Tawanda Jones has not missed a week with West Wednesday, and to this day she still seeks justice for Tyrone. No one has been charged, arrested, or otherwise been held accountable for his death.
The state of Maryland rendered its verdict—the medical examiner said he’d died of cardiac arrhythmia complicated by dehydration during police restraint—and Tawanda spent the years after the riots challenging that answer.
Nearly one year to the day after the April 2015 riots, Tawanda got a different answer. An independent review of Tyrone’s autopsy by pathologist Dr. William Manion concluded that Tyrone did not die of a heart condition. Manion wrote that Tyrone’s death was a result of “positional asphyxia”—essentially, he had suffocated. But that April 2016 report still wasn’t enough for the state’s attorney to reopen the case.
A few months later, a forensic pathologist in Alabama was willing to take another look at Tyrone’s body, to see if he saw what she saw.
Tawanda spent $21,000 to have her brother’s body exhumed and sent down to Dr. Adel Shaker. Tawanda had researched him on the Internet. There was a story about how he had been able to determine that the cuts on a little girl’s body that was found in the woods weren’t from wildlife getting to her but had been deliberately inflicted.
Tawanda ran a tight operation, getting Tyrone’s body sent down south, even sending a cousin to make sure that it was him lying on the table. Tyrone finally told his story. “West’s cause of death is positional asphyxia, where he was not able to breathe during restraint process when he was held down by police officers sitting on him,” Shaker wrote in the report, which was released at the end of 2016. He also wrote that restraining West in a prone position while compromising his breathing was “the main cause of his demise.”
In July, the city and state paid $1 million to settle a federal lawsuit filed by the West family in the aftermath of Tyrone’s death. The family had alleged police misconduct and use of excessive force. But Tawanda removed herself as a plaintiff so that the money could go to Tyrone’s children—and so that she could be free from a non-disparagement agreement that would have silenced her, prevented her from speaking the words that continue to ring out in Baltimore every Wednesday.
“One man. Unarmed.”
Jenny Egan continues to fight for children.
After the uprising, she stayed in her role as a juvenile public defender, but her newfound friends from the days of the riots founded a new grassroots legal service, called the Baltimore Action Legal Team (BALT). The team provides legal support to Baltimore communities who exercise their civil liberties protesting against injustices rooted in structural racism and economic inequality.
Since then, BALT has helped coordinate legal and jail support for protests, including the #Afromation protest at Artscape, sit-ins at City Hall, and various other actions around the city. They also have partnered on a successful Mama’s Day Bail Out program and now are building a community lawyer brain trust to connect volunteer lawyers to Baltimore organizations and communities who need legal information and input.
Other volunteers from the uprising’s legal circle have created spin-offs. At the University of Baltimore Law School there is now a thriving National Lawyers Guild chapter that runs a legal observation program, a group that provides jail support every week to recently released folks at BCDC. Jenny said that as a result of the riots, there is now a community lawyer brain trust to connect volunteer lawyers to Baltimore organizations and communities that need legal information and input.
“There is infrastructure now for protest and for holding the city accountable for unconstitutional behavior that did not exist in 2015,” Jenny said.
Jenny’s also seen a change in her office, a reinvigoration of the culture. “Baltimore defenders have long seen their clients beat up, harassed, illegally detained, and even murdered by police not just without accountability but without concern or care from the media or the public,” she said. “When people you invest in and care about are abused and no one bats an eye, it can leave you jaded and hopeless. When you jump and scream and yell—and the prosecutors, the police, and the bench do nothing to stop the abuse of your clients—it can drain the fight out of you. When Baltimore stood up and spoke out for Freddie, the fact that our city yelled so loud the whole world heard us say no meant defenders didn’t feel like they were fighting in complete darkness anymore.”
But the light only flickers, Jenny said. Three people died in BCDC in 2018, including a mentally ill man who was there on a traffic violation, and no one has paid attention or held anyone accountable.
Jenny also believes that a scene she saw at the end of the April 27 uprising led to one of the most impactful accountability measures seen in the history of the Baltimore Police Department. When she saw a white man run out of the CVS, the hair on Jenny’s arms stood up. She thought he was a plant, an agent provocateur. “That dude is a cop!” she yelled out. After she identified him, he was chased by a group of protesters to his car, the only one left in a parking lot outside of CVS. The man tripped, and somebody gave him a gentle kick in the butt before he managed to get himself to the door of his black late-model sedan, with no plates on the front. Jenny watched as he got in and screeched toward the police line that had formed toward North Avenue. She was startled when she watched the police line part to let him through and he just drove away.
Three years later, eight cops who belonged to an elite squad called the Gun Trace Task Force would be indicted for a rash of crimes, including creating a dangerous and violent black market for prescription drugs they stole from pharmacies during the riots.
