A line of police behind riot shields hurled tear gas canisters and fired pepper balls at as many as 200 protesters on Tuesday night to enforce a citywide curfew, imposed after the worst outbreak of rioting in Baltimore since 1968.
Demonstrators threw bottles at police and picked up the canisters and hurled them back at officers. However, the crowd rapidly dispersed and reduced to just a few dozen people within minutes.
The clash came after a day of high tension in Baltimore, as thousands of police officers and Maryland National Guardsmen poured in to try to prevent another round of looting and arson like the one that rocked the city on Monday.
Photo: Reuters
It was the first time since the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr in 1968 that the National Guard was called out in Baltimore to quell unrest.
The violence on Monday was set off by the case of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old man who died of a spinal-cord injury while in police custody.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said 2,000 guardsmen and 1,000 law-enforcement officers would be in place overnight.
In a measure of how tense things were on Tuesday, Baltimore was under a 10pm-to-5am curfew. All public schools were closed. The Baltimore Orioles postponed Tuesday night’s game at Camden Yards and — in what might be a first in baseball’s 145-year history — announced that yesterday’s game would be closed to the public.
The streets were largely calm all day and into the evening, with only a few scattered arrests.
About 15 minutes after the 10pm curfew took effect, police moved against protesters who remained in the street in the city’s Penn North section, near where a pharmacy was looted the day before.
Shortly before the curfew and in a different neighborhood, police arrested three or four juveniles after people started attacking officers with rocks and bricks, authorities said.
At least one officer was reported injured.
At the White House, US President Barack Obama called the deaths of several black men around the country at the hands of police “a slow-rolling crisis.”
However, he added that there was “no excuse” for the violence in Baltimore and said the rioters should be treated as criminals.
“They aren’t protesting. They aren’t making a statement. They’re stealing,” Obama said.
Political leaders and residents called the violence a tragedy for the city and lamented the damage done by the rioters to their own neighborhoods.
“I had officers come up to me and say: ‘I was born and raised in this city. This makes me cry,’” Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said.
At least 20 officers were hurt, one person was critically injured in a fire, more than 200 adults and 34 juveniles were arrested and nearly 150 cars were burned, police said.
The governor had no immediate estimate of the damage.
The violence set off soul-searching among community leaders and others. Some suggested that the unrest was about more than race or the police department — it was about high unemployment, high crime, poor housing and schools, and lack of opportunities in Baltimore’s inner-city neighborhoods.
The city of 622,000 is 63 percent black. The mayor, state attorney, police chief and city council president are black, as is 48 percent of the police force.
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