a paid vacation.”
She suggested the anger was far from exhausted. “People are getting revenge, and they are just getting started,” she said. “This was probably about 2%. We still got about 98% to go.”
Gospel singing had provided the backdrop to the funeral ceremony, but now people were moving to a different tune.
A slowed-down version of Michael Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel blasted out of the speakers.
One man, a white glove on one hand, was dancing on the roof of a yellow truck. Another was dancing in the middle of the intersection between North Avenue and Monroe Street, drunkenly pouring looted vodka on the road.
People were laughing, squealing, cheering. The music changed to Aerosmith’s version of the Beatles song Come Together.
It was 7.10pm on Monday night, and residents on Baltimore’s west side stood on porches and outside boarded-up houses, shaking their heads in disbelief. Two blocks away, around the corner from where Gray, a 25-year-old African-American man, was arrested by police on 12 April – setting in train a series of events that culminated in his death seven days later – two men stood in the doorway of a liquor store that had been looted moments earlier.
“They bust the lady and the man in the head,” said a man who gave his name as James. “She was lying on the floor and they were just walking right over her.”
Seconds earlier, he and the other man had tried to protect the owners from the mob that raided the store. As he spoke, teenagers walked casually behind him, clearing the shelves of the few remaining cans of beer.
Two police armoured personnel carriers had come, in the end, to rescue the liquor store owners. They had fired rubber bullets and flash bangs into the crowd. One man was still walking around dizzy and showing off the lump on his head from a bean bag round.
Scenes like this were unfolding across the city through the night, as
rioting spread from the suburbs around where Gray was arrested to engulf
a large swath of Baltimore.By 1.45am on Tuesday, looters were fanning out across the city, exploiting a police focus on containing the fires that dotted sprawling terraced streets.
The disturbances had begun nearly 12 hours earlier after some 2,000 residents attended Gray’s funeral at the New Shiloh Baptist church. The slogan Black Lives Matter – adopted by a protest movement that has spread across the US since the fatal police shooting last August of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which sparked two bouts of rioting last year – was emblazoned on a neon sign outside the church.
Despite pleas from Gray’s family for peace, police knew trouble was coming. Reports had been circulating on social media of expected unrest and locals reported that drug gangs had agreed to suspend their rivalries and territorial disputes to unite in anger at the police.
Similar agreements were forged between gangs in London four years ago, when rioting spread through the city following the police shooting of a black man, Mark Duggan.
The Baltimore riots were not on the London scale, but authorities will be nervous about the possibility of a spread to other cities also blighted by fraught relations between police and local communities. For hours on Monday, teenagers threw rocks and bottles at police who gathered on intersections, cowering behind their shields and occasionally arresting stray rioters or disabling them with pepper spray. It was, one local resident said, “wild shit”.
After initially targeting a shopping mall, the crowd turned to a row of liquor stores and a pharmacy, which was later set on fire. When firefighters arrived to put out the blaze, someone cut through the hose with a knife.
By late afternoon, the intersection of North Avenue and Fulton Avenue had been turned into what one man – bottles of cognac in each hand – called an “open bar”.
Nearby, a group used part of a wooden fence to break the window of a corner store. Moments later, looters were streaming out clutching bags of chips and cigarettes.
Many residents tried to stop the violence and theft, pleading with children to stay indoors. Some even braved the streets themselves, urging people not to take part in the aggression.
One group of clergy had spent the evening marching through the west side, pleading with people to remain peaceful. Donte Hickman, a pastor, said he was marching with others to “quell the chaos and bring about peace” when he received a phone call urging him to head back to his church, five miles away on the east side of the city.
The trouble had spread to Baltimore’s downtown area and then east, to the deprived streets just north of the industrial harbour. Hickman arrived to find a 60-unit affordable home complex for senior citizens, built by his church, in flames. “This is not the justice that we seek,” he said, walking toward the flames. “This is chaos and confusion. But it is going to work for our good. Because we will rebuild this community.”
Hickman added moments later: “It hurts my heart,” as the magnitude of the fire sank in.
The $16m (£10.5m) site had taken eight years to build with support from the church. It was due to open this year, providing mortgage-lending, drug testing and other services to the impoverished area. “They were about to put the roof on it,” Hickman said.
A few blocks away, a thin line of police had blocked off one of the many roads that had been looted.
Two women stood on a street corner, offering very different interpretations of Baltimore’s night of destruction. One, Cynthia Brooks, runs a local homeless shelter. She said Monday’s destruction reminded her of the Baltimore riots in 1968 – when she was in fourth grade. Those riots happened in April, too, she said, and were triggered by the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King.
She criticised the “senseless” destruction of shops the community depended on for food. “I love my city and it hurts,” she said. “The shoe store was looted, and I see people running up and down passing shoes out. What a waste. What do you do tomorrow if you can’t fit the shoes?”
Quatiarra Bonaparte, 14, took a more defiant stance. Although she did not take part in the disorder, Bonaparte said the unrest was a vent for the rage young people in her neighbourhood felt over Gray’s death.
She pointed out that the six officers involved in his arrest, who are
under investigation, have been suspended on full pay. “When we kill
each other, we get consequences,” she explained. “But when they kill
each other they just get a paid vacation.”She suggested the anger was far from exhausted. “People are getting revenge, and they are just getting started,” she said. “This was probably about 2%. We still got about 98% to go.”
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