Officers Charged For The Death Of Freddie Gray

Officers Charged For The Death Of Freddie Gray

Four days after the Baltimore riots took place in response to the death of Freddie Gray, Baltimore’s Chief Prosecutor charged the six police officers involved in his arrest, our initial report on the riots can be found here. The charges against the officers include murder, manslaughter in arrest and fatal injury reported The New York Times.

The public had been warned that it could take some time for the state attorney’s office to complete its investigation. Instead, charges were filed by Marilyn Mosby, Baltimore’s state attorney very soon after she had received the medical examiner’s report which ruled the Freddie Gray death as a homicide.

Currently all six of the officers involved are in custody and being arraigned.

According to NPR, Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr. was charged most heavily with second-degree depraved heart murder. Goodson was the driver of the van which transported Gray to a police station, it has also been mentioned that Goodson may have given Gray a “rough ride” as Gray had his feet shackled to the floor, and hands handcuffed but had not been safely secured with a seatbelt.

Police union attorney Michael Davey has spoken out against Mosby’s charges and claimed that Freddie Gray’s injuries were not sustained because of any action taken by the six police officers which are being charged. Davey stated that due to the all the publicity that the case has received the prosecution has moved very quickly in charging the officers.

In another article written by The New York Times, it is made clear why Mosby has been so eager to charge the officers.

“Shortly before she became the youngest top prosecutor in any major American city, Marilyn J. Mosby, a daughter and granddaughter of police officers, had tough words about how the nation’s criminal justice system had handled mistreatment of black men by the police.

‘It’s been 78 days since Michael Brown was shot in the street by a police officer,’ Ms. Mosby said at her alma mater, Tuskegee University in Alabama, in October. ‘It’s been 101 days since Eric Garner was choked to death in New York by a police officer, and 54 days since the New York City medical examiner ruled that incident a homicide. Neither has resulted in an indictment.’”

While Davey may feel that Mosby is being overzealous, she is taking a strong political stance against the mistreatment and lack of justice towards those who have suffered at the hands of police officers in the recent past.