WASHINGTON — The NAACP opened a satellite office in one of the areas of Baltimore affected by Monday’s rioting, aiming to address complaints of police brutality and racial profiling.
In a news conference Tuesday morning, Tessa Hill-Aston, President of the NAACP’s Baltimore City Branch, said that an office in Sandtown was necessary because “people are fed up” with the kind of police treatment that led to the death of Freddie Gray, who died of injuries suffered in police custody.
“Somebody has to be indicted for somebody’s death,” she said.
Gray is one name on “a long list” of victims of police, said Cornell William Brooks, president and CEO of the national NAACP. Black men, he said, are 21 times more likely to die at hands of police than whites — one every 28 hours.
“This is not an individual tragedy, an individual phenomenon,” he said.
And while eyes are focused on the city in the wake of Monday’s violence, in which 15 police officers were injured and 200 people were arrested, Brooks was blunt.
“I’m less concerned about ‘Why is it an uprising now?’ than I am about ‘When will this all end?’”
He compared the cancellation of Baltimore schools Tuesday — “there are children who are not in school today” — with the deliberate segregation of the Old South.
The kind of “rough-riding” that is said to have contributed to Gray’s death, in which a suspect is taken into a van without a seat belt and deliberately subjected to a difficult journey, is nothing new for the NAACP, Hill-Aston said. Several years ago, the organization sued the Baltimore police over similar treatment.
“We will be addressing that,” she said.
Brooks said that “rough-riding” was mentioned in the Justice Department’s report on police tactics in Ferguson, Missouri, and called it an “illegal and unconstitutional” form of policing.
“Targeting innocent citizens for intimidation is not lawful,” he said.
He was also clear about possible responses.
“The NAACP is not adverse to taking people to court in the course of the last 106 years. And if we receive complaints from people in the community about this kind of conduct, we will exercise every available legal option.”
Brooks said of the Monday violence, “We have a fraction of the citizenry who have given over to anger in ways that are unconstructive.”
“At least 1,000 people are volunteering to clean up streets that they did not dirty or destroy. That says something about the folks in the community.”
In the city, he said, there is “an overwhelmingly larger group of people who focus their anger into action and into reform and building communities.”
“When all these cameras go away, these people will be right here, fighting day in and day out to bring about an end to racial profiling and police brutality.”
Hill-Aston added that the NAACP was working in concert with neighborhood associations such as the Grand Masons, fraternities and sororities, some of whom sent their presidents to the news conference.
“We’re not taking over; we’re adding to.”
A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to Tessa Hill-Aston as Roslyn Brock.
