National Guard keeps peace after Baltimore riots

BALTIMORE — National Guardsmen took up positions across the city of Baltimore and hundreds of volunteers began sweeping the streets of broken glass and other debris Tuesday, the morning after riots erupted following the funeral of a black man who died in police custody.

Police confirmed that at least 20 officers have been injured in the Baltimore riots. One person is in critical condition following a building fire.

The streets were calm in the morning, but authorities remained on edge against the possibility of another outbreak of looting and arson.

The city was under a 10 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew, all public schools were closed, and the Baltimore Orioles canceled their Tuesday night game at Camden Yards. National Guardsmen in helmets with face shields surrounded City Hall, standing behind bicycle-rack barriers.

Channel 2's Dave Huddleston is enroute to Baltimore and will report live on Channel 2 Action News.

"We're not going to have another repeat of what happened last night," Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan vowed after a visit to a West Baltimore neighborhood where cars were burned and windows smashed. "We're going to make sure we get Baltimore back on track."

Hogan said there are "a couple of thousand" National Guardsmen and police officers in Baltimore, with more on the way.

It was the first time the National Guard was called out to quell unrest in Baltimore since 1968, when some of the same neighborhoods burned for days after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

At the White House, President Barack Obama called the deaths of several black men around the country at the hands of police "a slow rolling crisis." But he added that there was "no excuse" for the violence in Baltimore, and said the riots should be treated as criminals.

"They aren't protesting. They aren't making a statement. They're stealing," Obama said.

"We have seen too many instances of what appears to be police officers interacting with individuals, primarily African-American, often poor, in ways that raise troubling questions. It comes up, it seems like, once a week now," Obama said. He said although such cases aren't unprecedented, there's new awareness as a result of cameras and social media. "We shouldn't pretend that it's new."

Obama said America should not just pay attention to these communities "when a CVS burns" or when "a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped." He said he can't force police departments across the country to retrain their officers, but he can work with them and help pay for body cameras to improve accountability.

"In those environments, if we think that we're just going to send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there, without as a nation and as a society saying what can we do to change those communities, to help lift up those communities and give those kids opportunity, then we're not going to solve this problem," he said. "And we'll go through the same cycles of periodic conflicts between the police and communities and the occasional riots in the streets. And everybody will feign concern until it goes away and then we go about our business as usual."

As firefighters doused smoldering fires, political leaders and residents called the violence a tragedy for the city and lamented the damage done by the rioters to their own neighborhoods.

Hundreds of volunteers helped shopkeepers clean up as helmeted officers blocked a stretch of North Avenue in the neighborhood where Freddie Gray, 25, was arrested earlier in this month in a case that has become the latest flashpoint in the national debate over the police use of deadly force against black men.

Hardware stores donated trash bags and brooms, and city workers brought in trucks to haul away mounds of trash and broken glass.

With schools closed, Blanca Tapahuasco brought her three sons, ages 2 to 8, from another part of the city to help sweep the brick-and-pavement courtyard outside a looted CVS pharmacy.

"We're helping the neighborhood build back up," she said. "This is an encouragement to them to know the rest of the city is not just looking on and wondering what to do."

CVS store manager Haywood McMorris said the destruction didn't make sense: "We work here, man. This is where we stand, and this is where people actually make a living."

The rioting started in West Baltimore on Monday afternoon — within a mile of where Gray was arrested — and by midnight had spread to East Baltimore and neighborhoods close to downtown and near the baseball stadium.

The rioters set police cars and buildings on fire, looted a mall and liquor stores and hurled rocks, bottles and cinderblocks at police in riot gear. Police responded occasionally with pepper spray or cleared the streets by moving in tight formation, shoulder to shoulder.

At least 15 officers were hurt, including six who were hospitalized, police said. There were 144 vehicle fires, 15 structure fires and nearly 200 arrests, the mayor's office said.

"They just outnumbered us and outflanked us," Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said. "We needed to have more resources out there."

The governor had no immediate estimate of the damage.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in her first day on the job Monday, said she will send Justice Department officials to the city in the coming days. And the governor said he is temporarily moving his office from Annapolis to Baltimore.

Gray was arrested April 12 after running away at the sight of police, authorities said. He was held down, handcuffed and loaded into a police van. Leg cuffs were put on him when he became irate inside. He died of a spinal cord injury a week later.

Authorities said they are still investigating how and when he suffered the injury — during the arrest or while he was in the van, where authorities say he was riding without being belted in, a violation of department policy. Six officers have been suspended with pay while the investigation continues.

While they are angry about what happened to Gray, his family said riots are not the answer.

"I think the violence is wrong," Gray's twin sister, Fredericka Gray, said late Monday. "I don't like it at all."

In 1968, when Baltimore and many other U.S. cities erupted in flames over the assassination of King, the state of Maryland called up 6,000 Guardsmen to restore order in the city, and 2,000 active-duty federal troops were sent in, too.

Standing in front of the burned-out CVS drugstore Tuesday, the mayor lamented that the neighborhood was still recovering from the riots of the 1960s.

"We worked so hard to get a company like CVS to invest in this neighborhood," she said. "This is the only place that so many people have to pick up their prescriptions."

WSBTV