Carrié writes: "As the 2015 uprising continues,
fueled by the anger at Freddie Gray's death in police custody, the state has
been taking extraordinary measures to attempt to restore order. For some, this
comes at the expense of our constitutional rights. I was one of them."
A protester faces police in riot gear in Baltimore. (photo: Shawn Carrié/Guardian UK)
My 49 Hours in a Baltimore Cell - for Being a Reporter
By
Shawn Carrié, Guardian UK
03 May 15
I was one of hundreds confined
in squalid, overcrowded cells with inedible food and rights ignored waiting for
a criminal charge that in my case never came
The last time that riots hit the streets of Baltimore
was in 1968, following the
assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
As the 2015 uprising continues, fueled by the anger at
Freddie Gray’s death in police custody,
the state has been taking extraordinary measures to attempt to restore order.
For some, this comes at the expense of our
constitutional rights. I was one of them.
As a working member of the press, I was arrested on 27
April, just as Baltimore began to erupt, and detained for 49 hours before being
released without charge. A flurry of legal maneuvering, coupled with the fog of
a state of emergency, meant that I and several others were deprived of our
constitutional protections under the first, fourth, sixth, and eighth
amendments.
My journey started after Freddie Gray’s funeral, when
I heard reports of a riot breaking out at Mondawmin Mall. I arrived in the
middle of a melee. Unmasked people were running straight up to the police
lines, brazenly pitching bricks from as little as 10 feet away. Clouds of
teargas filled the air. I didn’t witness a single arrest – I only heard a
captain shout out: “Just remember their faces.”
A line of riot police then charged against a throng of
rioters – I followed them, camera in hand, trying to capture the tumultuous
scene. I was hit directly in the forehead with a plastic
“less lethal” projectile that
explodes with an irritant powder on impact. I stumbled over to the sidewalk.
Everything went black for a moment, and the next thing I saw were faces staring
down at me as I lay on the grass.
Stunned, I got up and tried to continue reporting.
Within a few minutes, the intersection cleared, and the riot squad stood at
bay. A few television cameras remained, and I joined them to try to snap some
photos of the police line. An officer from behind the line came up to me and
told me that I needed to move. I reached in my jacket to show my press pass,
and asked the armor-clad giant which way I should go. He started to say, “I
don’t know, but you can’t stay here …” and was interrupted by a captain
barking: “Him! He goes!”
Before I could say another word, I was thrown to the
ground and put in handcuffs.
I was brought over behind the police lines to sit
behind an armored vehicle, where I would remain with my arresting officer for
about two hours. I tried to make small talk with him to buy some leniency,
telling him I was just a reporter. He asked me where I’m from; I said New York
City. He then became much more convivial, chatting about Washington Heights,
where he was from, saying that he’d much rather be at home eating dinner with
his family.
I heard him say to another cop: “I don’t even know why
they told me to lock this guy up. He’s a reporter.” But reporter or not, I was
now under arrest and on my way to Central Booking.
The Baltimore city jail is a squalid, gray and
soulless place. Hundreds of prisoners streamed in and were herded by the eights
and nines into cells built for twos and fours. The cell that would be my home
for the next 48 hours was 8 feet wide by 10 feet long, with a barely concealed
toilet occupying about a quarter of the room.
Cells marked “single” had as many as five people, and
those marked “group” had up to nine prisoners crammed inside.
In jail, the corrections officers (COs) are god and
master, savior and executioner. All requests for basic necessities like water,
toilet paper, food, or medical attention were brusquely denied. Every eight
hours when “food” arrived, it was a uniform regimen of one elementary school
milk carton and four slices of laundered bread-matter with one slice of either
a yellowish cheese substance, or processed bologna. It was utterly inedible.
