A First Amendment battle looms in Georgia, where the state is framing opposition to a police training complex as a criminal conspiracy

By Rachel McKane, Brandeis University and David Pellow, University of California, Santa Barbara

When does lawful protest become criminal activity? That question is at issue in Atlanta, where 57 people have been indicted and arraigned on racketeering charges for actions related to their protest against a planned police and firefighter training center that critics call “Cop City.” 

Racketeering charges typically are reserved for people accused of conspiring toward a criminal goal, such as members of organized crime networks or financiers engaged in insider trading. Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr is attempting to build an argument that seeking to stop construction of the police training facility – through actions that include organizing protests, occupying the construction site and vandalizing police cars and construction equipment – constitutes a “corrupt agreement” or shared criminal goal.

The indictment’s justification is rooted in long-standing anti-anarchist sentiments within the U.S. government. However, some civil rights organizations call this combination of charges unprecedented.

As scholars who study environmental change and social justice, we believe the charges seek to suppress typical acts of civil disobedience. They also target grassroots community organizing models and ideas rooted in the practice of mutual aid – people organizing collective networks in order to meet each other’s basic needs.

The RICO indictment against ‘Cop City’ protesters describes the accused protesters as ‘militant anarchists.’

The ‘Stop Cop City’ movement

“Cop City,” officially known as the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, was first proposed in 2017. The facility is expected to cost US$90 million and is located on 85 acres of public land in the Weelaunee Forest, once home to the Indigenous Muscogee Creek peoples. The site is owned by the city of Atlanta but sits on unincorporated land in DeKalb County, just outside the city.

The opposition campaign has garnered support from activists and environmentalists who are concerned about militarization of police forces and potential threats to the Black community, as well as to climate resilience in Atlanta.

Members of Defend the Atlanta Forest, a decentralized movement of grassroots groups and individuals, argue that the threatened forest provides essential ecological services – filtering rainwater, preventing flooding, providing habitat for wildlife and cooling the city in a time of climate change.

Activists have led protest marches, written letters to elected officials and organized a referendum for the public to decide the future of the property. Some have camped out in the Welaunee Forest – a method that radical environmental defense groups like Earth First! have used to delay or prevent logging. In one instance, activists reportedly set construction equipment on fire.

Authorities have responded with force. In January 2023, police fatally shot activist Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, who had been camping on the Cop City site for months. Authorities assert that Terán had shot and wounded a state trooper, while Terán’s family contends that they were protesting peacefully.

An independent autopsy concluded that Teran was shot 57 times while sitting with hands raised. A prosecutor opted not to file charges against state troopers involved in the shootout, calling their use of deadly force “objectively reasonable.”

Attorney General Carr indicted 61 activists on Sept. 5, 2023, under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which is a broader version of the 1970 federal RICO law. Three defendants have been charged with money laundering for transferring money to protesters occupying the forest around the construction site, and five are charged with domestic terrorism and arson. Some of the accused face up to 20 years in prison.

Clashes between protesters and police have continued. Protesters organized a march for Nov. 13 and were met by heavily armed police officers in riot gear. When activists attempted to push past the officers, the police used tear gas and flash-bang grenades.

How does RICO apply?

Georgia’s 109-page indictment of “Cop City” protesters paints a broad – and, in our view, troubling – picture of the actions and beliefs that allegedly contributed to what it describes as a corrupt agreement.

The indictment cites the 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police as the event that sparked the “conspiracy.” It refers to the Atlanta-based movement as the Defend the Atlanta Forest “Enterprise” and describes participants as engaging with “anarchist” ideas and practices such as “collectivism, mutualism/mutual aid, and social solidarity.”

Protesters use these practices, the indictment asserts, to advance their goal of stopping construction of the training center. As evidence, it cites examples, including posting calls to action on online blogs, reimbursement for printed documents and transferring money to activists for materials such as camping gear, food, communications equipment and, in two instances, ammunition.

Threatening First Amendment rights

As we see it, these activists are being criminalized for their political beliefs and for engaging in activities protected by the First Amendment, such as exercising free speech. Throughout the indictment, the Georgia attorney general uses the term “anarchist,” we believe, as a synonym for “criminal.”

