On April 12, a young man named Freddie Gray was arrested and put into a police van. At some point during the drive to the police station, Gray fell into a coma and later died. What exactly happened in that van is an issue in major dispute, and will be at the heart of the upcoming trial of six Baltimore police officers.
In response to Gray’s death in police custody, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced this week that the BPD would install video cameras “with recording capabilities” in its police vans. The van that transported Gray did have a camera–but it could only be used for the driver to keep an eye on passengers; it didn’t have recording capabilities. Also, it was broken.
The mayor did not announce a timeline for the videos-in-vans plan– hopefully it’ll happen somewhat quicker than the plan to equip all BPD officers with body cameras, which won’t be complete until 2019.
