A Baltimore police officer was shot during a traffic stop near Mondawmin Mall on Sunday night. Officer Andrew Groman was in stable condition last night after surgery, and the suspect, Donte Jones, was arrested. The fact that the officer-involved shooting came on a weekend of local protests against the Eric Garner and Michael Brown non-indictment decisions wasn’t lost on Police Commissioner Anthony Batts.
“I’m not caught on the irony of the time or the situation,” Batts said in video used in a WBAL-TV report. “We’ve had marches nationwide for the fact that we’ve lost lives in police custody. I wonder if we’re going to have those same marches as officers are shot, too.”
Protesters who spent the weekend marching in the streets responded in kind. Grassroots collective Bmore Bloc released a response calling Batts’ comments “insensitive and deliberately provocative.”
“Batts’s horrible “question” disrespects the work of this movement by erasing its motivation with false equivalency,” the statement said. “Baltimore Bloc demands an immediate apology from Batts and the Department, and we demand that the Mayor and City Council join us in condemning his statement.”
Here’s the full response to Batts’ statement, which includes a comparison of last night’s shooting to the case of Tyrone West.