Such language echoes the Immigration Act of 1903, also known as the Anarchist Exclusion Act. This law targeted anarchists for exclusion from the U.S. solely based on their political beliefs. Section 2 of the law states that “anarchists, or persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the government of the United States or of all governments or all forms of law, shall be excluded from admission into the United States.”

This wording reflects a widespread view of anarchy as a state of violent disorder. In fact, however, many anarchist thinkers actually proposed to organize society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government.

Another, broader view of anarchy is that it is an ideology and practice of organizing communities and society in ways that confront any and all forms of oppression, including oppression by government.

Why would such a philosophy be deemed threatening? Consider recent U.S. history.

The Black Panthers

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the federal government sought to repress and criminalize the Black Panther Party for Self Defense as part of a covert and illegal counterintelligence program, known as COINTELPRO.

The Black Panther Party created extensive community survival and mutual aid programs for Black communities at a time of ongoing government neglect. Offerings included free access to medical and dental clinics, ambulance service and buses to visit friends and relatives in prison.

The Black Panther Party organized dozens of social programs to directly meet local needs in underserved areas like New York’s South Bronx.

The Black Panthers’ free breakfast for children program fed thousands of children across the country. In Chicago, local police destroyed food the night before the program was set to begin operations. A memo by an FBI special agent called the program an attempt to “create an image of civility” and “assume community control,” thus threatening the centralized authority of the U.S. government.

Federal agencies relied mainly on covert tactics to surveil, infiltrate and discredit the Black Panther Party. Like the Cop City protesters, the Black Panthers also engaged in direct confrontations with police.

However, we see the current use of RICO charges to address political activism and protest activities as a new tactic.

Future implications

In our research, we have explored how mutual aid groups establish networks of care and survival in the face of climate change. We expect mutual aid to become even more important for Black and Indigenous people of color as environmental disasters become more frequent.

From our perspective, efforts to stop Cop City demonstrate the interconnection between two critical issues: overpolicing of communities of color and climate change. We see Georgia’s RICO indictment as an attempt to repress social movement activity, using the state’s tools of legal interpretation and enforcement.

Criminalizing collectivism, mutual aid and social solidarity is particularly concerning for historically marginalized populations, who often rely on these tactics for survival.

Seeking to use the state’s political processes, organizers recently collected over 116,000 signatures supporting a ballot referendum that, if approved, would cancel the lease of the city-owned site for the training center.

However, Atlanta officials have refused to verify those signatures as they await a federal court ruling on whether the organizers missed a key deadline. Meanwhile, Atlanta is already clearing land for construction at the training site.

Rachel McKane, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Brandeis University and David Pellow, Department Chair and Professor of Environmental Studies and Director, Global Environmental Justice Project, University of California, Santa Barbara

Originally published on December 1st in The Conversation.  

Related Articles

61 “Stop Cop City” activists hit with racketeering charges, People's Dispatch

Cop City Protesters Arrested After Chaining Themselves to Construction Equipment, Common Dreams

‘People Have Been Protesting Against Cop City Since We Found Out About It’, FAIR 

Vigils For Tortuguita: Land Defenders Erupt In Solidarity, Progressive Hub

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County Exhumes Dexter Wade’s Body Before Family’s Arrival: ‘They Dug Him Up Without My Permission’

By Shaunicy Muhammad 

Hinds County exhumed Dexter Wade’s body from the local penal colony at 8 a.m. on Monday, hours before his family was set to arrive to witness his removal from the spot where local officials buried him long before notifying the family of his death.

The family’s attorney, Ben Crump, cited a signed letter from the Hinds County Board of Supervisors to Dennis Sweet, another attorney for the family. The letter said the “exhuming will take place on Monday, November 13, 2023 at 11:30am.”

Crump and Sweet said they had an agreement with the Hinds County Board of Supervisors that Wade’s mother would be able to attend the exhumation. The family only learned that his body had already been removed when they arrived at the Hinds County Penal Farm.

