Baltimore gone haywire
CBS:
“It’s so bad, people are afraid to let their kids outside,” Perrine
said. “People wake up with shots through their windows. Police used to
sit on every corner, on the top of the block. These days? They’re
nowhere.”
West Baltimore residents worry they’ve been abandoned by the officers
they once accused of harassing them, leaving some neighborhoods like
the Wild West without a lawman around.
“Before it was over-policing. Now there’s no police,” said Donnail
“Dreads” Lee, 34, who lives in the Gilmor Homes, the public housing
complex where Gray, 25, was chased down. “People feel as though they can
do things and get away with it. I see people walking with guns almost
every single day, because they know the police aren’t pulling them up
like they used to.”
Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said his officers “are not holding
back,” despite encountering dangerous hostility in the Western District.
“Our officers tell me that when officers pull up, they have 30 to 50 people surrounding them at any time,” Batts said.
Batts provided more details at a City Council meeting Wednesday
night, saying officers now fear getting arrested for making mistakes.
“What is happening, there is a lot of levels of confusion in the
police organization. There are people who have pain, there are people
who are hurt, there are people who are frustrated, there are people who
are angry,” Batts said. “There are people, and they’ve said this to me,
`If I get out of my car and make a stop for a reasonable suspicion that
leads to probable cause but I make a mistake on it, will I be arrested?’
They pull up to a scene and another officer has done something that
they don’t know, it may be illegal, will they be arrested for it? Those
are things they are asking.”
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