In the days after the uprising, Greg Butler sat in jail as law enforcement hunted for the man in the gas mask. When he was arrested he had given them an alias, Greg Bailey, and days went by before they figured it out. They put a picture of the gas-mask-wearing man out on the news, labeling him a wanted individual. And they offered a reward, too. Greg was surprised that he hadn’t been turned in by someone from his neighborhood who needed the money. In the meantime, Greg Bailey—the man police found entering a looted store and attempting to steal cigarettes—was charged with second-degree escape, possession of a dangerous weapon with intent to injure, and attempted theft of less than $100. A few days later Greg Butler was confirmed as the infamous man behind the gas mask who had cut the fire hose. He was charged with malicious destruction of property, reckless endangerment, and obstructing firefighters.
Greg was held without bail for the next month awaiting trial, and a jury found him guilty but offered him probation. His freedom was short-lived, however. Greg knew that he had an audience at his state trial, the men who sat in the back of the courtroom in dark jackets and followed him to the bathroom and outside to smoke a cigarette. As soon as he left the courtroom from his first trial, they moved in to arrest him on federal charges.
At his trial, prosecutors and his attorney had litigated his whole life—the life of a black Baltimore boy who, no matter how much he tries to stay out of trouble, winds up with it finding him anyway. In the end, after he pleaded guilty, he addressed US District Court judge J. Frederick Motz about his state of mind that day: “I was lost that day. Everything fell south on me. I felt like I had no family and I couldn’t turn to anyone. I panicked and showed my actions. I’m thankful no one got hurt. I was angry and directed it at so many of the wrong people.” More important than his past, he said, he had a future, a son.
Among those who spoke on Greg’s behalf, a surprise witness presented himself: Robert Maloney, Baltimore’s director of emergency management, who sought him out after he heard of the standout basketball star turned “menace.”
“I wanted to meet him, and I wanted to hear from him why he did what he did, and I wanted to figure out where in the hell he got an old gas mask from that day given no one else had one on, and how he ended up on the cover of Time magazine,” Maloney said.
Through conversations, Maloney said, he learned not only about Greg but about his city. “I learned a lot about him, and I, like others, have taken the choice to help him to get him on track, and so I’ve done that in phone conversations and just seeing what he’s up to, and thinking about future employment—I know he has some college background—channeling that. I know he’s a father now. And so my perception of all of this in this particular case—and nothing has changed my mind that I’ve heard today—is that sending him to federal prison is not going to help him or us.”
Prosecutors were seeking charges that carried mandatory minimums: aiding and abetting arson, which would require twenty years, and obstructing firefighting, which required a minimum of five. His attorneys argued that the charges were excessive, particularly for a victimless crime. If convicted, he would have been one of several arrestees who served more time than any of the police officers who were charged in the death of Freddie.
But Greg ended up with three years of supervised release and 250 hours of community service, and he was ordered to pay $1 million in restitution. “There have been enough victims,” Judge Motz told Greg. “I don’t want to make you another victim.” For his community service, Greg volunteered with the fire department, helped with his neighborhood mentoring program, and was tapped to serve on the mayor’s youth council, all while working seven days a week.
Greg felt that he had a new lease on life, though after his release he could not escape some of his demons. He violated parole and fell behind on his restitution payments. “I’m not asking for too much, just a chance to get back in the fight,” he told the judge in court.
Today, Greg is thriving. He is living with his two children and fiancée in Baltimore, serves as a mentor to young children, and works as an assistant dean and girls’ basketball coach at a public charter school. His father died in November 2017. He and his mother, who is now clean, have a strong relationship. His probation was scheduled to end at the end of 2019.
The financial woes that seemed to strike Shake & Bake after the death of Freddie Gray never eased; in fact, they got worse. By the close of 2015, Shake & Bake’s annual revenue was down almost 60 percent from the year before. Even when the numbers didn’t pick up and people urged Anthony to lay people off, he refused. He knew that the young people who worked for him didn’t have a lot of options outside of the Shake & Bake. Keeping the staff on was an additional strain in a time of reduced revenue.
In August 2017, Anthony Williams circled the halls of Shake & Bake, peeling posters off the walls and putting them in the boxes that would contain the last of his legacy there. The city had decided that it was time for Shake & Bake to move on without Anthony as the general manager, firing him after decades of work. It was also going to shut the Bake down and “refurbish” it for an unannounced and undetermined grand reopening. An institution that had been a Baltimore fixture for thirty years was closing. Anthony wept as he locked the doors for the final time, feeling like the most important chapter in his life had been rewritten for him, taken from him when he had nothing else to hold on to.