                                                    

Wade died in early March after an off-duty Jackson Police Department officer fatally struck him with his vehicle as he attempted to walk across the southbound lanes of Interstate 55. His mother Bettersten Wade searched for him for months and reported him missing to police on March 15. But even though Dexter Wade had a prescription bottle with his name on it and the coroner’s office had already determined his identity by the time his mother filed the police report, JPD did not inform her of his death until late August—over a month after his burial.

Wade’s family asked to exhume his body on Nov. 13 in preparation for an independent autopsy and a “proper burial” for their loved one, Crump said.

“It was an agreed upon position with the County that Ms. Bettersten Wade would be here at 11:30 to commence the exhumation of her son,” Crump said at a vigil on Nov. 13. “Like a thief in the night, they went and took the body out of the ground. Ms. Bettersten asked, ‘Who gave permission to public works? What are they hiding?’” Crump said.

“Is this how the system works?” Bettersten Wade asked on Nov. 13 at the vigil. “They put him in the ground without my permission; they dug him up without my permission.”

Bettersten Wade, pictured with attorney Ben Crump, reported her son Dexter missing in March 2023. She learned in August 2023 that an off-duty police officer struck and killed Dexter Wade in March and that her son was later buried without her knowledge. Photo by Shaunicy Muhammad

Crump and Wade’s family have questioned whether the lapse in communication from officials was related to the 2022 conviction of a JPD police officer charged in the beating death of her 62-year-old brother George Robinson. Robinson was pulled from a vehicle in the Washington Addition neighborhood and beaten by officers, witnesses said in January 2019. He died days later.

Bettersten Wade questioned how officials could claim they couldn’t get in touch with her to tell her that her son’s body had been identified when she would have been on their radar following the high-profile court case.

“How could you not say this is a vendetta? I put in a missing person’s report. There’s my address; there’s my phone number. How could they not put all that together?” Bettersten Wade said at a press conference on Oct. 30.

Dexter Wade was walking across Interstate 55 on March 5, 2023, when an SUV driven by an off-duty Jackson police officer struck him. Hinds County buried his body in a pauper’s grave at the Hinds County Penal Farm in July 2023. Photo courtesy Dexter Wade’s family

The Hinds County Coroner’s Office turned Dexter Wade’s body over to his family following the vigil. Crump said a public exhumation would have allowed for “full transparency” with the family and the public.

Since NBC News first reported about Wade’s death and subsequent burial, Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba said that the circumstances were not the result of police misconduct or maliciousness. “There was a lack of communication with the missing person’s division, the coroner’s office and accident investigation,” Lumumba said on Oct. 26.

At Monday’s vigil, Crump accused Jackson officials of shifting blame and “trying to wash the blood off their hands.”

“There is no excuse for the way this case has been handled,” the attorney said in a Nov. 13 statement following the vigil. “Every time Ms. Wade takes a step toward getting answers as to what happened to her son, Jackson officials bring her two steps back. We hoped today that Ms. Wade could receive some answers and closure, but once again she is just left with more questions and even more trauma.”

Investigators with the Hinds County Coroner’s Office removed Dexter Wade’s body and turned it over to his family on Nov. 13, 2023. Photo by Shaunicy Muhammad

Jackson Director of Communications Melissa Faith Payne sent a statement to the Mississippi Free Press on Oct. 26 saying that “officers were unable to identify him at the time” of his death on March 5.

“Days later, the coroner’s office was able to identify the victim as Dexter Wade by way of medication found in his pocket,” the statement said. “However, the contact information for Mr. Wade was outdated, and neither the coroner’s office nor investigating officers were able to make contact with Mr. Wade’s family.”

“Subsequently, on March 14th, Dexter Wade’s family reported him missing to the Jackson Police missing person’s unit,” Payne continued. “Missing persons officers did not know that the pedestrian victim from March 5th was the same person reported missing on March 14th. The lead detective in the missing person’s case continued to investigate until he retired in July.”

Payne said a second officer began a follow-up investigation in August “that led back to the coroner’s office.”

“Through collaborative efforts, they were able to close the missing person’s case, by identifying Dexter Wade as the pedestrian who was killed March 5th,” the statement continued. “While this is a very tragic and unfortunate accident, our investigation found no malicious intent by any Jackson police staff.”