Hours passed by with no marker other than the
irregular flow of prisoners called to be given their charge papers. Most were
handed charges of rioting, burglary, arson or disorderly conduct. Two
19-year-old brothers in my cell were charged with disorderly conduct and
slapped with a $150,000 bail citing a long description of a group of three to
10 black males running. One of them said that he had thought about joining in
the looting of a clothing store, but decided against it and went home. The
document didn’t cite any stolen property on their persons when police arrested
them a block away from their house.
My name was never called to be given charges. The two
men who were with me for the duration of my stay also never received charges.
Orion [name changed] was a 30-year-old with a wife and daughter, who told me he
didn’t even know there was a riot going on. He told me he just stood still with
his hands up as a riot squad ran past him, then came back a minute later and
told him he was behind their lines and arrested him.
Maintaining his innocence, he was anxious the entire
two days I spent with him, worrying that a new charge would violate his
probation for a gun possession charge three years ago.
Quite a few of the inmates spoke about Freddie Gray,
the mundanity of police brutality, and friends or family abused by police.
“Enough is enough” was a common sentiment behind the outburst of repressed
anger.
Most did not possess the eloquence of Dr King when he
described riots as “the language of the unheard”. Dante [name changed] was
rowdy, invariably screaming a story at full bellow, or banging on the iron door
for a CO’s attention to speak to a lawyer. He had been arrested for violating
the curfew on Tuesday night, but spoke proudly about the thrill of getting away
with a pair of new sneakers on Monday.
He and many others reminisced excitedly about the
riots as if it were the morning after a raging party. They saw the riots as a
chance to “come up” and get some free loot which could be sold on the black
market. But as the bacchanalia faded into the heaviness of prison, the hangover
hung deep in one man’s regretful sigh: “Damn, I should’ve never gone into that
liquor store.”
Despite his unapologetic endorsement of pillaging,
after listening to him talk for hours, I couldn’t shake the impression that
looters like Dante couldn’t just be condemned as opportunistic thieves. His
life story was unmistakably dotted with socioeconomic fault lines of
Baltimore’s cycle of crime and punishment, lack of opportunity, and recidivist
violence.
An 18-year-old caught fleeing police with a gun on him
said he only carried it because of the tough guys in his neighborhood. “I stay
strapped so I can stay alive,” he confided to our cellmates. He approached his
predicament with a rationale not unlike the national guard: more guns mean more
safety.
In jail, your constitutional rights are worth about as
much as the food they feed you. Asking to see a lawyer when it took four hours
to get water was like asking for caviar. When I cited the fourth and sixth
amendment protecting due process, and Maryland state law banning detainment
beyond 24 hours without a charge and statement of probable cause, the COs told
us that the state of emergency meant that “24 hours is out the window”.
We pleaded to talk to someone, anyone. When I asked
one of the higher-ups, a lieutenant, what he was doing to ensure that the law
was being followed, he told me bluntly: “They are violating your rights. And
everyone here knows it.”
Some time on Wednesday, lawyers arrived. One of them
looked at me and saw the bruise on my forehead, stopped, and asked: “Are you
the reporter?” She introduced herself as Katie D’Adamo, and told me she was
with the Maryland office of the public defender. I told her I’d been in there
for at least 36 hours, and hadn’t been told what I was being charged with, nor
seen a lawyer. I explained my story with scant privacy through the door of the
cell while she filled out a habeas corpus petition addressed to Warden Carolyn
Scruggs and told me it would be filed in the circuit court demanding our
immediate release. Orion did one, too. Then they left.
The next few hours were quiet. Then the hallways
steadily started picking up with activity. Lieutenant Barney said he was going
to stay past the end of his shift at 3pm to make sure everyone who hadn’t
received charges since Monday was released.
Eventually I was given a bag with my name on it,
containing my jacket, wallet, and camera equipment. There were riot police with
shields lining the hallway as they led us single-file down a long hallway. At
the end of the corridor a sergeant pressed a button, and a bright door opened.
She said: “Get out.”
The group ran out like wild wolves.
© 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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