A Baltimore police report on the death of a black man, Freddie Gray whose death in police custody sparked protests was handed over on Thursday to the city’s chief prosecutor.
Sources said the medical examiner’s report, contained in the police report handed over Thursday to the state attorney, found Gray’s wound was consistent with the bolt inside the back of the police van.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts did not give details of the report or take questions, but did say some 30 detectives worked on the probe and that the police wagon Gray was being transferred in April 12 made a previously undisclosed stop. He shed little other light on the sequence of events leading up to the injuries that later proved fatal to Gray a week later.
“I understand the frustration; I understand the sense of urgency,” Batts said of the report, which was handed in a day ahead of schedule. “That is why we have finished it a day ahead of time.”
Batts comments came hours after a Washington Post report claiming Gray may have intentionally tried to injure himself while in the police wagon. The Post cited an unidentified prisoner, who was also in the wagon but was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him. The prisoner reportedly said he heard Gray “banging himself against the walls” and believed he “was intentionally trying to injure himself.”
The city’s chief prosecutor must decide whether to bring charges against any of the six patrol officers involved in the man’s arrest.
Gray’s death a week later from his injuries has become the latest flashpoint in a nationwide debate about police use of lethal force against African Americans and other minority groups.
After setting off demonstrations and a night of rioting in Baltimore, protests spread to other major cities on Wednesday, a reprise of demonstrations last year after police killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri; New York; and elsewhere.