When asked for comment today about Wade’s exhumation, Payne said “the City had no part in either his burial or exhumation. That was entirely with the county.”

Continued Calls for a DOJ Investigation

Officials have not said who approved the 8 a.m. exhumation. The Mississippi Free Press was unable to reach the Hinds County Board of Supervisors for comment for this story.

Hinds County Administrator Kenny Wayne Jones told WAPT on Monday that the situation was “very unfortunate” but that there was “no cover-up or anything like that—just miscommunication.”

Attorney Ben Crump, right, and Bettersten Wade, center, look at Wade’s body bag as investigators with the Hinds County coroner’s office place him in the back of a hearse following exhumation on Nov. 13, 2023. Photo by Shaunicy Muhammad

Attorney Crump continued to call on the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct their own investigation into the circumstances around Wade’s death and burial. U.S. House Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat whose district includes most of Jackson, also voiced support for a federal investigation in a statement on Monday.

“The circumstances surrounding Mr. Wade’s death are deeply troubling,” Thompson said. “The pain his mother and loved ones are enduring is unimaginable. The extensive local and national media coverage of this tragedy has prompted numerous calls to my office from concerned citizens in Jackson who are also searching for answers. The system owes Mr. Wade’s family an explanation for the callous manner in which his untimely death was mishandled.”

Crump said the family plans to have an independent autopsy conducted on Wade’s body. Campaign Zero, an organization based in Washington, D.C., is assisting with the costs. The attorney said the family plans to give him “a proper funeral” on Nov. 20 and that he expects civil-rights attorney and MSNBC host Al Sharpton to attend.

“Justice delayed is justice denied, and we will keep fighting for justice in Dexter’s name until his mother gets the closure she deserves,” Crump said.

This article originally appeared in the Mississippi Free Press on November 17th, 2023.  

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Feds to probe Trenton police for ‘problematic’ use of force and illegal stops

BY: Dana Difilippo 

The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a civil rights investigation into Trenton and its police department, citing concerns that officers use excessive force and routinely, illegally stop and search pedestrians and motorists without reason or warrants.

Investigators will probe “problematic” uses of force against people stopped for minor traffic offenses and those who were cooperating or already restrained, said Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division.

They’ll also investigate allegations that officers have used force to punish people observing or questioning their actions and that officers have escalated tensions with residents, injuring people in mental health crises, Clarke said in announcing the probe Tuesday.

“These allegations are serious and credible, and our investigation will seek to establish whether these allegations are true,” Clarke said. “Effective policing requires public trust. When law enforcement officers violate the Constitution and federal law, it erodes trust and undermines public safety efforts.”

U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said investigators will try to determine if the department has an unconstitutional, systemic “pattern or practice” of police misbehavior. The investigation is expected to take up to a year. A similar probe against Newark police a decade ago resulted in a 2014 consent decree that required the department to adopt reforms.

Investigators haven’t gotten specific reports of racial profiling, but 49% of the 7-square-mile capital city’s 90,000 residents are Black, while 37% are Hispanic or Latino, census figures show.

“We do not allege racial discrimination here. We are going to follow the facts and the law. We are aware, of course, that there is a sizable population of people of color within Trenton,” Clarke said.

Investigators will review use-of-force reports, court records, news media reports of police brutality and misconduct, officers’ body camera footage, officer training materials, and policies on how the department investigates citizen complaints and disciplines officers, Clarke said. They’ll also meet with police staff, observe officers on duty, and meet with the public, she added.

“As we begin this investigation, we recognize the challenges that Trenton and the Trenton Police Department face in addressing violent crime,” Clarke said. “But meeting these challenges requires confidence by the public that the police are committed to protecting them. It requires the assurance that police do not hold themselves above the law.”

Sellinger said he attended a town hall five weeks ago in Trenton where residents “raised concerns about excessive force, concerns about stops and searches done for no good reason.” Still, he and Clarke said no single incident prompted the probe.

