Ten Years Later: Baltimore police and the media are still lying to you about what happened to Freddie Gray

How can the police claim reform, when they are still committing the same harms and still covering them up? Also, why does it take more than ten years to get the truth out there?

(Reprinted from Criminalizing Disability)

Book is available in hard copy, audio, electronic at stores and libraries.

Just in time for the ten-year anniversary of the death of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore Police Department (BPD), city leaders, and even the local media are congratulating themselves for how far the city has come since his death. Recent headlines advertise the progress of the federal consent decree, which was established after Gray’s death, as well as improvements in transporting prisoners, including seat-belting and cameras in vans.

The city issued a statement acknowledging previous issues with transporting prisoners: “Nowhere was this more evident than the tragic death of Freddie Gray.”

As the author of an investigative book on the Gray case, I find BPD’s promises of reform largely hollow. For one, and most importantly, no one in BPD has ever taken responsibility for Gray’s death—or even admitted what actually happened to him. How do you reform a problem you won’t name?

I’ve spent a lot of the last eight years trying to get the truth out there. I co-investigated the case with Amelia McDonell-Parry for “The Undisclosed Podcast,” in 2017, with new insights and evidence that pointed to an untold cause of death. Then, I gathered significantly more evidence and wrote articles and a book that outlined every minor detail of his death, arrest, and the multi-agency government cover-up. I did a number of interviews with media outlets about the book, with the goal always of changing the entrenched police narrative. That hasn’t been enough.

So why is the public still being lied to, so easily, about what happened to Gray? What does it take to undo a police narrative?

And what really happened to Freddie Gray?

Gray was arrested on April 12, 2015 and died of a broken neck while in police custody. Former State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby charged six officers in his death, though she failed to win any convictions. Both police leaders and prosecutors claimed that Gray’s fatal injury happened while the van transporting him was in motion, from not being seatbelted. They only disagreed as to whether any officers were at fault.

Prisoners have been known to be injured by “rough rides,” but that isn’t what happened to Gray. Unreleased evidence I obtained—including witness statements, police statements, and audio and video files—indicate that Gray’s fatal injury occurred when police threw him headfirst into the van around the corner from his arrest.

Officers started abusing Gray during his arrest, as many witnesses reported. A viral video showed him already screaming in distress while he was held on the ground and dragged to the van. After Gray was arrested, the van stopped around the corner briefly so officers could shackle his legs and complete paperwork. At least nine witnesses then saw the officers throw him headfirst and facedown back into the van, after which he became silent and motionless. You can listen to their accounts here:

According to the medical examiner (ME), Gray’s fatal injury was caused by a headfirst motion into a hard surface.

As you can see from the timeline of their statements, witnesses shared their accounts with police investigators in the hours and days after Gray’s arrest, and their recollections were consistent with each other. Police and prosecutors withheld these statements from the medical examiner, the courtroom, and the public. Case files indicate that Mosby’s prosecutors filed charges before they had thoroughly investigated the case. The prosecution’s story in court kept changing from trial to trial, particularly around the stop where Gray was fatally injured.

Police released some CCTV video to the public but suppressed audio and video evidence that would have supported the witnesses’ claims.

As I found while investigating the case, BPD officers have a history of seriously harming prisoners by throwing them into transport vans. More than one of those cases got described in the media as a rough ride. By not addressing the real issue behind Freddie Gray’s death—the careless and brutal physical handling of a prisoner BPD has evaded accountability. The whole city is patting itself on the back over a lie.

BPD has also never taken accountability for the cover-up of Gray’s death, which began on the day of his arrest. The arresting officers told investigators and medics that Gray was “combative” and “hitting his head” against the walls of the van, causing his own fatal injury. They planted a witness in the van, on the other side of a metal divide, and coerced him to tell that story too, threatening jail time. The autopsy report disputed that Gray ever banged his head or that such an action could have resulted in his broken neck. Police leaked stories to the media suggesting that Gray harmed himself and had a pre-existing injury. The theory that Gray’s neck was broken while the van was moving was just the cover-up story that stuck.

Baltimore police killed Freddie Gray, covered it up, and now use him as a symbol for reforms that mostly didn’t happened. As I wrote about for FAIR, the Baltimore media cashed in on Freddie Gray’s death, gaining clicks and raising the profiles of local reporters, but have shown no interest in new evidence that has since emerged. As such, they aren’t able to hold police accountable when the same practices persist.

There are ample reasons to believe that many of the same issues persist within BPD. In January 2023, Paul Bertonazzi, an elderly man, died shortly after being transported in a police van to the hospital. His cause of death was “cervical spine fracture,” or a broken neck, per the Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention and Policy.

Police fed stories to the media indicating that Bertonazzi was “combative” and “hitting his head against the inside of the van,” as well as claiming he had a pre-existing condition. In other words, police leaked the same suspicious stories that were leaked during the Freddie Gray case.

BPD released partial body camera footage showing Bertonazzi crying “help” and “you’re hurting me” before he was wheeled into the hospital, while officers unsuccessfully commanded him to stand up—another echo to the Gray case, with the viral video of him in pain.

But what happened to the video from the cameras that were supposed to be installed in the van that transported Bertonazzi since Freddie Gray’s death? And why was Bertonazzi transported to the hospital in a police van in the first place, instead of an ambulance? Police said he was already in a medical and behavioral crisis when they were called to help him.

What really happened to cause Bertonazzi’s fatal injury remains a mystery, for now. The media didn’t ask hard questions, instead choosing to blame the hospital for what happened.

The local media has learned nothing in the last ten years, even continuing to perpetuate the police lie that Gray’s death was caused by a rough ride.

The Bertonazzi case makes clear that the public cannot take comfort in BPD’s promises that it is finally safely transporting prisoners nor that it has made progress when it comes to the deep issues that plague the department.