So now that things have calmed down I am ready to write.
The day that the girls and I flew back from Minnesota (April 25), Dave came to pick us up at the airport and said he was running late because of the protests going on downtown. Now, knowing D and a few occasions in the past, I thought he was blowing things out of proportion. Later that night I found out after watching the news, that they held the Oriole fans inside Camden Yards until it was deemed 'safe'. Dave made a good call.
So the protests happened on Saturday, someone trashed a 7 Eleven, and I thought that was as dramatic as things were going to get.
We live in downtown Baltimore, but I wasn't worried. To be quite honest, it never even crossed my mind that things might escalate. Less than 36 hours later, the chaos was in full swing. There were peaceful protestors, but all we saw via media channels were fires, lines of police in their riot gear, broken glass, shouting, and a lot of very angry people.
We were glued to the coverage of what was happening. While we did not see anything out our window yet, we heard the endless sirens and countless helicopters overhead. I honestly couldn't believe this was really happening. And it seemed as though our police force and our city had no clue how to handle this.
As night came, more and more people seemed to be coming out, but primarily to do damage. We have a Family Dollar across the street from our house and we were just waiting...
Around midnight, as we were attempting to sleep, we started hearing the cars pulling up to the store across the street. I could hear the chatter of small groups of teenagers saying things like "hey, look, there's the Family Dollar, get your bat". The first group had no success. Soon a new group of teens took a shot with their bats and bricks- they got in. Family Dollar has a security service that monitors the outside of their store after-hours. The man on the intercom tried asking them in his most authoritative voice to leave, but quickly gave up, and was silent for the next 4 hours.
Four hours. Thats how long people kept coming to loot the store across the street that we have found very convenient on many occasions. We called 911. We couldn't get through. We couldn't get through for almost an hour. We finally did and told them what was happening; all they could say was they would see what they could do. We were worried that someone might set the store on fire as they had done to other similar businesses. We kept calling the cops. We continued to have problems getting through. Around 2AM we got through again and they said they would escalate the priority.
The police never arrived.
The store was never set on fire, at least.
We then spent a week hanging out with the national guard.
Crazy. This is looking out on the street from D's work.
I am not going to write in detail as to why the riots happened, as you can easily search Freddie Gray. Many people said that this wasn't what the family wanted, and wasn't the way to get justice. But let me say this. The riots made international news. And as of today (May 17, 2015), there are 6 officers charged with essentially letting a man die in their custody, a man that should probably not have been arrested to begin with.
Things got out of control. But you can't say that they didn't get their point across. Its sad that it came to this. This city already has a pretty rough reputation. Baltimore, let's fix this. Ill be interested in seeing how things progress as I sit in my future home at a location TBD in nice, quiet, Minnesota.
The day that the girls and I flew back from Minnesota (April 25), Dave came to pick us up at the airport and said he was running late because of the protests going on downtown. Now, knowing D and a few occasions in the past, I thought he was blowing things out of proportion. Later that night I found out after watching the news, that they held the Oriole fans inside Camden Yards until it was deemed 'safe'. Dave made a good call.
So the protests happened on Saturday, someone trashed a 7 Eleven, and I thought that was as dramatic as things were going to get.
We live in downtown Baltimore, but I wasn't worried. To be quite honest, it never even crossed my mind that things might escalate. Less than 36 hours later, the chaos was in full swing. There were peaceful protestors, but all we saw via media channels were fires, lines of police in their riot gear, broken glass, shouting, and a lot of very angry people.
We were glued to the coverage of what was happening. While we did not see anything out our window yet, we heard the endless sirens and countless helicopters overhead. I honestly couldn't believe this was really happening. And it seemed as though our police force and our city had no clue how to handle this.
As night came, more and more people seemed to be coming out, but primarily to do damage. We have a Family Dollar across the street from our house and we were just waiting...
Around midnight, as we were attempting to sleep, we started hearing the cars pulling up to the store across the street. I could hear the chatter of small groups of teenagers saying things like "hey, look, there's the Family Dollar, get your bat". The first group had no success. Soon a new group of teens took a shot with their bats and bricks- they got in. Family Dollar has a security service that monitors the outside of their store after-hours. The man on the intercom tried asking them in his most authoritative voice to leave, but quickly gave up, and was silent for the next 4 hours.
Four hours. Thats how long people kept coming to loot the store across the street that we have found very convenient on many occasions. We called 911. We couldn't get through. We couldn't get through for almost an hour. We finally did and told them what was happening; all they could say was they would see what they could do. We were worried that someone might set the store on fire as they had done to other similar businesses. We kept calling the cops. We continued to have problems getting through. Around 2AM we got through again and they said they would escalate the priority.
The police never arrived.
The store was never set on fire, at least.
We then spent a week hanging out with the national guard.
Crazy. This is looking out on the street from D's work.
I am not going to write in detail as to why the riots happened, as you can easily search Freddie Gray. Many people said that this wasn't what the family wanted, and wasn't the way to get justice. But let me say this. The riots made international news. And as of today (May 17, 2015), there are 6 officers charged with essentially letting a man die in their custody, a man that should probably not have been arrested to begin with.
Things got out of control. But you can't say that they didn't get their point across. Its sad that it came to this. This city already has a pretty rough reputation. Baltimore, let's fix this. Ill be interested in seeing how things progress as I sit in my future home at a location TBD in nice, quiet, Minnesota.
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