But Trenton police have a long history of brutality and alarming encounters that have resulted in lawsuits and indictments:

• An officer was criminally indicted last year for pepper-spraying an elderly man, Joseph Ahr, on his porch after officers went to the home to talk to his son in 2020. Ahr died three weeks later.
• Two officers were charged in 2019 for beating a man after a routine traffic stop.
• An officer’s 2022 shooting of an unarmed motorist, which left him paralyzed, drove the city council president to demand more transparency and ask for the police director’s resignation. The director, Steve Wilson, remains in charge, and a Mercer County grand jury deemed the shooting justified.
• Officers made headlines in 2020 after they restrained a man in mental crisis by kneeling on him as he lay face-down in the dirt until he fell limp. He was declared dead minutes later.

In the state’s most recent report on major discipline meted out to law enforcement officers statewide, just one Trenton officer faced major discipline — for using a police department wash ticket to wash his personal vehicle. The police department has about 250 officers, and Trenton is the state’s fifth largest city.

Wilson’s office referred questions to Mayor Reed Gusciora, a Democrat who was a longtime state Assemblyman until he became Trenton mayor in 2018.

In a statement, Gusciora said he learned of the investigation Tuesday morning and has instructed all levels of city government to fully cooperate.

“My administration knows all too well the difficulty and danger police officers face on a daily basis. We thank and support the overwhelming majority of officers at the city, county, and state level who do the right things every day to keep Trentonians safe,” Gusciora said.

He credited Trenton officers for seizing drugs, more than 200 guns, and $133,722 from gun and drug traffickers in recent months.

“But we also recognize that the community’s trust in our police force is critical,” Gusciora said. “If any members of law enforcement violate the public trust or act in contravention of our state and federal laws, they should and must be held accountable.”

Patrick Colligan and Michael Cipriano, who head the state and city Policemen’s Benevolent Association, respectively, put out a joint statement that they “understand and respect the purpose” of the investigation and “remain committed to transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement.”

“However, we hope that this inquiry will also shed light on the pressing need for additional resources and support for our officers,” the statement read.

Trenton police respond to more than 100,000 calls for service a year, including 41 shootings in just the past month alone, Colligan and Cipriano said.

“Our police headquarters is in dire need of repair, and resources have been limited. The loss of 105 officers in 2012 has had a lasting impact, and we have yet to recover to a safe staffing level,” they said. “Retention of officers remains a significant concern, with the Covid-19 pandemic adding unprecedented burdens to our staffing levels.”

Sellinger said investigators’ goal is to improve policing.

“The object of a pattern and practice investigation is not to assign blame,” Sellinger said. “It’s to help fix problems that may exist. Whatever our findings may be, our ultimate goal is to ensure that the people of Trenton are served by a police force that effectively fights crime while respecting the constitutional rights of every person.”

Photo credits: New Jersey Monitor, Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora (Edwin J. Torres Governor’s Office)

Originally published on October 24th, 2023, in the New Jersey Monitor.

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The Baltimore Sun’s Reckoning on Freddie Gray

 JUSTINE BARRON

Five days after Freddie Gray’s death, the Baltimore Sun (4/24/15) published on its website an interactive slideshow on his arrest, which it updated later that month as the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) added information. Audiences could click through a timeline of details of Gray’s long April 12, 2015, ride in a Baltimore police van, during which police reportedly made six stops before officers said they discovered their prisoner was unconscious. (Gray died on April 19, after a week in a coma.)

The slideshow was almost entirely sourced from the statements given by BPD leaders during press conferences, without independent corroboration. Some of the police claims were repeated as fact, with no attribution. “The driver of the transport van believes that Gray is acting irate in the back,” it stated at one point.

There was one small sign of resistance to the police narrative included in the slideshow: “Multiple witnesses tell the Sun they saw Gray beaten [at the second stop], but police say evidence including an autopsy disputes their accounts.” Here, as elsewhere in its Gray coverage, the Sun implicitly “corrected” witnesses with the police version of events.

The slideshow illustrated the Sun‘s general approach to coverage of Gray’s death, one of the biggest national stories to come out of Baltimore in decades: The narrative was largely shaped by police’s version of events, presented by the paper with limited skepticism or contradictory information. When witness accounts did appear in the Sun, they were usually reduced to brief uncorroborated soundbites.

