Entire Baltimore Neighborhood Under Lockdown: "Police Declared Martial Law"

Five days ago, Det. Sean Suiter, a married father of five and an 18-year veteran with the Baltimore Police, was patrolling the streets of West Baltimore around 5pm last Wednesday when he saw suspicious activity. Suiter approached a man and was shot point blank in the head, in a summary execution. He was rushed to the hospital in critical condition where he later died of his injuries.

Rest In Peace Detective Sean Suiter https://t.co/NiKIdmzbAD pic.twitter.com/l7vkrOKjMv

— Baltimore Police (@BaltimorePolice) November 16, 2017

In response, Baltimore Police reacted with ‘fire and fury’ turning the neighborhood where Suiter was shot into an “open-air prison”, shutting down city streets and enabling checkpoints for citizens while officers in tactical gear went door to door, according to Baltimore Brew. Residents were prohibited from entering their own neighborhood unless they showed proper identification, these extreme measures have been in place for 4-5 days.

“They’ve been to my house three times asking, ‘Did you hear anything? Do you know anything,’” said Edward Stanley, a local resident, who had to show a yellow slip before entering the neighborhood.

Baltimore Brew said, the neighborhood was tuned into “open-air prison”, as the complete lockdown was in attempt to collect evidence and search for the shooter.

Police initially said they needed to cordon off the area to try to capture the shooter. Police have said Suiter was in the 900 block of Bennett Place, investigating a previous homicide, when he was shot on Wednesday. So far, no arrests have been announced in the case. This morning, homicide detective Mike Newton told The Brew that the lockdown was necessary to collect evidence.

One community group took pictures of a checkpoint in West Baltimore.

#FreeWestBaltimore pic.twitter.com/P61qoDLHnq

— Baltimore BLOC (@BmoreBloc) November 19, 2017

15 @BaltimorePolice vehicles on Schroeder alone and dozens more on surrounding blocks. All the officers are just sitting in their cars. pic.twitter.com/M9zCCltdzK

— Baltimore BLOC (@BmoreBloc) November 19, 2017

Another twitter account describes how ‘the police declared marital law’, as one police officer with an assault rifle guards a corner.

And apparently police been standing on corners like this the last two days pic.twitter.com/y9Qrd2TSRe

— Pulla (@KINGDACEO) November 17, 2017

Citizens describe how their day lives have been disrupted as West Baltimore remains under police control, as per Baltimore Brew:

Two women walking down Franklin Street to get to their cars, parked blocks away because of the lockdown, complained that they had been harassed by officers.

 

“They know I live here. They’ve seen me come and go. But this one had to pat me down. He [the officer] went like this to my jacket, grabbing it,” said Shelly, 25, who asked that her last name not be used.

 

“They wanted to know where I had been. Why do I have to tell him that? It’s just me in my flip-flops trying to go to my own home.”

 

“We haven’t been able to get our mail for four days,” said the woman with her, Samantha, 50, who also asked not be identified. “Is the city going to pay the late fees on my bills?”

 

“It’s so sad what happened to the officer and I hope they catch whoever did it,” another woman said. “But this is really overboard. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The ACLU of Maryland released a statement yesterday, who are “troubled by reports that some persons entering or leaving the area have been subject to pat down searches, and that non-residents have been barred from entering the area”.

“While the search for a killer is, of course, a high priority for the police, the limits on lawful police behavior do not disappear even when engaged in that pursuit.  And at least one federal appellate court has said that a similar police cordon and checkpoint system was unconstitutional.

 

“The residents of Baltimore, and, in particular, the residents of the affected community, deserve a clear explanation from the City as to why this unprecedented action has been taken, what rules are being enforced, and why it is lawful.  The need to secure a crime scene from contamination to preserve evidence does not, on its face, explain the wide area to which access has been restricted for days after the incident.”

 

On-the-ground information is scarce to those outside the cordon because access to residents, including by the media, has also been restricted. For that reason, we encourage anyone who has this kind of information to contact us at curtis@aclu-md.org.

WBALTV11 visited one checkpoint in West Baltimore:

West Franklin Street is back open to traffic.

Police plan to release the West Baltimore crime scene Monday morning #WBAL pic.twitter.com/AgyDlqjWQH

— Vanessa Herring (@VanessaWBAL) November 20, 2017

According to one citizen, ‘this is the 3rd time in less than 3 years that West Baltimore has been occupied by police’…

This is the 3rd time in less than 3 years that West Baltimore has been occupied by police:

1) April 27 - May 1 in 2015 after the funeral of Freddie Gray
2) June 27, 2016 at a street celebration of the life of rapper Lor Scoota
3) Nov. 16-???? in 2017 after Det. Suiter was killed pic.twitter.com/C85qSSl6Br

— T"Challa ??Ra ???? (@BmoreDoc) November 18, 2017

Baltimore Brew concludes by saying the Baltimore Police will “clear the crime scene” on Monday, so in a few hours.

Perhaps in a preview of things to come, the 4-5 day siege of West Baltimore by Police has been described by one resident as ‘Martial Law’. Readers concerned about social tensions in the US are urged to monitor events in Baltimore, which better than Chicago or Detroit now demonstrates just how the United States is marching straight into a new, Orwellian era.

2-Years Ago, America Learned the Term ‘Nickel Ride’ After Cops Used It to Kill Freddie Gray

It’s been two years since Baltimore Police mandated the death penalty for 25-year-old Freddie Gray, for the truly heinous crime of possessing a “switchblade.”

In those two years, police attempted to downplay the gravity of what Gray evidently endured during one of their notoriously signature “nickel rides” — but, as with any case of this magnitude, the truth trickled out only well after protests quelled and public outrage took aim at another of countless unjustified police homicides.

Telling is the mundanity in the news of legally-permissible, ethically-intolerable police violence — that Gray’s untimely and unnecessary demise has faded from headlines sardonically evinces this epidemic so many dismiss as unfounded until its frosty hand touches their lives.

After securing handcuffs and often leg restraints — but not belting passengers to the vehicle — officers transporting arrestees to the station, drive recklessly, purposefully doing their utmost to ensure maximum bumps, bruises, and worse — Gray’s spinal cord was almost entirely severed in what the medical examiner said resulted from a single, “high-energy” injury event.

His neck likely snapped upon impact when the officer driving slammed on the brakes — intentionally inflicting maximum damage upon Gray, who, of course, had yet to be tried, much less convicted, in a court of law.

That officers of the law, took it upon themselves to administer capital punishment, without the hindrance of the justice system, is the very definition of extrajudicial killing. Accordingly, Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced charges on May 1, 2015, and a grand jury indicted all six officers involved in Gray’s arrest and fatal transport less than a month later.

Progress cutting through the Thin Blue Line of impunity, it seemed, had been made — until each methodically escaped punishment for the ‘unofficially’ capital crime.

Despite a laundry list of charges from second-degree murder to second-degree manslaughter to misconduct in office, Lieutenant Brian Rice and Officers Edward Nero and Caesar Goodson were acquitted, while Officer Garrett Miller, Sergeant Alicia White, and Officer William Porter had charges dropped by the State.

No one has ever been punished for killing Freddie Gray.

On this solemn two-year anniversary of Gray’s appalling killing, Rolling Stone explained,

“Freddie Gray became a national news story thanks to a man named Kevin Moore, who filmed the last few minutes of Gray’s arrest. After giving a copy of the video to investigators, Moore uploaded the footage online and it quickly went viral. It showed Gray being held face down on the sidewalk by officers Garrett Miller and Edward Nero, screaming in pain. His ankles were crossed and his knees bent, with Miller’s weight pushing his heels in his rear, a police hold known as a leg lace.

“While Moore’s video was shown in court at the police officers’ trials, he was never called to testify. Neither were any of the dozen-plus residents who witnessed Gray’s arrest that morning, despite many of them giving damning interviews to the media under their own names. Some of these witnesses were interviewed by detectives, but their accounts – of Taser use, of seeing an officer put his knee in Gray’s neck, of Freddie crying out that they were hurting his back and his legs – were dismissed by both the police and prosecutors. Other officers who were present during the arrest, but weren’t charged, testified that Gray was only trying to attract attention, but witnesses maintain his screams were real.”

Rolling Stone interviewed some of the witnesses in revisiting what happened to Gray during that ordeal — something that can’t be said of the State’s Attorney’s Office, whose investigators had claimed to be performing an independent probe.

Yet, a number of eyewitnesses who spoke with local and national media outlets were never contacted by detectives or investigators.

“You can hear him making noise, like, he’s in pain,” Jacqueline Jackson, who saw the second of several stops during Gray’s transport from the vantage point of her kitchen window, told Rolling Stone for its series, Undisclosed. “It was just sad.… I told them, ‘What are y’all doing to that young man?’ They told me I needed to mind my M-Fing business.”

Jackson observed three officers try once to stuff the young African American man into the back of the transport van after shackling his legs — then “they threw him face down, head first and hard into the metal van compartment. Even from inside her house, she could hear a loud thump, followed by Gray’s moans.”

Eventually, the callous officers found Gray unresponsive and summoned emergency services. After a week-long coma, the young man — whose weapon, in actuality, did not violate the law — succumbed to those maliciously-inflicted injuries.

