Baltimore braced for another night under a state of emergency, with officials promising that thousands of police officers and Maryland National Guard troops would patrol the streets Tuesday and ensure calm after looting, fires and rioting had convulsed the city.
In a late afternoon press conference, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said the city had been relatively calm thus far on Tuesday, and thanked residents and community leaders who helped clean up the debris from the Monday night riots.
“Today, I think we saw a lot more of what Baltimore is about,” she said. “We saw people coming together to reclaim our city."
Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said protests have been peaceful. Officers arrested a few looters on the east side of the city Tuesday morning, and one or two demonstrators who were part of a large march that moved down Pennsylvania Avenue on Tuesday afternoon.
“This is where we live. This is where we worship,” Batts said. “This is where our kids go to school, so don’t destroy it.”
Earlier officials tallied the toll of chaos: 235 arrests,including 34 juveniles; 15 structure fires; 144 vehicles destroyed; and more than 20 police officers injured. At least one civilian was reported in critical condition from the fires, but no other details were given.
During the news conference, Batts said nearly all of the officers, some who suffered hand injures when deflecting rocks and bottles, have been treated and released. One was hospitalized overnight with a serious head injury, but is expected to recover.
Police Capt. Eric Kowalczyk has said police will enforce a curfew, set to begin at 10 p.m. and run until 5 a.m., but would use common sense. Those seeking medical care and returning from work were exempt from the curfew, he said.
He defended the police response.
"When we deployed our officers yesterday, we were deploying for a high school event,” Kowalczyk said. “I don’t think there’s anyone that would expect us to deploy with automatic weapons and armored vehicles for 13- 14- and 15-year-olds.”
“What we saw last night was a group of people take advantage of a situation, a very unfortunate situation, and use that to tear down their own neighborhoods,” he added.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said at a mid-day news conference after touring the stricken areas that "this violence isn't accomplishing anything. It's counterproductive."
Hogan pledged that violence would be dealt with forcefully and that the city would not have to endure a repeat of Monday night.
“This is not the Baltimore we love,” the governor said.
As residents prepared for the start of the weeklong curfew, much of the city remained closed Tuesday. Schools and many businesses were shuttered, and the Baltimore Orioles postponed a second straight game against the Chicago White Sox. The Orioles and Sox will play their regularly scheduled game on Wednesday, but it was moved from the evening to the afternoon, and no fans will be admitted, Major League Baseball announced.
Camouflage-clad National Guardsmen, armed with assault rifles, surrounded major public spaces such as City Hall and Inner Harbor with a show of force that included heavy-duty military vehicles.
The governor at his news conference said thousands of officers and troops were on the streets, with more expected. He thanked fellow Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey for sending 150 state troopers, among the dozens of contingents from surrounding cities and states.
Baltimore residents struggled to shake off the nightmarish violence that began hours after Freddie Gray was buried.
Gray died on April 19 of a severed spine, a week after he was taken into custody by Baltimore police. Officials are investigating the events, which drew early small and peaceful protests that escalated over the weekend and turned Baltimore into a battle zone on Monday.
At a Washington news conference with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, President Obama said the issues of relations between African Americans and police were larger than the looters, whom he condemned.
“There’s no excuse for the kind of violence that we saw yesterday,” Obama said. “It is counterproductive. When individuals get crowbars and start prying open doors to loot, they’re not protesting, they’re not making a statement -- they’re stealing. When they burn down a building, they’re committing arson. And they’re destroying and undermining businesses and opportunities in their own communities that rob jobs and opportunity from people in that area.”
But the president also defended the right to protest and called for a broader discussion of how the nation deals with racism and police.
“We can't just leave this to the police. I think there are police departments that have to do some soul searching. I think there are some communities that have to do some soul searching. But I think we, as a country, have to do some soul searching. This is not new. It’s been going on for decades,” he said.
Meanwhile, some parts of Baltimore tried to return to a semblance of normalcy.
Holding brooms and shovels from their own homes, Baltimore residents showed up in droves to clean up the riot debris: shattered windows, rocks, ashes.
On a sunny Tuesday morning, the mood was much more cordial toward riot gear-clad police, who were repeatedly offered bottled water as they stood guard over damaged retail shops. But there was a pervasive feeling that the goodwill could sour at any time.
“The anger you saw is about decades of pain and abuse in our community,” said Megan Kenny, 38, an education provider in the city. “The movement isn't going to end. I mean, how do you end racism?”
Kenny and her boyfriend, Paul Mericle, 31, who works for Baltimore public schools, took the opportunity of an unexpected day off to join residents along North Avenue to clean up debris.
“People have been up cleaning since before dawn,” Mericle said in the shadow of EZ Mart Tobacco and Convenience, which had been ransacked with shelves emptied.
Across the street, a big rig with a green trailer sat with piles of garbage bags as people with dust trays and snow shovels walked by.
Farther down the street, though, was a stark reminder of the seething tension. The CVS on North and Pennsylvania avenues sat smoldering as lines of county police stood with defensive shields. Opposite them was a crowd -- one man with a bullhorn -- talking about the death of Freddie Gray. As more residents began massing on the east side of Pennsylvania, police began handing out more shields out of a small trailer to the police.
“The violence isn't over,” said a Baltimore police officer who was not authorized to speak publicly on the rioting. “We have a long way to go with the community here. We have a lot of wounds to heal.”
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake spoke of healing as she toured the damage. She said public transportation would be up and running and that she was working to make sure that “most government services can operate normally.”
Speaking at the West Baltimore drugstore, Rawlings-Blake said: “What happened last night means that more people are struggling.... We worked very hard to get CVS to come here.”
Hogan said state insurance officials would work on helping residents. As the rioting ended, questions have continued about whether the city and state moved quickly enough to stop the violence. The governor was careful not to assign any blame to city officials, whom he praised.
Hogan said the state had prepared to mobilize the Guard and issue an emergency declaration in the afternoon as television broadcast the first images of the confrontation between teenagers and police. The formal declarations came around 6 p.m., seconds after they were requested by the city, he said.
Asked if the mayor should have called for help sooner, however, Hogan replied that he didn't want to question what Baltimore officials were doing: “They're all under tremendous stress. We're all on one team.”
During comments as she toured the damaged areas of her city, Rawlings-Blake pushed back against her critics. “There are always going to be armchair quarterbacks that have never sat in my seat,” she told reporters. “This isn’t the first emergency that I’ve had to deal with and I know you have to put in the work and manage the crisis on the ground,” she added.
Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said late Monday that the city simply didn’t have enough officers to maintain control of all the neighborhoods, as looting and fires spread from one end of the city to the other.
“They just outnumbered us and outflanked us,” he said. “We needed to have more resources.”
He said the extra manpower arriving late Monday and Tuesday would help the police regain control of neighborhoods and enforce a weeklong curfew. Batts said he was dismayed by scenes of Baltimore’s teenagers looting and burning.
“This is not protesting. This is not your 1st Amendment rights,” he said.
He praised one woman who was filmed smacking her teenage son on the head and pulling off his hood. “I wish we had more parents that took charge of their kids out there tonight.”
Staff writer Michael Muskal and James Queally contributed to this report from Los Angeles.
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times3:10 p.m. This post was updated with the latest information from Baltimore city officials.
1:28 a.m.: This post was updated throughout.
11:36 a.m.: This post was updated with revised arrest figures.
10:47 a.m.: This post was updated throughout.
8:46 a.m.: This post was updated with the announcement that the Baltimore Orioles had postponed a second straight game.
This story was originally published at 6:58 a.m.
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