10 years after Freddie Gray's death, Baltimore reflects and pushes for equity
A few hours later and several blocks away, activists held a rally calling for social justice as they marched from Penn-North Metro to Mondawmin Metro.
A decade ago, Freddie Gray died at Maryland Shock Trauma from a spinal injury one week after he was injured riding inside a Baltimore City police van when he was 25 years old. In the weeks following his death, Baltimore was engulfed in protests focused on the systemic inequities that marked Gray's life.
Mayor Brandon M. Scott laid a wreath at a mural honoring Freddie Gray, about a block from where he was arrested in the 1700 block of North Mount Avenue and Presbury Street. Scott was joined by attorney William H. 'Billy' Murphy, Jr. and Freddie Gray's twin sister, Fredricka Gray, to memorialize his death.
'We all know that 10 years ago that Baltimore, starting with the death of young Freddie Gray, went through what we call a kairos moment,' Scott said. 'And today we are here at the request of the family who wish to lay a wreath … to really honor their beloved son, brother, cousin. That's why we are here today.'
Fredricka Gray wore a sweatshirt emblazoned with a photo of her brother. She was born 14 minutes after Freddie Gray.
'I want to say thank you to all y'all who supported us and been with us through the whole process,' Fredricka Gray said. 'It's still justice for Freddie Gray, 10 years now.'
Murphy represented Freddie Gray's family in a lawsuit against Baltimore City, eventually agreeing to a $6.4 million settlement. Murphy said the Baltimore community needs to keep moving forward for social equity, but he has confidence in the current leadership of the city and state.
'We are happy that the mayor is placing a wreath at the mural depicting Freddie,' Murphy said. 'The mural when everybody looks at it gets inspired. The mural that reminds us what happened on that fateful day. There's so much that happened as a result of Freddie's death, and much of it good, a lot bad.
'We have to work harder each and every day to make sure that the dream that arose from Freddie's death one day comes true — better housing, better food, better health care.'
Scott said the city is still striving to make improvements in the reduction of crime and the relationship between police and residents.
'We all know that we are not the perfect Baltimore that we all want to be,' Scott said. 'We doubled down on what we want to be after 2015 and the unrest that followed Freddie's death. Yes, we are better and we will continue to get better each and every day and every way, whether that is here in Sandtown, across town in East Baltimore and all over West Baltimore. We will continue to work that way.'
Jaselle Coates has lived on the corner of Presbury and North Mount Avenue for 25 years. A Freddie Gray mural with Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall is painted on her side wall. She watched landscapers work on a nearby grass-filled lot and shook her head.
'I haven't seen this many city workers since I lived here,' said Coates, who also grew up in West Baltimore. 'Not much has changed since Freddie Gray. They say the murder rate has gone down, but it hasn't gone down.'
A few hours after the wreath laying, non-profit advocate Peoples Power Assembly held a rally called 'Honor Freddie Gray & The Struggle Against Police Terror.' Activists marched from Penn-North Metro to Mondawmin Metro.
Participants largely agreed that the city has a long way to go to improve policing and public safety issues. Some said things have gotten worse in the past decade.
Joyce, 62, is originally from the Penn-North area and now lives in East Baltimore. She's been sober for 24 years after struggling with drug addiction, but believes 'absolutely zero' progress has been made in addressing the danger posed by addicts in her native neighborhood.
'What they need to do is take that opioid money that they got and put it in this area, saturate this area,' Joyce told The Sun. 'We have a lot of good people, intelligent, articulate folk up here. They're just hanging around here because they are addicted to fentanyl and other drugs.'
Charles County native Apryle Bennett, 24, attended Loyola University of Maryland and said she noticed an increasingly heavy police presence in the areas near campus, but doesn't feel that presence helped address core issues like public mistrust.
'Off of the campus, you just felt like people were caged in. They just felt very uncomfortable,' Bennett said. 'Anywhere you go, there's a lot of police, but people don't really feel protected and safe because of intense questions they ask like, 'Where are you going?' 'What are you doing?''
Dejan Ernestel, in his 50s from the Belvedere Square area, said the extent to which policing in the city has improved 'depends where you are.' He explained the Peoples Power Assembly's strategy to move public funds away from policing to foster civic engagement.
'Instead of investing in police, we would invest more into the social services,' Ernestel said. 'The importance of community control is people who are living in these neighborhoods can feel [like] part of the community.'
After Gray's death, the city, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Baltimore Police Department entered into the consent decree after a DOJ investigation determined that years of 'systemic deficiencies' at the department drove police to engage in unconstitutional practices, like using excessive force, retaliating against people engaged in free speech and unfairly policing Black Baltimoreans, including Gray.
The consent decree required Baltimore police to overhaul its transportation policies, including implementing extensive training and upgrading its vehicle equipment maintenance.
