98 Officers Injured; 95 People Charged In Baltimore Riots
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- In Monday's riots, 98 officers were injured in total and 95 people have been charged so far, Baltimore police reported Thursday.
Of those officers injured, 43 needed emergency medical treatment.
Baltimore Police Capt. Eric Kowalcyzk said 13 officers remain out on medical leave due to their injuries.
But since Monday's violence, the city has remained mostly peaceful.
Under the state of emergency, National Guard troops continue to support Baltimore police and for the first time in three days, police are no longer wearing riot gear.
Kowalcyzk said 201 people were initially arrested on Monday due to their involvement in the riots and looting across the city.Since then 106 were released because police had yet to charge them criminally. But Kowalcyzk said that could change.
"We will continue to pull video footage," he said, from the riots to help identify suspects. They could then be charged.
Police had initially responded to North and Pennsylvania avenues Monday afternoon for a reports of a student gathering that was disseminated through social media.
"We deployed officers for an event that was supposed to be a high school gathering of 13, 14, 15-year-olds," Kowalcyzk said. "As that event escalated, as the number of people and the ages escalated we worked to deploy resources to match the event that we were seeing, the violence."
"The commissioner talked about the fact that we were undermanned and overwhelmed by the number of people and the level of violence that we saw, which is what led us to where we are today," he said. "We had 20 officer injured in that initial encounter.
After the second night of the mandated curfew, he reported that 9 adults and 2 juveniles were arrested for curfew violations between the hours of midnight and 3 a.m.