Public strategically misled

Freddie Gray (1989–2015)

In a new book, They Killed Freddie Gray: The Anatomy of a Police Brutality Cover-Up, I reveal extensive evidence that undermines most of what the Sun reported in its slideshow timeline. My book is sourced to discovery evidence from the prosecution of six officers that was never presented in court, internal affairs investigation files and more. I reveal that police and prosecutors were aware of physical abuse that happened during the first two stops of Gray’s arrest, but strategically misled the public and manipulated evidence to hide it (as I also reported elsewhere: Appeal, 4/23/20; Daily Beast, 8/19/23).

In particular, I reveal that there were at least nine witnesses who saw police pull Gray out of the van at its second stop at Mount and Baker streets, shackle his ankles, and throw him headfirst back into a narrow compartment in the van. They also saw him becoming silent and motionless at that stop. Many of them reported these details to investigators early on. The medical examiner determined Gray’s fatal injury was caused by headfirst force into a hard surface, but she wasn’t told about these statements.

While the public saw a viral video of Gray screaming while he was loaded into the van during his arrest at the first stop, it heard much less about what happened at Mount and Baker streets. My book takes a look at the role the media played in both enabling the police’s coverup and gaslighting the witnesses.

The Sun was hardly alone in its “police say” approach to this story, but it arguably did the most damage. For one, it invested extensively in its Gray coverage, becoming the paper of record on the case, with its content republished or cited frequently by other outlets (e.g., Chicago Tribune, 4/25/15; CNN, 6/24/15). And much of the Sun’s coverage took a decidedly, and increasingly, pro-police slant.

Making a mystery

The Baltimore Sun (4/24/15) turned Freddie Gray’s death into a “mystery” by marginalizing witnesses who saw Gray physically abused by police.

Twelve days after police seized Gray, the Baltimore Sun (4/24/15) published “The 45-Minute Mystery of Freddie Gray’s Arrest,” exploring what was known and still unclear about his detention. The article cited three witnesses describing different types of excessive force used against Gray, alongside the police’s narrative. Over the next two years of protests, riots, trials of four officers (with no convictions) and outside investigations, the Sun continued fostering “mystery” and speculation around Gray’s cause of death (epitomized by the Rashomon-like documentary Who Killed Freddie Gray?, co-produced by the Sun and CNN—2/12/16).

Yet Gray’s death was a mystery by design. Police and city leaders began insisting early on that his cause of death could never be known. “It’s clear that what happened happened inside the van,” Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said on April 20, one day after Gray died; she asserted that Gray’s fatal injury must have happened while the van was moving, when there was nobody present to witness it.

Two days later, the Fraternal Order of Police’s attorney made a similar statement: “Our position is, something happened in that van, we just don’t know what.”

There was no evidence to support these claims—police had more evidence of excessive force at that time—but the narrative took hold. The Baltimore Sun (4/23/15) followed those statements by speculating about “rough rides,” a practice where police van drivers harm unseatbelted prisoners by driving erratically.

As city leaders invalidated the claims of witnesses, the Sun stopped highlighting their accounts in its stories, even investigative stories. A May 2015 article (5/20/15) disclosed a cellphone video that showed a few seconds of Gray silent and motionless at Mount and Baker streets, the second stop. “Less is known about what happened…when the van stopped at Baker Street and he was shackled,” the article stated.

Yet the story omitted what witnesses had previously told Sun reporters (4/24/15, 4/24/15) about Gray being beaten and thrown headfirst into the van at that stop. The accompanying video to the May 2015 article said that officers merely “placed him back into the van” at the second stop, which was the police’s narrative.

By the time the autopsy report was leaked to the Sun (6/24/15) in June, revealing that Gray’s fatal injury was caused by headfirst impact into a hard surface—comparable to “those seen in shallow-water diving incidents”—the witness accounts of the second stop were seemingly forgotten.