On Thursday, a federal judge terminated two sections of the consent decree governing the Baltimore Police Department, the first time sections of the 17-section agreement have been declared fulfilled.
Judge James K. Bredar ruled the police department has met the consent decree's requirements and sustained its progress in the way the department transports people in custody, and how it provides police officer assistance and mental health support.
'The Baltimore Police Department has improved tremendously since 2015 and we will continue to do that,' Scott said Saturday.
Sun reporter Racquel Bazos contributed to this report. Have a news tip? Contact Todd Karpovich at tkarpovich@baltsun.com or on X as @ToddKarpovich. Contact Carson Swick at cswick@baltsun.com. Contact Racquel Bazos at rbazos@baltsun.com, 443-813-0770 or on X as @rzbworks.
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As Joe Vigil inspected a gutted former retail space in one of Antioch's highest-crime corridors, the newly appointed police chief let out an exasperated sigh. That empty storefront at the center of Sycamore Square, a graffiti-tagged shopping center known for frequent shootings, was supposed to be reopening soon as the Antioch Police Department's new satellite office. But, as Vigil surveyed the building's interior in early July, he saw wires dangling where lights once hung, cracked floor tiles and dirty walls with white space outlining where a cash register once stood. 'This is worse than I expected,' said Vigil, a tall, bearded man with a stout build. 'It's going to require some serious work to get this place up to par.' The same goes for Antioch's entire police department. During the four months since Vigil was elevated from acting chief to the permanent job, he has overseen one of the bigger resurrections in Bay Area law enforcement. 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Some longtime residents began carrying Tasers with them when they ventured out at night. But more than the lack of law enforcement, many locals fretted about the mindset of the remaining police officers. More than one-fifth of the city's residents identified as African American. For months, they had read about the publicly released texts in which cops referred to Black people as 'gorillas,' 'monkeys' and other racial slurs. Vigil said he was as stunned as anyone. Just as he was struggling to reconcile how he could have been so unaware of the department's bigoted undercurrent, then-acting City Manager Kwame Reed asked Vigil to become acting police chief. His absence from all the text threads suggested that he wasn't part of the problem. 'My wife's Black, and she had seen the text messages,' Vigil said, his voice cracking as he blinked back tears. 'As soon as I told her they wanted me for acting chief, she was just like, 'Absolutely not. You will not. '' But Vigil wasn't one to spurn a challenge. Before coming to Antioch in May 2020 for the opportunity to move up from sergeant to lieutenant, his two-plus decades in law enforcement included stops in two of the Bay Area's most dangerous cities: Vallejo and Richmond. During his 10-year stint in Sacramento, Vigil routinely volunteered for the graveyard shift patrolling high-crime neighborhoods like Del Paso Heights and Oak Park. Along the way, he earned a master's degree from Cal State Long Beach and a certificate from California law enforcement's top leadership development academy. None of that made Vigil's transition to acting chief simple. He needed to learn basic procedures, such as how to place officers on leave. 'The fact that Joe hadn't had much high-level management experience was kind of beside the point,' said Brian Addington, who served as Antioch's interim police chief between Vigil's two stints, and now mentors Vigil in a consulting capacity. 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What that piece omitted: Antioch officers didn't have body cameras when the incidents in question happened. Due to budgetary issues that caused the City Council to vote down that costly hardware, Vigil's reviews were based almost exclusively on the officers' written description of events. 'To be honest, if I had to do it all over again with the same resources I had at that time, I would've made the same decision,' he told the Chronicle. 'I did the best I could with what I had available.' Scott, Antioch's new city manager, recognized as much. When the City Council hired her in October 2024, it did so based on her experience navigating police misconduct fallout. During her six years helping hold a scandal-prone Seattle Police Department accountable, Scott learned the importance of finding the right cultural fit for chief, not just chasing the biggest possible name. While working with a third-party search firm to vet dozens of national candidates, she kept coming back to Vigil. He began to gain credibility locally by asking for community feedback, bolstering patrol units in the city's highest-crime neighborhoods and publicly admitting the obvious: We have to be better. By the time Scott announced the start of Vigil's second interim tenure this past January at the police station, dozens of people stood and applauded. 'For me, seeing that community trust in him was really pretty impressive,' Scott said. 'It showed me that we were already crossing the threshold of a culture change.' A chaotic schedule affords Vigil little time for decorating. His office remains empty, aside from a family photo on his desk, a motorcycle helmet next to his computer and a Beta Ray Bill action figure on a shelf. Like most police chiefs, Vigil reports to the city manager. What makes Vigil's situation unique is that for the foreseeable future, he must also report to the U.S. Department of Justice, the California Department of Justice and a city-run police oversight commission — all of which became involved with the department because of the sprawling texting scandal. His top priority is to ensure Antioch adheres to the Department of Justice's 25-page memorandum of understanding, which details policies covering everything from use-of-force documentation to community-engagement programs. If Vigil commits even a minor breach of protocol, he risks city officials cycling to their sixth police chief in four years. 