After a night of rioting in

Baltimore, fear of violence

leads to closures

Object 1

After Freddie Grays funeral on Monday, violence erupted in Baltimore as protestors clashed with the police.
(Editor's note: Video contains graphic language.) (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)

By John Woodrow Cox, Justin Jouvenal and Emma Brown-April 28

BALTIMORE This wounded city assumed a defensive crouch Tuesday, one day
after looters and rioters wreaked havoc on West Side neighborhoods. Malls,
museums, courts, federal offices, universities, shops and a baseball stadium all locked
their doors out of fear that the mayhem would resume and potentially spread
despite the hundreds of National Guard members and police officers pouring into the
city.
Shortly after 2 p.m. Tuesday, there were reports of crowds throwing bottles near the
scene of some of Monday nights rioting.
The Orioles postponed their afternoon baseball game, the American Heart Association
canceled a scheduled conference, and the Maryland Science Center at Baltimores
Inner Harbor was closed, interrupting planned field trips for six schools and 400
students. Baltimore City schools were already closed for the day, but Baltimore County
public schools canceled afternoon activities and Morgan State University ended

classes at 4 p.m.
Even as volunteers swept up the messes left by brick-throwing mobs and defiant
residents came out to reclaim streets now filled with law enforcement vehicles, a
sense of fear hung over Charm City like so much smoke from ruined storefronts and
smoldering cars.
Security Square, a shopping mall west of the city, closed amid social media rumors
that it would be the site of further riots, and Eastpoint Mall in eastern Baltimore County
closed as well. The federal government closed more than a half dozen of its Baltimorearea offices, and the massive Social Security Administration in Woodlawn began early
dismissal of its 10,000 employees out of an abundance of caution, a spokeswoman
said.

Small groups of young people threw rocks and other objects during
confrontations with police officers
And although libraries and recreation centers remained open, Baltimores public
schools were closed, and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) estimated Tuesday morning
that the police presence in the city had doubled since Monday.
Hogan, who activated the National Guard to assist, promised a heavy police presence
into the night Tuesday to deter further violence and fires.
[Live updates: Rioting rocks Baltimore]

Things are going to be different today, Hogan said during a news conference
broadcast live on Baltimore television stations. He blamed Mondays havoc on roving
gangs of thugs.
Well be more prepared here tonight, Hogan added. Well have more people here
from the police, from the Guard and from the fire departments around the state.
The violence erupted Monday afternoon shortly after crowds gathered to eulogize
Freddie Gray, who died April 19 of a severe spinal injury he suffered while in police
custody a week earlier.
[What you really need to know about Baltimore ]
Officials struggled, sometimes with themselves, to find the right mixture of outrage
over the violence and sympathy for the underlying anger of a beleaguered community
traumatized by Grays death. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D) said she shouldnt
have used the thugs to describe the rioters Monday night.
We dont have thugs in Baltimore, she said, echoing one of several church leaders
who appeared with her at Bethel A.M.E. Church in West Baltimore to announce that
several places of worship will provide food and comfort for students Tuesday.
Sometimes my own little anger translator gets the best of me. ... Theyre going to
regret what theyve done, but its too late.
But even as officials planned for the worst Tuesday, a groundswell of Baltimore
residents took to the streets to show a different side of this city via a massive,
decentralized and impromptu cleanup effort.
When the sun rose over this West Baltimore neighborhood, just a dozen volunteers
were picking up garbage. But by noon, hundreds of people armed with brooms,
dustpans, trash cans and even small bulldozers had crowded the blocks surrounding
the intersection that became the epicenter of Mondays riots.
Some handed out water and trash bags to strangers, while others plucked garbage
from vacant lots and picked up broken glass. Activists shouted through bullhorns, a
man was registering people to vote, a woman burned incense and a group
spontaneously broke out into a round of Amazing Grace.
I didnt have to work, so I wanted to do my part, said Antoinette Rucker, 27, of
Baltimore County, who loaded a trash can into her car and headed into the city to help.
One island of normalcy was the public library just down the block from the burned out
CVS that was a center of violence Monday.
A day earlier, dozens of patrons and staff members, including several unaccompanied
children, took shelter at the Enoch Pratt Free Library as the riot raged outside. When
branch manager Melanie Diggs saw the mob moving down the street, she locked the
doors and turned out the lights and ushered everyone into the childrens section on the
lower level. They hid for more than two hours before scooting out a side door.

Some of the kids who were here yesterday walked in this morning, Diggs said
Tuesday. That made my heart melt. The library is a safe place.
At least 19 officers were injured in a melee of brick throwing and car burning, some
suffering broken bones. At least one was still at the shock trauma center in Baltimore
on Tuesday morning. Officials said his condition was unknown.
City officials tallied more than a dozen structural fires and 144 vehicle fires. Nearly 200
people were arrested, said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who defended the citys
response to the violence. Some have said that officials did not act fast enough to quell
problems.
[A political test for a mayor and a new governor]
We responded quickly to a very difficult situation, Rawlings-Blake said after touring
Mondawmin Mall, where she said looters had caused significant property damage.
There is a delicate balancing act to respond, but not over-respond.
Rawlings-Blake said it was painful to watch the violence on the streets.
Late Monday night, Grays family called for calm. I want you all to get justice for my
son, but dont do it like this, said his mother, Gloria Darden. Dont tear up the whole
city.
Although the streets grew quiet shortly after sunrise, problems were reported as late
as 5 a.m., and police officers in riot gear continued to block an intersection that had
been at the center of the mayhem, near a CVS pharmacy that was burned and looted.
National Guard troops had set up a checkpoint outside Baltimores Western District
police station by early Tuesday morning, but no troops were visible at the West
Baltimore intersection that was at the center of Mondays protests. City officials said
200 Guard troops were on the ground and dozens more were awaiting deployment.
Maj. Gen. Linda Singh, the commander of the Maryland National Guard, promised
Monday evening that her troops would be out in massive force.
We are going to be patrolling the streets in order to ensure that we are protecting
property, Singh said at a news conference, adding that troops would be serving in a
supporting role. This is not martial law. Martial law means that at that point the military
fully takes over, so we have not reached that point.
Police and city officials rejected any connection between Mondays violence and the
peaceful protests that followed Grays death, saying that the looters and rioters were
criminals who exploited the moment. Many Baltimore residents agreed.
One woman in her 60s said she locked herself in her home Monday evening and
listened as violence took over her neighborhood. It reminded her of the 1968 riots that
followed the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. But this was worse, she
said.
She saw police cars burn, and young men dance on the roofs of the vehicles. On TV,

