A Washington Post story alleging that Freddie Gray tried to injure himself based on the testimony of another prisoner leaves a lot of room for skepticism. The story is based on the testimony of an anonymous prisoner, who says that Mr. Gray inflicted his own injuries. But the case for skepticism starts in the second paragraph:
The prisoner, who is currently in jail, was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him. His statement is contained in an application for a search warrant, which is sealed by the court. The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.
So, if the prisoner could not see Mr. Gray, on what basis does this prisoner conclude that Mr. Gray was inflicting his own injuries?
We know from the article that this report was written by a police investigator. This is an obvious effort by the Baltimore police department to leak any kind of information that would cause a reasonable person to blame the victim and take the focus off of the systemic police brutality that the Baltimore police department has engaged in over the years. The Washington Post notes that this is a small piece of the puzzle regarding the investigation; therefore, we should not use this to draw conclusions.
Furthermore, the police contradict their own story when they say that they don't know whether Mr. Gray was injured before or during his ride in the police van. This suggests that the police themselves are skeptical of the accuracy of this story. And the attorney for Mr. Gray's family has serious problems with the accuracy of the reports that have come out of the police department.
“We disagree with any implication that Freddie Gray severed his own spinal cord,” Downs said. “We question the accuracy of the police reports we’ve seen thus far, including the police report that says Mr. Gray was arrested without force or incident.”
And since we know that the bus driver stopped the van once to check on Mr. Gray and since we know that Mr. Gray himself asked for medical attention, those two facts militate against the claim that Mr. Gray somehow sought to injure himself.