A scathing assessment of police and city management during unrest following the death in custody of Freddie Gray in April concluded rioting was ‘preventable’

Baltimore police officers were ordered by their commissioner to allow rioters the space to destroy and loot property during a spate of unrest in the city following the death in custody of 25 year-old Freddie Gray in April, according to a partisan review by the city’s powerful police union.

On Wednesday, the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge Three published its scathing assessment (pdf) of police and city management during the unrest, which left 19 buildings and 144 vehicles burned, concluding the rioting was “without question, preventable” and argued police commanders “failed to meet professional standards on all levels”.

“As a result, chaos and lawlessness ensued,” the report states.

The observations prompted immediate criticism from Baltimore’s mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who accused the union of relying on “baseless and false information” to reach its conclusions.

“Our hope was that this report would shed some additional light on how we can better prepare our officers should there be future unrest,” the mayor said in a statement. “Instead this report is no more than a trumped up political document full of baseless accusations, finger pointing and personal attacks”.

Gray, 25, was arrested in west Baltimore on 12 April, after making eye contact with a BPD officer, who chased him with other officers several blocks before arresting him and placing him the back of police van, handcuffed and shackled without a seatbelt. Gray suffered severe spinal injuries sustained in the back of the van and died a week later on 19 April.

The union, which represents more than 2,500 officers, had criticised top police commanders throughout the April unrest, but had itself drawn heavy criticism during the protests, after labelling the calls for the six officers involved in Gray’s death to be charged a “lynch mob” mentality.



The FOP report argues that during a roll call meeting with officers on 25 April, when tensions and regular protests in the city first turned towards violent unrest, police commissioner Anthony Batts issued direct orders to officers “not to engage any protesters”.

The report quoted an unnamed source who said officers were told: “the Baltimore Police Department would not respond until they [the protesters] burned, looted, and destroyed the city so that it would show that the rioters were forcing our hand.”

The report quotes unattributed radio traffic from the day, allegedly from a command staff member, who responded to reported looting in the city’s central district, by stating: “looting is expected. Let it happen.”

The report argues that arrests on this day had to be approved by civilians working in the police department’s legal section, with officers required to radio in and describe a situation before moving in to apprehend a suspect.

Minor spates of looting occurred on Saturday 25 April, but the heaviest rioting occurred two days later, when dozens of buildings were burned around the city and widespread looting broke out. The report argues that during this period of rioting, officers lacked coherent instructions from police commanders, were told to use non-lethal crowd control techniques ineffectively, and were not given adequate transportation, meaning some officers had to walk to their deployment areas.

The report argues that Baltimore police officers have not been given adequate riot control training, and that the officers were not issued with basic riot equipment during the initial stages of the unrest. Around 130 officers were injured during the period of rioting.

On 27 April the BPD media team also publicised what it described as a “credible threat” that rival gangs in the city had pledged to join forces and “take out” police officers in the city.

These threats were later dismissed as not credible by federal agents assisting the city during the protests, according to documents obtained under freedom of information laws by Vice.

The report also describes publicising this bad intelligence was a poor management decision. “Circulating this rumor undermined the credibility of law enforcement and unnecessarily inflamed tensions,” the report states.

The FOP also argued that Rawlings-Blake should have called for the deployment of the National Guard on 26 April, when the mood of the city had apparently calmed. The decision to call for the national guard was not made by mayor Rawlings-Blake until Monday 27 April, after the most serious rioting had begun.

Rawlings-Blake’s office is conducting their own review of the response to the unrest. On Wednesday she said this review would be “extensive, independent and consist of all the facts”.

“The FOP declined to wait and gather all of the information before rushing to conclusions,” Rawlings-Blake said in a statement.

“We will not follow the same approach, she added.

The Baltimore city police department did not respond to a request for comment.