Violent protests in Baltimore yielded to calm Sunday, as mourners readied a funeral wake for Freddie Gray, an African American man who died of injuries sustained while in police custody.
Gray, 25, who died one week ago after his spine was nearly severed following his arrest, was to be buried Monday in his hometown of Baltimore, less than an hour from the US capital Washington.
A viewing of his body for friends and family was to be held at a local Baltimore funeral home beginning at 1:00 pm (1700 GMT) Sunday.
One day earlier, protesters rampaged through downtown Baltimore, in the latest show of public rage after the death of an unarmed African American by US law enforcement.
Speaking to US television, Congressman Elijah Cummings, who represents the Baltimore district where the violence took place, said he was pleased that the US Justice Department was undertaking a “top to bottom” probe of the city’s police department.
“We’ve got to take this department apart and try to figure out what is wrong and what is right,” Cummings told CBS television’s “Face the Nation” program.
“This is a significant moment,” Cummings said. “If we don’t correct this now, it will only get worse.”
News reports said Saturday’s demonstrations drew thousands of protesters, in the biggest show of outrage so far over Gray’s death.
Initially, the 90-minute rally at city hall demanding justice for Gray was peaceful.
But the mood shifted dramatically when scores of protesters moved to the vicinity of the city’s Camden Yards baseball stadium, scene of an evening Baltimore Orioles-Boston Red Sox game.
Gray’s twin sister Fredericka appealed — in vain — for calm.
“My family wants to say: Please, please stop the violence. Freddie would not want this,” she said amid the violence that led to numerous arrests.
She spoke alongside Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who said she was “profoundly disappointed” by violence she blamed on “a small group of agitators.”
Local television footage showed a crowd hurling traffic cones, soda bottles and trash cans at police officers, before randomly smashing store windows, looting merchandise and vandalizing police cars.
Street signs were torn down, and one motorist got a rock through her car window, local news media reported.
Targets of the violence also included a convenience store, a Michael Kors fashion boutique, a financial services center and a cellphone shop in Baltimore’s landmark Lexington Market.
Fans at the baseball game, which went beyond the standard nine innings due to a tie, were told to remain in the stadium, “due to an ongoing public safety issue,” until gates were opened for them to leave.
One police spokesman blamed the trouble on “isolated pockets” of individuals who were believed to have come from out of town.
Tensions have been simmering in Baltimore, a blue-collar Mid-Atlantic port city of 620,000, as investigators try to establish the circumstances that led to Gray’s death.
– Call for inquiry –
Speakers at the city hall rally called for President Barack Obama to launch a broad inquiry into police misconduct nationwide, following a series of fatal confrontations between white police officers and African-American men and boys.
“It has to stop. It really has to stop because it could have been any one of us,” one young male adult member of Gray’s extended family told the crowd.
During a press conference Friday, Baltimore officials acknowledged Gray should have received medical help at the moment of his arrest, when he was seen by bystanders — and caught on video — howling in apparent pain.
They also revealed that Gray, contrary to police department policy, was not buckled into his seat in the van, which made at least three unexplained stops on its way to the Western District police station.
He died last Sunday with 80 percent of his spine severed at the neck, lawyers for his family have said.
Six officers have been suspended with pay as the police investigation inches closer to a May 1 deadline to submit findings to a Maryland state prosecutor, who could decide to press charges.
Gray’s death is the latest in a string of high-profile confrontations between African Americans and police, including the fatal shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in August in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson.