BALTIMORE — The six suspended Baltimore police officers charged Friday in the death of Freddie Gray are a mix of veterans and recent recruits, of varying ranks and assignments. Three of them are black and three of them are white.

Theirs were once lives of anonymous uniformed service but now the five men and one woman have been thrust into the center of one of the nation’s most volatile police controversies. The charges arise from the death of a man who prosecutors say was illegally arrested, bound at his hands and feet and left to fend for himself in a moving police van without the aid of a seatbelt, and then denied timely medical care when he called out for it.

Many activists on the streets of Baltimore on Friday expressed relief and jubilation at the charges, viewing the death of Mr. Gray as the latest instance of American peace officers treating a black life with a shocking callousness. In their view, the officers represent the all-too-common horror of urban law enforcement, in both its cruelty and its routine disregard for human life.

And yet, at the same time, family and colleagues rallied around the officers, declaring their innocence and praising their work.