Baltimore Witness: Cops Twisted Freddie Gray Like ‘origami’

Baltimore cops twist­ed Freddie Gray like “origa­mi,” says the man who filmed the fatal­ly wound­ed 25-year-old’s arrest. Witness Kevin Moore is speak­ing out on the con­fronta­tion between police offi­cers and Gray, who died of a sev­ered spinal cord. “They had him fold­ed up like he was a crab or a piece of origa­mi,” Moore told the Baltimore Sun. “He was all bent up, and the offi­cer had his knee in his neck. He was just scream­ing, like scream­ing for life.“The death of Gray a week after the April 12 bust inflamed ten­sions between cops and black res­i­dents with the police union boss describ­ing pro­test­ers as a “like a lynch mob.” Union boss Gene Ryan acknowl­edged demon­stra­tions had been peace­ful but blast­ed pro­test­ers’ “rhetoric” after Gray’s death.

“In fact, the images seen on tele­vi­sion look and sound much like a lynch mob in that they are call­ing for impris­on­ment of these offi­cers with­out them ever receiv­ing the due process that is the Constitutional right of every cit­i­zen, includ­ing law enforce­ment offi­cers,” Ryan said in a writ­ten state­ment. The con­tro­ver­sial descrip­tion infu­ri­at­ed crit­ics who bashed the union leader as impos­si­bly tone deaf to one of the grimmest reminders of racial injus­tice in this country’s his­to­ry. “We’ve been the vic­tims of the lynch­ing and now we’re the lynch mob?” Gray fam­i­ly attor­ney Billy Murphy told the Baltimore Sun. “The pres­i­dent of the police union called peace­ful protests and the anger at the death of a man to severe and unfath­omable injuries while in police cus­tody a lynch mob? It does­n’t get more insen­si­tive or insult­ing than that. These remarks illus­trate why black peo­ple and the police don’t get along.”

Ryan should rethink his pri­or­i­ties, the attor­ney said. “He needs to issue an apol­o­gy at the speed of light and focus on the more impor­tant issues of how this black man did­n’t deserve to die and have his spinal cord sev­ered and his neck bro­ken — how that hap­pened,” Murphy told the Baltimore Sun. Ryan lat­er backed off the inflam­ma­to­ry lan­guage. “Maybe I need to reword that,” he said at a news con­fer­ence. Gray could be heard in a cell phone video scream­ing as two offi­cers dragged the hand­cuffed 25-year-old to a police van and loaded him inside.

He was lat­er tak­en to a hos­pi­tal where doc­tors dis­cov­ered his spinal cord was almost com­plete­ly sev­ered. Gray slipped into a coma and died a week lat­er. Union lead­ers main­tain the injuries hap­pened inside the van but claim they’re not sure how. The case is now being inves­ti­gat­ed by the Department of Justice.

The union rushed to sup­port the six offi­cers involved while lay­ing blame for the arrest on Gray, who was car­ry­ing a pock­et knife when he was stopped.“Had he not had a knife or a an ille­gal weapon on him, he would have been released after the prop­er paper­work was done,” union attor­ney Michael Davey said at a news conference.

dmmurphy@​nydailynews.​com