San Francisco Police Department Police Chief Greg Suhr resigned suddenly on Thursday, at the request of Mayor Ed Lee, after protests by the Black Lives Matter movement. The Black Lives Matter movement had targeted Suhr for months, following a scandal over racist and homophobic texts sent by police officers, and several recent officer-involved shootings.
As of last weekend, there are now 294 recorded homicides in Baltimore this year, up from the 211 murdered during all of 2014.
Last April, Toya Graham made headlines when she slapped her 16-year-old son Michael in the face for joining Baltimore rioters protesting the death of Freddie Gray.
On Wednesday night, former Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts told a crowd at Mount St. Mary’s University that police “took a knee” after riots in April, blaming their activity for rising crime rates that ended in his firing. Batts said, “Part of the crime rate increase is that the police officers at some point took a knee, and they are doing that like other officers.”
A Baltimore police officer who asked to remain anonymous said that the police’s morale is “in the sewers” and that the increase in the city’s crime is “a direct result from officers holding back” in an interview broadcast on Friday’s
On Wednesday, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the mayor of Baltimore, reversed herself; she now wants the Department of Justice to conduct a civil rights investigation of her city’s police department.
