Short diary here. As has been pointed out in diaries here and an article at Mother Jones, the evidence strongly suggests that the Baltimore City Police Department intentionally instigated the rioting on Monday which started at Mondawmin Mall and eventually resulted in the burning of the CVS store.
By Monday it was clear that the police needed something to change the story in the media. They needed to shift the focus away from Freddie Gray's murder and their complicity in it. They needed good TV imagery along with a story that made them into heroes and scared the shit out of white viewers at home. They got what they wanted by pre-positioning their riot troops at the mall so they could lay in wait for the high school children as they left school and headed to the mall for their bus connections to get home. What was portrayed for the media as a mob of angry young people converging on the mall with evil intent was actually a group of high school students trying to go home the same way they did every day.
There was no need for this police action. They claimed that there was a plan among the kids to act out a bunch of lawlessness, "The Purge" which had supposedly been organized on social media. But they had no actual evidence that this kind of action was intended. They had nothing more than a rumor, no individuals or groups that were allegedly planning these actions were identified. The police also claimed that the Bloods and Crips had formed a pact to kill police officers, when it turns out that their pact was to join together to keep the protests peaceful and not make the neighborhood look bad in the media. So the validity of the police claims regarding The Purge are in question. Even if there WAS a plan for lawlessness among a segment of the students, how was shutting down the public transportation and essentially stranding these children at the mall going to help prevent lawbreaking? If anything it was going to exacerbate the problem.
This deserves to be investigated. Who made these decisions and on what basis were they made? What were the sources of their information regarding The Purge and the Bloods/Crips pact? How many of their actions were taken in an honest effort to prevent violence versus those taken to deliberately provoke the same? I think these are questions that demand answers. I also suspect that there is no agency, local, state, or federal, which wants to open this can of worms. This is why I believe that the businesses which were most directly impacted by the riots should bring a lawsuit against the police on the premise that the police intentionally instigated the rioting for PR purposes; and that in so doing, the police knowingly put the mall and its customers at risk and are directly responsible for the damages to property and losses due to looting. Let the process of legal discovery be a substitute for an official investigation that will likely never happen.
This may be impractical. It may not be legally sound. I have no idea as I am not a lawyer and do not think like one. I can only say that it feels like an appropriate course of action. The police should be held accountable not only for the murder of Freddie Gray, but also for their role in precipitating the riots.