'Joe is under a microscope,' Freitas said. 'Really, he has no room for error.' Such rigid guidelines haven't stopped Vigil from being resourceful. To restock Antioch's patrol units, he and other department leaders took out ads in magazines and on billboards. They mined police academies in the Central Valley and Sacramento for new cadets. On a handful of occasions, they set up recruiting booths at local gyms. Through it all, the crux of Vigil's pitch didn't change: Earn a starting salary of around $116,000 while helping resuscitate a city. Antioch now has 90 full-time officers. While steering his SUV past a 24 Hour Fitness on the east side of town, Vigil leaned back in the driver's seat and smiled. At some point this fall, he expects the department to have 105 sworn officers. 'We actually just canceled our gym recruiting because our numbers are up so much,' he said. About 80% of Antioch's officers are under 26. As Vigil put it, 'We're starting with a clean slate, and so are they.' Though reports of rape and aggravated assault were up over the first half of this year compared to the same stretch last year, robberies and shootings nose-dived. The two homicides in Antioch so far in 2025 are less than a third of the city's count at this point in 2024. 'Given where the city was, things could only get better (under Vigil), which is what's happening,' said civil rights attorney Ben Nisenbaum, who was among the lawyers representing residents in a federal lawsuit filed in April 2023 — and tentatively settled earlier this year — against Antioch police officers tied to the texting scandal. 'But the trajectory has to be maintained, and there's a lot of work to still be done.' While cruising through a sleepy downtown, Vigil pointed out the beauty of the San Joaquin River peeking over the buildings in the distance. Though some of the barbershops, thrift stores and restaurants had chipped paint or faded signage, the area's early 20th century brick facades, ironwork balconies and Spanish-style bell tower offered quiet reminders of a more vibrant past. Soon enough, Vigil figures, downtown will thrive again. There are fewer 'For Lease' signs in storefront windows than there were a few months ago. In late June, downtown Antioch began hosting the city's first weekly farmers' market. 'To me,' Mayor Ron Bernal said, 'that's as big an indicator as any that the tides are shifting here.' What might matter more is how people perceive crime in their community. For well over a decade, real estate developer Sean McCauley has invested in downtown Antioch in hopes of spearheading a resurgence there reminiscent of the one he helped spur nearby in downtown Brentwood. The big problem was often the lack of police. Now, the same tenants that used to complain to McCauley about officers not responding to break-ins or robberies tell him that officers pull up within 20 minutes of being called. 'It's a night-and-day difference,' said McCauley, who owns more than a dozen buildings downtown. 'Not that long ago, you could go an entire day in Antioch without seeing a single officer.' Families that used to seldom leave their apartments are now running errands without fear, even at night. 'And, when something like a mugging or domestic issue does come up,' local pastor Ruben Herrera said, 'the cops are actually communicating with us directly about what's going on nearby, which never used to happen.' Vigil will need time, though, to repair Antioch's more complex issues. Shagoofa Khan was among the community members named by Antioch police officers in racist and misogynistic text messages. More than two years later, she still has a hard time trusting police. It's not just because some of the same officers who were supposed to protect her neighborhood were sexualizing her and making fun of her ethnicity in those texts. Three months after graduating from Cal State East Bay with a master's degree in public administration, Khan keeps hearing from government agencies that they can't hire her. Online reports related to her activism against Antioch's police department concern managers. Each time Khan opens another rejection email, it feels more and more like a silent penalty for speaking out. 'It's been really hard to deal with,' said Khan, who currently works as a community organizer for an Antioch-based nonprofit. 'I still have some trauma from everything that happened (with the scandal), and now it's like the hardships just won't end.' Vigil doesn't have to look far to see his city's continued struggles. On that July afternoon, after updating a room full of baby-faced officers about the department's improved staffing, Vigil climbed into his Expedition and made the nine-minute drive to Sycamore Square. As he pulled into the parking lot, a dozen men standing in front of La Bonita Market quickly scattered. Just within the past year, that run-down shopping center surrounded by low-income housing has had nearly 1,000 calls to 911, including more than 30 shootings. After stepping out of his SUV, Vigil faced an empty lot across the street from where Antioch police's new satellite office is set to open. For years, city leaders have talked about transforming the space into something worthwhile: maybe a community center, or a massive play structure. As Vigil stood there, all he saw were liquor bottles and drug paraphernalia poking through overgrown grass. 'This place motivates me because it kind of represents what was this town's problem for so long,' he said. 'People talk about change, but don't actually follow through. No more.'
CBS News
3 days ago
- CBS News
93-year-old pedestrian killed by unmarked police car in Howard County, officials say
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