About a month after the closing, on September 24, 2017, Malik was shot and killed right across the street from Shake & Bake. When Anthony had seen him two months earlier, Malik was holding a bottle of Patrón tequila, his eyes drooping and reddened. “You’re changing,” Anthony told him, heartbroken at seeing his mentee take such a turn for the worse. So when Anthony got word about the shooting, he was more grief-stricken than surprised. As their motto said, Shake & Bake saves lives. And when it was gone, lives were lost.
A year later, in March 2018, after ordering the closing of Shake & Bake, the new mayor was in attendance when it reopened. “When I shut it down you would have thought that I shut down heaven,” she said. “When I shut it down my phone blew up like a fire engine.” Glenn “Shake & Bake” Doughty, the former Baltimore Colts player whom Shake & Bake was named after, stood there smiling as the doors opened in front of a crowd. Anthony didn’t attend; in fact, he wasn’t invited. He watched the evening news recap of smiling faces and kids with skates on from his small home in Towson.
On Friday, May 1, Nick Mosby raced to City Hall to see if the rumors were true—that his wife was standing at the War Memorial Building announcing a litany of charges against the six officers who had arrested Freddie Gray. Nobody expected to hear from her so quickly after the police completed their report and submitted it to the state attorney’s office. But on Friday afternoon, Marilyn Mosby uttered words that shocked the world, words that many who had been protesting had been waiting to hear: “The findings of our comprehensive, thorough, and independent investigation, coupled with the medical examiner’s determination that Mr. Gray’s death was a homicide, which we received today, has led us to believe that we have probable cause to file criminal charges.” With those words, the six officers under investigation for the death of Freddie Gray were now indicted and would be soon awaiting trials for the role they’d played in the death of the young man. These were the first indictments of police officers in the death of civilians ever in Baltimore, and instantaneously made Marilyn Mosby a hero in many communities of color and a pariah in many chapters of the Fraternal Order of Police.
Six months after the riots, Nick Mosby stood in Reservoir Hill, his wife and a crowd of supporters behind him, and announced that he would run for mayor. Having been a City Council member since 2011, he was finally pursuing his lifelong dream, and he laid out his plans for revitalizing a city. The incumbent, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, had announced weeks before that she would not seek reelection.
The race was crowded, with fifteen people declaring their candidacies: along with Nick, they included Baltimore’s former mayor Sheila Dixon; Elizabeth Embry, attorney and daughter of a former Baltimore City Council member; longtime City Council member Carl Stokes; and activist DeRay Mckesson all ran spirited races. In April 2016, weeks before election day, Mosby announced that he was dropping out of the race and would back the eventual winner, State Sen. Catherine Pugh, who won by fewer than two percentage points. Considering the upheaval and opportunity for change, the turnout was categorically low, with only 45 percent of registered Baltimoreans turning out.
Eventually, Nick was appointed as a delegate to the Maryland legislature, serving as a representative for the district he lives in and loves.
Following the unrest of April 27, 2015, Baltimore saw an unprecedented spike in homicides. Some blamed it on the flow of new pharmaceutical drugs on the street following the looting from the drugstores. Some blamed it on the belief that many police officers, now feeling they would be prosecuted, stopped policing certain areas and allowed crimes to take place there. Some blamed it on an overwhelmed City Hall. Some thought it was a combination of all of these reasons. But 2015 ended with Baltimore recording 344 murders, the second-highest number in Baltimore history—the only year with more had been 1993, when the population was 100,000 higher.
On July 8, 2015, Police Commissioner Anthony Batts was fired from the Baltimore Police Department in the aftermath of the spike in homicides. But Partee’s confrontation with Batts had real implications for Partee’s career, too. Once seen as a rising star in the department, Partee’s career stalled, and despite a notable record, he was passed over for promotion to lieutenant colonel. In September 2015, he was tapped by the new police commissioner to lead the training academy, a position not seen as a fast-track job in the police force but one he took on with excitement. He saw it as an opportunity to shape the future of the police force—and the city. Recruitment was down significantly, with fewer people applying to be police officers; Partee had to deal with a 14 percent drop in cadets and new officers. One of the big changes that Partee instituted was significantly increasing the Mobile Field Force Training, or riot control training.
His oldest son became a weightlifting champion and wanted to join the Baltimore police force. His father told him no. He ended up joining the navy instead, where he is serving.
Partee eventually retired from the Baltimore City Police Force after twenty-two years on the job. He was named the director of public safety and chief of police for Lincoln University, a historically black college in Pennsylvania.
The challenges Baltimore has experienced have also coincided with changes in the Orioles’ fortunes. A once-promising team full of All-Stars and consistently mentioned for a deep playoff run has fallen into rebuilding mode, with top stars leaving. After winning the American League East in 2014—one of the most competitive divisions in baseball, as it includes the high-powered and high-payroll Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees—the Orioles’ slide has been real and consistent. By 2016, the Orioles tumbled to third place in the division, and by 2018, with a winning percentage of .290, they were now one of the losingest teams in baseball.