she saw the CVS just around the corner the one where she gets her medication
be looted and destroyed. She heard hundreds of protesters taunt police through the
night.
Very, very intense, she said, declining to give her name because she feared that the
drug dealers in her community the ones she shoos off her corner might seek
retribution.
She said she has witnessed police beat young men here and supports the cause of
those who have peacefully protested in recent days. But she cannot understand the
chaos that erupted Monday, the day of Grays funeral.
I was really angry, she said. I was really, really angry.
Many Baltimore residents said they were sickened by what they had seen in their
streets the night before and felt moved to help.
My mother always taught me to control the controllable, said Monica Mitchell, 34,
who said she had been unable to sleep Monday night as she watched her city overrun
by riots.
Mitchell gathered a rake, gloves and garbage bags and headed to Pennsylvania and
North avenues, near the burned CVS pharmacy. She arrived at the intersection, which
still smelled of charred plastic, shortly after 5 a.m.
Just two weeks ago, she took one of her two sons to a library at this same
intersection. Now, a line of 20 officers in full riot gear stood guard. It felt surreal to her,
she said.
She said she understood the communitys frustration. Its an area with a high
unemployment rate, where people often have little to lose, she said. She pulled her
phone from her pocket and, as sirens blared in the distance, read the words of Maya
Angelou.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise, she said. Into a daybreak thats
wondrously clear, I rise.
[I was knocked to the ground by Freddie Gray rioters, then helped to my feet]
A block away, Cristal Renshaw had been out since 6 a.m., picking up trash off the
streets after watching events on Baltimores streets unfold on TV for 10 hours Monday.
Tuesday is her birthday.
She felt compelled to act.
I watched the CVS I go to burn, Renshaw said with a hoodie pulled up against the
morning chill. Now, Im just going to clean up. I just wanted to help this city.
There seemed to be little rhyme or reason dictating which stores and shops looters
targeted. Across the city, drugstores were burned out, shoe stores were broken into
and video shops had been emptied.

At a West Baltimore strip mall at 3 a.m., two women walked through the rubble of a
looted Shoe City. One woman plucked a pair of shoes from a broken window. At 4:30
a.m., police sirens pierced the darkness, fires still smoldered, and stragglers walked
through the city carrying shopping bags full of loot.
Meanwhile, shop owners tried to contain the damage.
[Woman called mom of the year after beating a young man out of the riots]
Before dawn, the owners of HipHop Fish & Chicken were installing glass at the
entrance to their soul food restaurant.
Looters had broken into the restaurant and stole more than $10,000, the owners said.
Vandals also broke into a second location nearby, where they shattered bulletproof
glass and broke into a safe.
They trashed the place, said Wally Zablah, who owns the restaurant with his brother,
Max Zablah.
The brothers, who identified themselves as Palestinians from Jerusalem, said the
violence in Baltimore didnt make sense.
Even Freddie Gray, he wouldnt approve it, said Wally Zablah, 41. They just want to
destroy the city. This isnt going to get them justice.

Grays name is the latest in a litany of black men who have died recently in connection
with police, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Walter Scott in North
Charleston, S.C. Their deaths have sparked national debate about the relationship
between law enforcement officials and the communities they work in.
Mondays violence came after a week of peaceful protests following Grays death,
angering some Baltimore residents who said that looting and rioting hurt efforts to
push for a change in police tactics.
Marvin Warfield, his voice rising, swept trash with a wide broom at the opening of an
alley, just feet from where cars burned on W. North Avenue hours earlier.
Youth dont know how to articulate, he said. The only way they know how is
violence.
The women cleaning next to him agreed, nodding.
How are you honoring Freddie Grays legacy by doing that? he continued.
Darlene Cain said that police fatally shot her son in 2008, but even so, she
understands that they play an essential role in the neighborhood.
I still want protection out here, she said. I still want my community to be safe. We
have to work together, whether we like it or not.

She and Warfield, both 54, said they resent that a meaningful cause had been marred
by violent opportunists. And they insisted that Mondays chaos had nothing to do with
Gray.
Gone are businesses they suspect will never reopen. And the CVS, where the
communitys elderly got their medication and its mothers got their baby formula, has
been ravaged.
Hurt, Cain said. Heartbroken.
You cant be nothing but hurt, Warfield added.
DeNeen L. Brown, Lynh Bui, Peter Hermann, Dana Hedgpeth, Mary Pat Flaherty,
Ovetta Wiggins, J. Freedom du Lac, Ashley Halsey III, Jenna Johnson, Mike DeBonis
and Joshua Hicks contributed to this report.

John Woodrow Cox is part of The Post's local enterprise team.

Emma Brown writes about national education and about people with a stake in
schools, including teachers, parents and kids.