While the Sun marginalized and ultimately erased witnesses, it did not hesitate to give frequent weight and credibility to the claims of police, even anonymously sourced. The Sun (4/30/15) headlined one such claim in “Gray Suffered Head Injury in Prisoner Van, Sources Familiar With Investigation Say,” with the story reporting:

Baltimore police have found that Freddie Gray suffered a serious head injury inside a prisoner transport wagon with one wound indicating that he struck a protruding bolt in the back of the vehicle, according to sources familiar with the probe.

During the trials, the medical examiner refuted the bolt claim entirely, explaining that she had told detectives on April 28 that the bolt was not consistent with any of Gray’s injuries. Two days later, the bolt story was leaked to the media.

Embedded journalism

CJR (5/5/15) noted that even as the Baltimore Sun was granted “exclusive access” to the BPD Freddie Gray task force, “a coalition of news organizations demanding that police respond to requests for records related to the Gray case was being stonewalled.”

In 1991, former Baltimore Sun journalist and TV writer David Simon published the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which reflected the year he spent “embedded,” as he has often described it (e.g., Simon’s blog, 3/25/12, 7/7/23), in BPD’s homicide unit. Decades later, many of the cases brought forward by the detectives Simon made famous were overturned due to withheld evidence, coerced confessions and other misconduct; a local Innocence Project leader called Homicide “a cautionary tale for embedded journalism” (New York, 1/12/22).

In 2015, Sun journalist Justin George used the same language, “embedded,” to describe the nine days he spent attending meetings of BPD’s Freddie Gray “task force” (e.g., Twitter, 10/9/15). Police set up the task force to investigate the case during the last two weeks of April 2015. While BPD promoted George’s involvement as evidence of its transparency, the department denied even basic evidence, including 911 tapes, to other news outlets (CJR, 5/5/15).

The Sun (5/2/15) published George’s first article on the task force, “Exclusive Look Inside the Freddie Gray Investigation,” on May 2, the day after State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced charges against six officers. Then it published his four-part series, “Looking for Answers” (10/9/15), in October, ahead of the first trial.

BPD picked the right news outlet to give exclusive access. George’s articles read like a love letter to BPD and an implicit challenge to any serious prosecution of the officers. He described the investigators having to hide their identities, while passing angry residents and a “Fuck the Police” sign:

They all realized the importance of their investigation and that they were part of a pivotal moment in Baltimore history…. Amid the allegations of brutality, they wanted to show that they would leave no stone unturned.

George turned up the rhetorical dial in describing Homicide Major Stanley Brandford, “a former Marine who kept his gray hair shorn close” with “a calm demeanor, quick wit and an uncanny ability to memorize facts.” Brandford, George reported, worked late through the night of his birthday, the last night of the task force’s investigation, to prepare files for the State’s Attorney’s Office:

Brandford didn’t finish copying the files until 3:30 a.m. He took the case file home, told his wife what he was about to do, and snapped some photos of the file as a keepsake. The next morning, Brandford placed the thick file in a blue tote bag and returned to police headquarters.…

It was less than a half-mile walk, but he felt the weight of history in his hands. He waited for walk signs before he crossed streets, fearful a car might hit him, scattering hundreds of important documents over the street, he said later.

In a speech the next day, Mosby described the files Brandford delivered as “information we already had.” George did not include this statement in his reporting—undercutting as it did the “weight of history” in the anecdote.

Dramatizing a locker search

The Baltimore Sun produced a dramatic video of the search of Officer Caesar Goodson’s locker—a search that turned up nothing notable.

The online version of George’s four-part series includes several highly produced videos following Lamar Howard, a chatty, well-dressed detective having a busy couple of days. He hands out fliers to people in the street and stops by a school to collect security footage.

The video also shows Howard participating in a raid on the locker of the van driver, Officer Caesar Goodson, on April 28. (The case files show that BPD was seeking to pin liability on Goodson from early on; Goodson is cast in a cloud of suspicion throughout George’s articles.) As papers and clothes are removed from Goodson’s locker, Howard looks toward the camera and shakes his head in dismay.

