Baltimore police prepare for Freddie Gray trials
BALTIMORE -- The first Baltimore Police Officer went on trial on Monday in the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered a spinal injury in April while being driven in a police van.
William Porter is charged with manslaughter for failing to get help for Gray. Five other officers will be tried later. The city's been gearing up for this.
"The city and the police department need to do better," said Baltimore's new police commissioner Kevin Davis.
He said his department has been training for the trials, and unrest they could bring. He said they are ready for whatever may come during and after the trials.
Davis acknowledged that wasn't the case in April. After Freddie Gray's death, the city erupted. Businesses were looted and torched. Police officers were injured. In the aftermath, murders and violent crime spiked and officers were accused of not being aggressive enough.
There were concerns that they were pulling back.
"I think a more a thoughtful way to recognize what happened, for a couple of months here, is this police department had PTSD," Davis said.
Davis said this is not a politically correct way of saying the police were taking a knee.
"No, I think it's a correct way of saying the cops had anxiety," he explained.
Davis' predecessor, Anthony Batts, was fired in July. But the killings continued. This year there were 311 homicides, a 59 percent increase over 2014.
Davis, who was deputy commissioner at the time of the rioting, said one reason the murder rate is up is the looting of 30 pharmacies. Suddenly, 288,000 doses of prescription drugs were on the streets with gangs fighting for control.
"When they get their hands on those stashes, there's competition for the geography that they need to occupy to sell their drugs and from that the violence has erupted," Davis said.
With the trials of the six officers expected to go into next year. Davis said he will treat a protest like a protest and a riot like a riot. That is something he believes the department did not do seven months ago.