On May 1st, I had a diary entitled "More on Murder of Freddie Gray: Lieutenant Rice." https://www.dailykos.com/...
Rice, 41, is the oldest and most senior cop charged in the Freddie Gray murder. He was the one who first made eye contact with Mr. Gray and initiated the pursuit.
Last night the Guardian, from London, England, published an incredible follow-up story about Rice: http://www.theguardian.com/...
Here's the lede:
Baltimore lieutenant Brian Rice used his position to threaten ‘heads will roll’ if officers did not arrest his ex-girlfriend’s husband, police report reveals
Brian Rice The incident is the latest in a series revealed by the Guardian that policing experts said raised questions over Rice’s ability to perform his duties. Photograph: Alamy
The most senior Baltimore police officer charged over the death of Freddie Gray used his position to order the arrest of a man as part of a personal dispute just two weeks before the fatal incident, prompting an internal inquiry by Baltimore police department.
During an erratic late-night episode in March, Brian Rice boasted he was a Baltimore police lieutenant and warned “heads will roll” if officers in a nearby city did not “go arrest” his ex-girlfriend’s husband, according to a police report obtained by the Guardian.
In brief, Rice's ex-girlfriend is also a Baltimore cop. They have a child together. She left him and married another man. Rice has been obsessing about it for years. In 2013, he threatened the other man's life; police confiscated seven guns from his house; and he was reportedly taken into custody for a psychiatric examination. But no charges were filed, and apparently he was not disciplined by the Baltimore city police, even though it is a serious crime to threaten somebody's life.
Rice and his ex-girlfriend work in Baltimore city, but they both live in Carroll County, Maryland, 30 or 40 miles away. The most recently reported incident started with Rice arriving at the police station in Westminster, Maryland, the county seat for Carroll County at 3:45 a.m. demanding that the police go and arrest the ex-girlfriend's husband! Read the article. It's full of amazing details.
So Rice was obviously driving around about 3 a.m. spying on his ex-girlfriend from years ago.
This incident happened only two weeks before the murder of Freddie Gray.
Today I wrote to the new editor of the Carroll County Times, which has been a very good small paper but is now owned by the Baltimore Sun and is going downhill. I gave him a link to that Guardian article and suggested that the best reporting on this should be coming from the Carroll COunty Times or the Baltimore Sun, not an English paper. [First draft mistakenly called The Guardian a tabloid.]
UPDATE: The police report, which is linked to in The Guardian's article, refers to the woman repeatedly as Rice's ex-wife. I don't know why The Guardian's article says ex-girlfriend. IIRC, one or more articles I linked to in my first diary on this also says ex-girlfriend. It doesn't really matter though, of course.
UPDATE 2: Until this diary I had vaguely thought of The Guardian as just one of many British newspapers, maybe even tabloidish. I'm glad to learn otherwise, and I've just made The Guardian my top news bookmark. It's amazing how a publication from England can frequently and dramatically outdo U.S. papers on local U.S. news.
So don't miss this incredible parallel piece from last night on the outrageous 109-page just filed by the Freddie Gray police defendants against prosecutor Marilyn Mosby: http://www.theguardian.com/.... They go so far as to threaten her with hundreds of thousands of dollars in liability for violating their constitutional rights, and they say that never in the history of the United States has a prosecutor ever been so corrupt and so conflicted, and on and on! Unbelievable.
Here's an article on the motion from the Baltimore Sun: http://www.baltimoresun.com/...