This week the second trial of a Baltimore City police officer over the death of small-time hood Freddie Gray is set to commence. The officer now in the dock, Edward M. Nero, is being prosecuted on the unprecedented grounds that he lacked probable cause to arrest Gray, and that therefore his actions in detaining Gray and placing him in a police paddy-wagon were not just a mistake in judgment (if that), but criminal. The Gray police prosecutions are a case study of how an American metropolis can descend into mob rule, and how fragile are the social bonds and legal protections that hold this republic together.
Nero was one of the bicycle patrol officers that first detained Gray and is charged with the least serious offenses. The prosecution’s theory of the case is that Gray died from injuries received during his ride in the police van, not through anything that Nero or his partner did. As a result, neither Nero nor his partner is charged with offenses directly related to Gray’s death. But Nero and his partner are white, and appear on video dragging a recalcitrant Gray into the police van. Letting them off the hook when three black officers have also been wrongly charged in Gray’s death would be politically impossible for Baltimore’s craven mayor and state’s attorney. So they have ginned up charges against Nero and his partner which are different, but just as legally and morally outrageous as the charges against their black colleagues.......
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