Attendance at the games also took a significant dip. The Orioles have had losing streaks before, but getting Baltimoreans into the seats to either cheer or boo had not been an issue until recently. Attendance at the Orioles games since the uprising has been down close to 40 percent, with the combination of team performance and perceived downtown safety taking a toll on the organization’s promise and profitability. Creative incentives to get people into the ballpark as well as rethinking the relationship with the community have been distinct priorities. Gone are the ribbon-cuttings and construction of swing sets; a deeper-rooted engagement with the community is the new core philanthropic effort. The idea is to get the players to be of Baltimore and not simply in Baltimore.
John and his brother, Louis, also saw increasing responsibilities with the team as the health of their father, Peter Angelos, declined. And the lawsuit with the Washington Nationals over MASN now stretches into its seventh year.
In the fall of 2015, the Gray family and the city of Baltimore finally settled. The finalized terms granted the Gray family a $6.4 million payout, with Freddie’s mother, Gloria, receiving $5.36 million and Freddie’s father, who had no real connection with Freddie until his death, receiving $640,000. Since the Freddie Gray case, Billy has represented several hundred other plaintiffs in cases involving police brutality or excessive police force. Billy was also instrumental in the 2016 consent decree between the city of Baltimore and the US Department of Justice. His sister, who worked for US attorney general Loretta Lynch, worked closely with Billy to craft the case that led to the final decision. The consent decree mandated sweeping police reforms after a Department of Justice investigation found widespread discriminatory policing in the city, particularly in poor black neighborhoods. Hundreds of incidents were publicly uncovered. The decree requires restrictions on police officers and how they engage individuals suspected of criminal activity, and also requires the police department to enhance officer training and accountability. Almost immediately after the Trump administration took office, the consent decree was put under review, with then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions saying he had “grave concerns that some of the provisions of the decree will reduce the lawful powers of the police department and result in a less safe city.” Billy has been a vocal advocate for the consent decree to make sure true accountability comes to Baltimore. He continues to travel the country urging for criminal justice reform, and he continues to stay in touch with the Gray family.
Perhaps no character came out of the 2015 riots worse off or more divided than Baltimore.
In the days after the riots, the Baltimore state’s attorney, Marilyn Mosby, announced that she would charge six officers in the death of Freddie Gray. In the May 1 announcement, Mosby came down the stairs of the War Memorial Building to declare that she was heeding the calls of “No justice, no peace.” Months later, none of the officers had been convicted, and there has not been peace in Baltimore since.
In the months after the April 2015 unrest, the city devolved into what law enforcement and citizens alike described as consistent unrest. Resentful and fearful of prosecution, some police stopped protecting and serving. Arrests plummeted in May to the lowest percentages seen in any month for at least three years, according to city arrest data, as officers began turning a blind eye to drug dealing, robberies in broad daylight, and routine violations.
By then, the national news outlets had disappeared, the politicians had gone back to day-to-day business, and the promises of change that had echoed through the city for one hopeful week went unfulfilled. The programs for youth, whose clash with officers sparked the unrest, were not adequately sustained, and many withered under financial pressure. The neighborhood blight that served as a backdrop for interviews about Baltimore’s impending renaissance still showed disrepair. The streets were still hosting gun battles and bloodbaths.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced she would not seek reelection. Residents chose longtime Baltimore state senator Catherine Pugh to go to City Hall, and along with a fresh slate of City Council members, Baltimore appeared ready for a new start. But by 2017, the homicide rate surged, and Baltimore logged 342 murders—the highest rate in its history, and the highest of any major city in the country. That same year, the Baltimore Police Department delivered another blow to an already battered city: the largest corruption case in its history. Eight officers were charged in federal court with racketeering related to robberies, extortion, and the unleashing of unfettered terror on the city. The elite unit of the Gun Trace Task Force, as it was called, was also believed to have been the primary traffickers of drugs stolen from a burning CVS during the riots.
As the officers went on trial, a key witness walked into an alleyway and was later found gravely wounded in a vacant lot by a bullet shot from his own gun. It was revealed that the victim, Baltimore City police detective Sean Suiter, was scheduled to testify before a grand jury in the Gun Trace Task Force case the day after the shooting. The state medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, but an independent panel later determined that evidence supported the conclusion that he took his own life. His family told The Baltimore Sun that they believed it was an “inside job.”
Suiter’s death and the surrounding mystery and conspiracy shook the scant confidence the city had that it had reached a turning point. And just when it seemed things couldn’t get any worse, they did. In 2019, the Sun published a series of damning articles about self-dealing board members at the University of Maryland Medical Center. One of the worst offenders: Baltimore mayor Catherine Pugh. She resigned in disgrace on May 2, and in November 2019 she was indicted on eleven counts, including fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy.