“The vast majority of the city is slowly but surely calming down, apart from a few burning cars and street lights“, however, Baltimore Police Chief Anthony Batts said at a press conference shortly before midnight (0400 GMT).
As soon as Freddy Gray’s funeral was over, gangs of young people, mainly high school students who had just left school, took on the police by throwing all kinds of projectiles: bricks, pebbles, sticks, bottles… Several supermarkets were looted and set on fire as were cars, including police cars.
Faced with overwhelmed law enforcement, the authorities decided to call in reinforcements from thousands of police officers from the region as well as soldiers from the Maryland National Guard.
The mayor – democrat, lawyer, influential member of the black community – of the city Stephanie Rawlings-Blake also announced the establishment of a curfew Tuesday from Tuesday 10:00 p.m. (02:00 GMT Wednesday) until 05:00 every days for a week.
“Too many people have spent generations building this city to be left to be destroyed by thugs“, she asserted.
The violence, confined to a district in the northwest of the city, injured 15 police officers, six of whom were more seriously affected, said Anthony Batts.
“They will all recover but they were seriously injured by the projectiles“, underlined the police chief. Several reporters were also attacked and had their equipment stolen.
Twenty-seven people have been arrested, but police have vowed to comb through footage from security cameras and the like to find the perpetrators.
The national guard, which is a paramilitary force, will be the subject of a “massive” deployment, confirmed at another press conference the general of this force, Linda Singh.
Some of the soldiers were already in town on Monday night, said the police chief, explaining that these reinforcements were to be used mainly to stand guard in areas secured by the city’s police.
A Maryland police official also said the state had requested up to 5,500 additional troops.
The governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, had declared a little earlier a state of emergency “to restore order” in this city of 620,000 inhabitants located about sixty km from the federal capital.
The violence erupted just after the funeral of Freddie Gray, who died after his muscular arrest by the police, whose practices are regularly denounced, including by the mayor.
The city decided to close all its schools on Tuesday, according to a spokesperson, at the risk of ending up with many idle young people and again ready to fight.
Baltimore police said they had received a “credible threat” from local gangs who allegedly “partnered to + eliminate + police officers”.
-‘A sacred day’-
Similar riots broke out last summer in Ferguson (Missouri, center), after the death of an unarmed young black man, killed by a white policeman. Other incidents of the same nature have revived the debate of racism within the police.
Freddie Gray died on April 19 from a fractured cervical vertebra a week after his arrest in Baltimore, which has several sensitive neighborhoods.
This death is the latest in a series of police blunders that have reignited tensions between the black community and law enforcement.
The violence in Baltimore on Monday evening contrasted with the calm and dignity of the ceremony honoring Freddie Gray. Some 3,000 people, family, friends and anonymous people, all black, had paid a calm tribute mixed with prayers and activism to the young man, who lay in an open white coffin, surrounded by wreaths of white flowers in the New Baptist Church. Shiloh.
The ceremony took a political turn with the intervention of the family’s lawyer, Billy Murphy, much applauded: “we are here for Freddie Gray, but also because there are a lot of Freddie Grays“.
US President Barack Obama has been briefed on the situation.
Since the announcement of the death of the young black man, demonstrations have taken place daily in Baltimore. The one that took place on the night of Saturday to Sunday had already degenerated into violence.
Several investigations have been launched to elucidate the circumstances of Freddie Gray’s injuries, without conclusions. Baltimore police, however, agreed that the young man should have received medical assistance after his arrest.