Baltimore Police: Freddie Gray Hurt Himself

[Content Note: Police brutality; racism; dehumanization; self-harm.]

Yesterday, conservative bloggers were peddling an absurd conspiracy theory that Freddie Gray was injured before his arrest. Which is not true, and is manifestly obvious from the arrest video in which Gray is still able to talk and is not in a coma.

I expect nothing less from the conservative blogosphere.

But, this morning, the Washington Post has published a report based on a leaked police document which claims there was another prisoner in the van with Freddie Gray, about whom we're inexplicably hearing only now, who says he could hear Gray "banging against the walls" of the van and believes Gray "was intentionally trying to injure himself."

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.

The document, written by a Baltimore police investigator, offers the first glimpse of what might have happened inside the van. It is not clear whether any additional evidence backs up the prisoner's version, which is just one piece of a much larger probe.

Emphases mine.

So, what we have here is an unsubstantiated report offered by someone who couldn't even see what was happening with an incentive to offer a statement supporting police, who has mysteriously just surfaced after two weeks.

Sure. It seems super responsible to publish this report.

I'm probably not the first person to make this observation, but even if this anonymous detainee did legitimately hear "banging," that is hardly reason to axiomatically assume the noise was evidence of Gray "intentionally trying to injure himself."

It could easily be evidence that Gray was indeed being given a "rough ride."

It could have been a desperate attempt to signal for help.

And even if Gray had been trying to harm himself, the police are obliged to protect people in their custody, even from self-harm. (That's why "suicide watch" exists.) Police are responsible for the safety of people they detain.

There is no scenario—even the most outrageous, unbelievable, impossible version of this story—in which police are not culpable.

And of course it says something about Baltimore Police's regard for the safety and humanity of people they take into custody that they believe floating this reprehensible fantasy about Gray nearly severing his own spine and crushing his own larynx will absolve them of accountability.

Even were it conceivably true. Even if this weren't a classic example of Occam's Big Paisley Tie—the most aggressively outlandish explanation for what happened to Freddie Gray.

The reason that a suggestion Gray flopped himself around the back of a police van until he put himself in a coma from his injuries doesn't sound ludicrous on its face to anyone who hears such codswallop can be credited to centuries-old racist narratives that other black people in profoundly dehumanizing ways. Magical Negroes with superhuman strength.

Narratives which are constantly invoked in cases of police brutality against black men and women. Like Victor White III, who somehow shot himself while his hands were cuffed behind his back. Like Michael Brown, who Darren Wilson described as looking like "a demon" after he shot him the first time, and, then, as he fired subsequent shots: "At this point it looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I'm shooting at him."

Baltimore Police have already admitted that Freddie Gray was not seatbelted in the van, which is a breach of protocol and indication of their disregard for his safety.

They've also admitted that Gray was only handcuffed when the van took off, but that they stopped the van so they could put him in leg shackles. But, again, failed to seatbelt him.

So, by their own account, police restrained all of Gray's limbs without a safety belt, and even checked on him once during the ride (in order to further restrain him), but now claim the most likely explanation for Gray's fatal injuries were that he did it to himself.

There is no way to believe that incredible tale. Unless you want to believe it.