Baltimore cancels leave for cops during Freddie Gray hearings

Tomorrow marks the first hearing in the case of the six Baltimore police officers currently charged in relation to the death of Freddie Gray. The judge will hear motions to dismiss, as well as to have State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby recused. While strictly a procedural formality at this stage, the possibility still exists that activists will seize the occasion as an opportunity to take it to the streets once again. In response, we may be seeing the beginnings of a glimmer of common sense (or at least an instinct for self preservation) out of City Hall. They have cancelled all leave for the cops tomorrow as a precautionary measure.

The Baltimore Police Department has canceled leave for officers on Wednesday and on Sept. 10, when hearings are scheduled in the case against six officers charged in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray, police said.

Canceling leave ensures the department has a maximum number of officers working or on call “in case there are any issues we need to respond to,” said T.J. Smith, the department’s chief spokesman.

The decision was made last week “out of an abundance of caution, just so we’re not caught flat-footed in case there is a need,” Smith said.

How this is handled may prove to be the next big test for both Mosby and 

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. They are facing an urban population which is still on a knife’s edge in terms of unrest and distrust of both the police and the city government. At the same time, both the Mayor and the State’s Attorney are in a simmering state of undeclared war with their own police officers. Things seem more calm than they did during the heights of the riots, obviously, but there still seems to be some bad blood remaining according to local reports.

All of this is taking place in the shadow of some unseemly math figures which keep driving the local news cycle. With the police in a “less aggressive posture” these days, the city is in the midst of the highest murder rate it’s seen in nearly a half century. This has led to theirasking for the help of federal agents from the FBI, DEA, Secret Service, U.S. Marshals Service and the ATF to try to tamp down the violence and establish some sort of normalcy

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