It was only a two-minute drive between the police station and where Freddie Gray was arrested. Why, then, did it take 30 minutes?
So many egregious and disturbing lies are being told about Freddie Gray.
One conservative reporter is claiming that Gray severed his spine jumping from a three-story window eluding police and then running full force into a wall. Except even the Baltimore police have claimed they simply spotted him on the street.
Other conservatives literally doctored a lead paint exposure settlement that Gray and his sister received and claimed that it was for a severe spinal injury he received in a car accident.
Perhaps no lie being told, though, is more disturbing than the one the Baltimore police are leaking to/through the Washington Post—that Gray injured himself in the van. It is irresponsible for the Washington Post to advance this lie, and it's corrupt for the Baltimore police to be leaking it to advance a false narrative to protect them.
We will investigate and disprove these lies below.
The Baltimore Police Department and the Washington Post are advancing the lie that after they arrested Gray, he deliberately crushed his own voice box, fractured three of his own vertebrae, and severed his own spine. The evidence they claim to have for this is a prisoner they claim is speaking anonymously about what he heard when he was put into the police transport van in a box next to Gray. Jayne Miller, an investigative reporter for television station WBAL, stated in an interview this morning that this witness has several years of prison hanging over his head and that he currently has a suspended sentence. Is he saying these things because he's getting a deal for it?
Here's the bogus claim:
A prisoner sharing a police transport van with Freddie Gray told investigators that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a police document obtained by The Washington Post.
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.
Now, because the Baltimore police refuse to release their reports or make official statements on what happened to Gray, we will use the facts we have to debunk this lie that Gray basically committed suicide in the back of the police van.
1. Gray was CLEARLY injured before he was placed in the back of the police van.
This video shows Gray in clear pain after he was arrested. He is screaming and his legs do not appear to be working. The people filming the video are angry because they see him in pain as well.
Starting at 1:41 in the video below, another onlooker filmed the arrest of Gray. In this video, his legs are limp and he appears to be in serious pain.
2. It took the police nearly 38 minutes to get him to the police station, but it's only a two-minute drive away.
Here is the official timeline released by the Baltimore Police Department:
1. April 12, 8:39 a.m. Mount St and North Ave ‐ Baltimore police begin pursuit of Freddie Gray
2. 8:40-8:46 a.m. 1700 Block of Presbury St ‐ Police pursue Gray and eventually apprehend him two blocks away at 1700 Presbury
3. 8:46 -8:54 a.m. Mount St and Baker St ‐ Police re-position Gray at Mount and Baker streets
Again, you must remember that it only takes two minutes to get from 1700 Presbury to the West Precinct Station. Already, they've taken eight minutes from the time Gray was arrested.
It appears that this video was filmed by someone during this time where police pulled over again.
4. 8:54-8:59 a.m. Travel from Mount and Baker to Druid Hill and Dolphin St ‐ Police travel to Druid Hill and Dolphin when they get a call to return to 1600 North Ave.
As the van travels toward Central Booking, the driver again stops near the intersection of Druid Hill Avenue and Dolphin Street and calls for an officer to check on Gray. After the check, which has not been described, occurs, the van is requested to return to the 1600 block of W. North Avenue to pick up another suspect.
Again, it has now been 13 minutes since Gray was arrested, the police station is two minutes away, and they still have not gotten him there yet.
This certainly lends itself to the theory that the police were doing what's called a "rough ride", where they deliberately drive erratically to injure a passenger.
5. 8:59 – 9:24 a.m. Travel from Druid Hill to Dolphin St 1600 North Ave ‐ Police pick up a suspect. The van travels back to W. North Avenue and picks up a second suspect. Police have declined to identify the second suspect, saying he is now a witness in the criminal investigation.
6. 9:24 a.m. 1000 block of N. Mount St, Western District station ‐ Police travel to the Western District station where they call paramedics.
(UPDATE)
The Baltimore Police just admitted on Thursday, after security camera footage was released from a private business, that the van made at least two more stops that were not reported or included in their original timeline.
So Gray arrived at the police station a full 40 minutes after they arrested him. When they arrived at the station, he was unconscious and unresponsive.
3. The Baltimore police's leak to the Washington Post that Gray injured himself in the van and that another suspect heard him doing it is not supported by the facts.
a. On April 29, the Baltimore police claimed in documents leaked to the Washington Post that a second suspect who was arrested heard Freddie Gray deliberately banging up against the walls of the van, but here is where we've caught them in a lie:
A full six days earlier, Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts claimed that the second suspect said Gray was quiet in the back of the van.
b. Gray did not have ANY injuries, cuts, scrapes, bumps conducive with someone forcefully breaking his own vertebrae, voice box, and severing his own spine.
But as Jayne Miller, the WBAL investigative reporter, has said, none of the evidence presented thus far corroborates the police explanation of the injuries:
“The medical evidence does not suggest at all that he was able to injure himself,” Miller said. “The force of this injury, akin to have the force involved in a car accident with all that momentum going, that is much more force than you would get trying to bang your head against the wall of the van.”
“You have to have other injuries,” she continued. “You can’t bang your head against the van, to injure yourself in a fatal way, without having a bloodier head. There is just no information that would corroborate that.”
In the video below, Miller not only explains how Gray's injuries aren't consistent with him doing this himself, she explains how police, when they opened the back doors, did not do so as if they expected a raving madman to be there.
c. Furthermore, Miller states that Gray was actually completely unresponsive by the time the second suspect was loaded into the police van, which completely debunks the notion that Gray was slamming himself up against the wall in an attempt to injure himself when the other man was in the van.
4. While it's sad to even have to say this, everything about the very idea that Gray deliberately severed his own spine in the back of the police van is preposterous.
The truth is that it is disappointing that we even have to debunk this claim, because the claim itself is outrageous and shouldn't even have to be acknowledged. At the very most police are claiming they were arresting Gray for having a pocket knife. He didn't get in the back of that van and do this to himself. It's illogical in every sense of the word.
If you have any thoughts or evidence or analysis, please feel free to chime in in the comments section below.
