Los Angeles/St. Louis/Washington – Black conservative leaders Joe Hicks, Stacy Washington and Horace Cooper are responding to the fiery press conference today by Maryland State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who essentially blamed the Baltimore Police Department for her failure to win convictions in cases against police officers in the death of Freddie Gray.
Mosby was the lead prosecutor in the government’s case against six police officers in the April 2015 death of Gray until announcing Wednesday that the state is dropping its prosecution after failing to win convictions in the first four trials.
Mosby claimed the failure of her prosecution team to win convictions was due to “an inherent bias that is a direct result of when police police themselves.” The police strongly denied the allegation of bias and noted that Mosby’s office had the legal authority to conduct its own investigation, but did not.
Black leaders affiliated with Project 21 are critical of Mosby.
“Today we saw further evidence that Marilyn Mosby’s stunning ignorance and incompetence is combined with the arrogance and racial truculence of a common street activist,” said Joe R. Hicks, a Los Angeles-based political commentator and Project 21 member.
“Unable or unwilling to admit something that is apparent to even the most casual observer – that absent reasonable cause, she attempted to persecute six innocent Baltimore police officers – Mosby spoke to the media and lobbed yet more racial hand grenades. Apparently she hoped that doing so would somehow help to save her ragged and tattered credibility,” Hicks continued.
“The case brought by Mosby never had any substance and was driven only by the outrageous political zeal of this race-obsessed prosecutor. Mosby’s outrageous statements fanned the flames of racial victimization and division, which serves no purpose, except perhaps her own demented sense of ‘social justice,'” said Hicks.
“Intentionally or not, Mosby gave encouragement to the street thugs who now literally control Baltimore streets at nightfall. The city’s homicide rate was up 44 percent between 2014 and 2015, and on a per capita basis, Baltimore’s current homicide rate is the deadliest in city history. The majority of Baltimore’s homicide victims and perpetrators are black – as they are nationally. Viewed in that light, Mosby’s politically-skewed prosecutions of police will mean more black community members will die. Feeling unsupported and persecuted, police will understandably pull back from the aggressive police tactics that have been shown to work prior to the current war on cops that has made police work difficult and deadly from Dallas to Baton Rouge,” continued Hicks.
“Playing the victim, Mosby claimed her failed, incompetent efforts to prosecute the Baltimore officers was somehow ‘one step closer to equality,’ thereby showing her contempt for the laws she is sworn to uphold. Her job isn’t to achieve ‘equality’ for any particular group, but to be a strong and unbiased voice for justice under the law. However, from the beginning Marilyn Mosby acted as a racial advocate pursuing a racial agenda undistinguished from the nihilistic black mobs who roamed the streets of Baltimore during several nights of terror, arson and looting. If Mosby had a single shred of dignity she would resign her post immediately and offer a public apology for her actions in this case,” Hicks concluded.
“Marilyn Mosby seems unable to comprehend that her own actions are responsible for the lack of convictions in the Freddie Gray case,” said Project 21’s Stacy Washington, a St. Louis radio talk show host. “By overcharging the officers she guaranteed their exoneration. This is truly shameful. Now Americans are stuck with acquittals stained by a cloud of accusations. Prosecutor Mosby’s tone is also an issue. Listening to someone in a position of authority railing and screaming into a microphone distracts from the actual message. If the statements made by Mosby about ‘police policing themselves’ are true, her manner of disseminating this information reduces the impact of her accusations.”
“Meanwhile, the safety of the residents of Baltimore is negatively impacted,” Washington continued. “Fewer police officers means more crime. While the homicide rate is up the number of new applications for Baltimore police force trainees is up as well, which is a silver lining. Another bit of good news is that the Baltimore police, working alongside the community, have implemented a number of new initiatives: body cams, transportation truck cams, training on use of force, to name a few, that will ensure better relations between the police and the community. There is no excuse for the kind of rhetoric that Prosecutor Mosby has employed.”
“Looking ahead,”Washington concluded, “she faces defamation and invasion of privacy suits from the two remaining officers charged in the Freddie Gray case. Perhaps Mosby would be better suited to criminal defense law instead of working for the state as a prosecutor.”
Legal commentator Horace Cooper, co-chairman of Project 21 and former assistant law professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University in Virginia, said, “These cases have finally come to an end. They should never have begun. Even as she acknowledged the dismissal of all charges against the remaining officers, Marilyn Mosby appears to not have realized the seriousness of her missteps. Trials are not fact-finding opportunities nor are they tools to quell a restless crowd. They are serious measures representing the awesome power of government that should only go forward when there is a high confidence of criminality and a likelihood of a conviction.”
“Her speech after the announcement was unfortunate and disgraceful,” Cooper added. “Her comments were likely to leave the public with the impression that America’s legal system is unfair and unjust. Her responsibility to embrace the law was rejected by her unwillingness to accept the failures of her department and the reality that one possible reason she never was able to succeed in these cases is because these accused men and women were innocent.”
“Abusing her power in this way makes her unfit to continue in this office. She may not have destroyed evidence or planted evidence, but her decision to unleash a prosecution on six individuals without evidence of criminal wrongdoing is as wrong as the inflammatory prosecutorial tactics of Michael Nifong,” Cooper continued.
“America in the 21st century should be past the days when the lynch mob decides who lives or dies — or who is charged and who is set free. Unfortunately for the residents of Baltimore their representative in the DA’s office remains stuck in a bygone era where there is more interest in appealing to the crowd than to lady justice. This is sad,” concluded Cooper.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a liberal, told CNN today that Mosby’s remarks were “not helpful”:
“They’re absolutely not helpful,” Rawlings-Blake said. “When you insinuate that the process is rigged, that is, I think, an unfair statement about the judge and about the investigation – especially when she purported to do her own independent investigation in her initial press conference.”
Rawlings-Blake also told CNN, “… I have never and will never use my position to give the impression to the community that they should not have confidence in the people who have sworn to serve them.”
Anthony Batts, who served as Baltimore police commissioner at the time of Gray’s death, was sharply critical of Mosby in a Baltimore Sun story by Justin GeorgeWednesday, calling her “immature,” “incompetent” and “vindictive.” Batts, who, like Mayor Rawlings-Blake, is not affiliated with Project 21, was fired by Rawlings-Blake after riots sparked by the Gray case and an increase in homicides in the city.
Baltimore City has said the trials against the police officers cost the city $7.47 million. The city also has paid $6.4 million to Gray’s family.
