New Jersey Sends Help To Baltimore; Unrest Persists Despite Curfew

BALTIMORE (CBSNewYork/AP) -- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced Tuesday that his state is sending support to Baltimore, as unrest persisted for a second day despite a curfew being in place.

"New Jersey is offering our full support and solidarity in their efforts to protect the lives and well-being of the people in the city of Baltimore while calm and order are being restored," Christie wrote on Twitter Tuesday.

New Jersey State Police will deploy 150 personnel to Maryland "to help ensure a peaceful resolution for the city and people of Baltimore," Christie said.

Approximately, 100 of those troopers will provide operational support, while the rest will provide investigative and logistical support. They will be there for at least 72 hours.

Meanwhile, a rally was held in New York Tuesday evening to show solidarity with the people of Baltimore.

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A 10 p.m. curfew went into effect for the entire city of Baltimore Tuesday night. But minutes later, police in riot gear dropped smoke canisters onto the streets to disperse protesters who refused to leave.

One man was seen launching his bike into an officer.

One man said he knew he could face criminal charges for violating the curfew, but advocated civil disobedience.

"I understand that," he said. "But if we don't stand for something, we fall for anything."

Police made at least one arrest. The curfew violations occurred despite urgent alerts rumbling over Baltimore all evening, with police helicopters in the air and loudspeakers on the ground.

The curfew is in place from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. It was ordered by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake Monday night.

There were also reports of a group attacking officers with rocks and bricks Tuesday night at Patapsco and Ninth streets in Baltimore, and arrests in response.

Earlier Tuesday, National Guardsmen fanned out across Baltimore, police with riot shields blocked streets, and firefighters doused smoldering blazes after looting and arson erupted in the city following the funeral of a black man who died in police custody.

On Tuesday night, hundreds remained at the site where so much violence spilled onto the streets 24 hours earlier.

Resident Greg Brown brought his three young children to see a burnt CVS drugstore, which he called a teachable moment.

"It's history, and at the end of the day, they need to see this is not the way; not what they should do," Brown said.

The rioting started in West Baltimore on Monday afternoon -- within a mile of where Freddie Gray, 25, was arrested and placed into a police van earlier this month -- and by midnight had spread to East Baltimore and neighborhoods close to downtown and near the baseball stadium.

At least 15 officers were hurt, including six who were hospitalized, police said. There were 144 vehicle fires, 15 structure fires and nearly 200 arrests, the mayor's office said.

The streets were calm Tuesday, but the city remains raw with emotion and residents are struggling to heal.

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Hundreds of volunteers spent the morning cleaning up the streets still lined with police and SWAT teams.

"We're hurting, that's all I can say, we're hurting," volunteer Ashley Stuggs told CBS2's Weijia Jiang. "I've been a part of the protest, but not the rioting, that's not what I was out here for. I'm out here for this, Justice for Freddie."

Stuggs said she doesn't believe what the rioters did was wrong, but many others who were born and raised in Baltimore disagree.

Gregory Smith, 50, said he's ashamed of the city that he barely recognizes.

"This is not a reflection of Baltimore, this is not a reflection of our city, this is not a reflection of our community. Please understand that the actions of a few does nothing as far as outweighing the actions of a whole city," Smith said.

There are concerns more riots could erupt Tuesday. In an effort to fight riots and looting, a weeklong citywide curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. begins Tuesday night.

Gov. Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency and enlisted help from the National Guard, whose troops arrived just after midnight as Mayor Rawlings-Blake defended against criticism they acted sooner.

"We've seen what happens when other jurisdictions have overreacted and brought in resources that escalated the violence on the street and I didn't want that to happen in Baltimore," said Rawlings-Blake, who met with Rev. Al Sharpton Tuesday afternoon.

It was the first time the National Guard was called in to quell unrest in Baltimore since 1968, when some of the same neighborhoods were convulsed by violence after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Gray's death under still-mysterious circumstances has become the latest flashpoint in the nation's debate over the use of police force against black men.

The rioting was the worst such violence in the U.S. since the turbulent protests that broke out over the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed black 18-year-old who was shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer.

"I understand anger, but what we're seeing isn't anger," Rawlings-Blake lamented. "It's disruption of a community. The same community they say they care about, they're destroying. You can't have it both ways."

State and local authorities pledged to restore order but found themselves responding to questions about whether their initial response had been adequate.

Rawlings-Blake waited hours to ask the governor to declare a state of emergency, and the governor hinted she should have come to him earlier.

"We were all in the command center in the second floor of the state House in constant communication, and we were trying to get in touch with the mayor for quite some time," Hogan said at a Monday evening news conference. "She finally made that call, and we immediately took action."

Asked if the mayor should have called for help sooner, however, Hogan replied that he didn't want to question what Baltimore officials were doing: "They're all under tremendous stress. We're all on one team."

Rawlings-Blake said officials believed they had gotten the unrest under control, "and I think it would have been inappropriate to bring in the National Guard when we had it under control."

The rioters set police cars and buildings on fire, looted a mall and liquor stores and threw rocks, bottles and bricks at police in riot gear. Police responded occasionally with pepper spray.

"They just outnumbered us and outflanked us," Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said. "We needed to have more resources out there."

Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings and about 200 others, including ministers, tried unsuccessfully to quell the violence at one point Monday night, marching arm-in-arm through a neighborhood littered with broken glass, flattened aluminum cans and other debris.

At least one mother took matters into her own hands after catching a young man believed to be her son participating in the riots.

Batts applauded her efforts.

"She started smacking him on the head because she was so embarrassed. I wish I had more parents that took charge of their kids out there tonight," Batts said.

The governor said he was temporarily moving his office from Annapolis to Baltimore on Tuesday.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in her first day on the job Monday, said she would send Justice Department officials to the city in coming days.

Maj. Gen. Linda Singh, adjutant general of the Maryland National Guard, said up to 5,000 troops would be available for Baltimore's streets.

"We are going to be out in massive force, and that just means basically that we are going to be patrolling the streets and out to ensure that we are protecting property," Singh said.

Col. William Pallozzi, superintendent of the state police, said a request for up to 500 additional law enforcement personnel in Maryland had been sent. Pallozzi added that the state is putting out a request for up to 5,000 more law enforcement personnel from around the mid-Atlantic region.

Gray was arrested April 12 after running away at the sight of police, authorities said. He was held down, handcuffed and loaded into a van. Leg cuffs were put on him when he became irate inside. He died of a spinal cord injury a week later.

Authorities said they are still investigating how and when he suffered the injury -- during the arrest or while he was in the police van, where authorities say he was riding without being belted in, a violation of department policy.

Six officers have been suspended with pay while the investigation continues.

The riot came amid a national furor over the deaths of several black men at the hands of police -- from the Brown case in Ferguson to the chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York and the shooting of Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina.

The NAACP spoke out Tuesday, promising to rebuild what was physically and emotionally destroyed.

"This tragedy is one in a series of tragedies," NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks said. "The anger that we feel in Sand Town, the anger that we feel in Baltimore is very much related to the anger that has been felt in Ferguson, the anger that has been felt in Staten Island, the anger that has been felt in Cleveland, the anger that has been felt across the length and breadth of this country, but we have to go from anger to action."

While they are angry about what happened to Gray, his family said riots are not the answer.

"I think the violence is wrong," Gray's twin sister, Fredericka Gray, said late Monday. "I don't like it at all."

The attorney for Gray's family, Billy Murphy, said the family had hoped to organize a peace march later in the week.

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