The Sun’s video editors added stirring music and artful stills and jump cuts to its videos. The camera zooms in on big bolt cutters forcing open the lock on Goodson’s locker. It then cuts dramatically to a close-up of a broken lock on the ground.

Nothing of note was ever found in Goodson’s locker. But the Sun invested its multi-media budget in doing PR for BPD.

Case files show that, by the end of the two-week task force, investigators had collected statements from a dozen witnesses describing Gray being tased, beaten, kicked, forcefully restrained and thrown headfirst into the van. None of George’s stories included any reference to these witness accounts.

George does cite Detective Howard arriving at a conclusion about Gray’s death that seemingly left the case unsolved for BPD: “‘Whatever happened,’ Howard said, ‘happened in the van.’” It was the same claim made by the mayor before the task force ever met.

Ignoring evidence 

The Baltimore Sun (12/21/17) published texts messages from police officers it described as “candid, even vulnerable.”

In 2016, the Sun was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for its Freddie Gray coverage. Yet as more evidence in the case emerged over the years that followed, the news outlet neglected to update the public on it. (Until 2022, when the nonprofit Baltimore Banner launched, the Sun was the only major news outlet in the city.)

In 2017, BPD finally released files from the Gray investigation to the Sun (12/20/17) and other news outlets, including nine binders of paperwork and six sets of photos. While police withheld a lot of evidence, the binders still offered a gold mine. They included a transcript of the statement of the lieutenant involved in Gray’s arrest, which was never played in court and incriminates him in a coverup story; an alternate map of the van’s route that investigators were considering while promoting their official narrative publicly; dispatch reports that undermined the police narrative of when officers called for a medic; hospital photos showing marks on Gray’s body indicating excessive force; and more.

The Sun only reported on the files in one article (12/21/17), which covers some of the officers’ text messages. Reporter Kevin Rector described the text messages as “candid, even vulnerable.” He recounted the officers denying ever harming Gray and discussing the pressures they felt from so much “anti-police sentiment.” The article did not mention that, in the same text conversations, the officers discussed that they should be careful what they texted to each other.

In 2015, George wrote that the task force investigators had left “no stone unturned.” By 2017, the Baltimore Sun didn’t change that narrative by looking closely at any of the investigators’ work.

The Sun continued to overlook new evidence in Gray’s death in 2020, when I published an article in the Appeal (4/23/20) that contained embedded audio and video files never released to the public. These included the statements witnesses gave to investigators starting from hours after the arrest, photographic and other evidence of excessive force, and evidence of the officers developing their first-day coverup story around their knowledge of what happened at the second stop.

One Baltimore Sun reporter, Justin Fenton (4/27/20), tweeted out the Appeal article, indicating that he had at least reviewed the new evidence. A few months later, Fenton co-wrote an article (7/16/20) revisiting the Freddie Gray story in light of how Gov. Larry Hogan discussed it in his new memoir. The article gave no indication of new evidence in the case, while it perpetuated old narratives of a vague mystery:

[Hogan] writes that the cause of the man’s injuries and death is “in dispute.” But he offers just two possibilities: either the injuries were the result of “a tragic, unforeseeable accident,” or officers purposely gave Gray a “rough ride.” Could it have been something else? Hogan leaves out the possibility of anything in between, such as negligence on the part of officers in handling Gray’s transport.

In keeping with the Sun’s legacy in covering the Gray case, Fenton left off the accounts of more than a dozen witnesses who saw Gray abused by police and thrown headfirst into the van, the exact kind of mechanism that the autopsy report claimed caused his “shallow-water diving accident” type of injury.

The Baltimore Sun’s seemingly stubborn refusal to share specific new evidence in Baltimore’s best-known and reported story in at least a decade is perhaps more of a mystery than how Gray was killed by police. Whatever the Sun’s reasoning, the effect has been to support police and other officials in hiding facts behind a veil of endless speculation.

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Parts of this story were adapted from Justine Barron’s book They Killed Freddie Gray: The Anatomy of a Police Brutality Cover-Up (Arcade, 2023).

Featured image: Detail from the cover of They Killed Freddie Gray.

Originally published on FAIR.org, September 22nd, 2023. Reprinted with permission.     

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