State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced on Monday that the city will prosecute six officers over the death of Freddie Gray, with charges rising all the way to second-degree murder. The decision sparked immediate and mostly positive reaction from the city.
The frightening scenes of urban unrest in Baltimore, and in Ferguson Missouri before that, reflect a long-smoldering distrust of police in African-American communities nationwide. A lot of departments, Baltimore’s among them, have made substantive strides in recent years increasing diversity. But Census Bureau statistics also indicate that police in many of America’s largest cities still don’t reflect the makeup of the communities they serve.