Discrepancies in nearly every aspect of the case remain and never have been explained by police or prosecutors. Optimistically speaking of our Injustice System, they probably never will.

Freddie Gray — like Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Dylan Noble, Philando Castile, and a disturbingly lengthy list of others — will only have died needlessly when his name ceases to roll from lips recounting that period when the American Police State shed pretense and began to flex its authoritarian self.

This near pandemic-level police brutality and impunity exists to test the boundaries of public tolerance to the unacceptable. It’s a sick method, if perhaps tacit, that a State cognizant of discontent among the citizenry repeatedly pushes the limits of acceptability.

And when police find murmurings of support from the mouths of those who would sooner have violent revolution than be visited with a similar tragedy at the whims of police, there will be no solutions to this problem.

Instead of justice, five of his excused killers summoned the deplorable gall to sue Mosby for false arrest, false imprisonment, and defamation of character — claiming the arrest had been lawful and justified, despite the determination Gray’s knife was legal.

Freddie Gray should still be alive — and the lack of punishment for his death and thousands of other police victims paints a dire picture of just how acceptable State violence has become.

Terrifying Video Shows Cops Pummel Small Boy as He Screams in Fear

Woodlawn, MD — A disturbing video uploaded to social media this week shows cops attack a boy as he sits on the curb after he was threatened by another student. The boy, 16-year-old Alonzo Cox had just been the victim of a knife assault, according to witnesses.

The Baltimore police department is now investigating the use of force after the video caused un uproar.

On Wednesday, police were called to respond to a fight across the street from Woodlawn High School. When they showed up, no one tried to run and Alonzo sat down. As the video begins, Alonzo, whose voice has not even broken yet, appears frightened and didn’t immediately comply with the female officer when she grabbed him.

Because Alonzo pulled his hands away, the officer jumped on top of him and began dropping elbows into his head. At this point, Alonzo is so frightened that he balls up in the fetal position. That’s when the much larger male officer joined in on the pummelling.

Alonzo’s screams for help are disturbing.

On Thursday, according to Fox News Baltimore, Alonzo admitted he could have cooperated more, but said he began to fear for his life.

“I was scared,” he said. “I thought I was going to get shot that’s all that was going through my mind, ‘please don’t shoot me’,” he added, “I was scared for my life.”

After watching the terrifying video of their son getting beat down by cops, his parents want answers.

Naturally, the police department immediately began justifying the actions of the cops.

READ MORE:  Citizen Pulls Over Cops. Cop Admits They are Above the Law, "We don"t have to Wear Seat Belts"

Former Baltimore City Police Commissioner Ed Norris weighed in on the video and said he wasn’t surprised by the actions of the officers, Fox Baltimore reports.

“The problem is they’re trying to put handcuffs on this teenager and he’s resisting,” Norris said. “He put his hands on the first officer and he’s continuing to resist, they’re trying to handcuff him, he’s fighting, he’s screaming, he’s fighting and they can’t get him handcuffed, it’s very difficult to handle.”

Norris added, “If you resist an arrest against a uniformed police officer they don’t lose and they’re going to do whatever they have to do to get you in handcuffs because they want to go home at night. People forget as well, even though this teenager is unarmed and he may not be a hardened criminal by any means, but when you start fighting an arrest with the police there’s a gun in the fight, because the officer is wearing it and that’s always on their mind. People need to be cognizant of that.”

The officers knew they were responding to a fight in which a person was threatening other children with a knife. When they arrived on the scene, they saw the 14-year-old girl waving around what they called a “large knife.” Alonzo was the victim, according to witnesses.

However, the fact that Alonzo was the victim did not deter officers from escalating the situation to intense violence against a defenseless child.

“Officers approached the girl, who is 14, giving verbal commands to which she responded,” Baltimore County Police and Fire Spokesperson Elise Armacost wrote in a statement. “The girl was taken into custody without incident. The male juvenile who had been identified as a suspect in the fight did not comply with a female officer’s verbal commands and assaulted her.”

READ MORE:  Citizen Confronts Cop After Filming Him Driving Recklessly to Work. Cop Left Speechless.

For the police to refer to Alonzo’s actions in the video below as ‘assault’, would be hilarious if it hadn’t led to his actual assault and subsequent arrest.

Cox now faces charges of 2nd degree assault, resisting arrest, and 2nd degree assault on police. The 14-year-old girl was charged with 1st and 2nd degree assault, according to Fox Baltimore.

“Baltimore County Police are reviewing the use of force involved in this incident, as is standard procedure,” Armacost wrote. “Body Worn Camera video is available and will be reviewed for evidentiary value.”

Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter and now on Steemit