Baltimore Cops Crack Down on Defiant Protesters -Crowds Swarmed Streets on 'May Day for Freddie Gray'

 

WND

Marches filled the streets in several cities across the country this Friday, as a show of solidarity with Freddie Gray, his family and Baltimore protesters – and as the crowds defiantly violated Baltimore’s 10 p.m. EST curfew, police began pushing back, arresting at least 50 demonstrators who refused to go home.

On Friday evening, protesters met in Union Square in a protest dubbed “May Day for Freddie Gray,” a reference to the May 1 celebration originally promoted by socialists and communists as “International Workers’ Day.”

Earlier in the day, Buzzfeed News reported Baltimore Police Sgt. Lennardo Bailey addressed a May 1 letter to “Eastern Command Staff” warning, “I respectfully report that we are being challenged on the street. I have been to five calls today and [at] three of those five calls for service, I have been challenged to a fight. Some of them I blew off but one of them almost got ugly.”

Bailey continued, “I don’t want anybody to say that I did not tell them what is going on. This is no intel; this is really what’s going on the street. This is my formal notification. It is about to get ugly.”

According to live tweets from the scene, hundreds of protesters gathered outside city hall, disregarding the Baltimore curfew at 10 p.m. EST. Friday marked the third night the curfew had been in place.

Protesters were handcuffed for violating curfew, but some reports from the scene indicated police were issuing warnings and releasing the people they had detained.

Family members of Gray allege he was injured at the hands of police, and those injuries led to his death at a hospital several days later.

 

As WND reported earlier Friday, Gray’s death has been ruled a homicide. Marilyn Mosby, the state’s attorney in charge of the investigation of the death of Freddie Gray, said at a press conference Friday the medical report indicates there was “probable cause” that a crime occurred, and the involved officers have all been charged with a variety of offenses, including manslaughter. She also said the autopsy report, which has been sent to prosecutors, shows Gray was not properly handled during his arrest and that examiners concluded his death was due to homicide.

On Friday night, Fox News tweeted that a Baltimore police officer claimed Freddie Gray’s toxicology report came back positive for heroin and marijuana and that police saw Gray in a drug transaction.

According to reports, Gray had been arrested more than 20 times:

 

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/05/Freddie_Gray.jpg

 

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http://www.wnd.com/2015/05/baltimore-cop-warns-its-about-to-get-ugly/