May 1^st

Once again there are no righteous columnists in today’s paper.  I will comment on the Baltimore police department because nothing else is in the news. I believe the Baltimore police department has been reading “The Arabian Nights,” particularly the story of Scheherazade. You may remember that the king sleeps with a fresh virgin every night and beheads her the next morning. Scheherazade tells the king a fascinating story but dawn arrives before she can finish so the king spares her life for one more night. Scheherazade keeps this going for a thousand nights and a thousand stories until the king falls in love with her and makes her his queen.

So what has this to do with the Baltimore police department? The Baltimore police department has been issuing a tale de jour about what happened in that police van. This has been going on…and on, for several days. We now are told another van occupant heard banging around in Gray’s section of the van. According to police this was evidence that Gray was trying to hurt himself. Maybe Gray was trying to get the attention of the driver and the other transporting officer because he wanted medical treatment. I guess the police couldn’t imagine that possibility.

Then a story emerges that the van stopped four times on the way to the station, not the three as originally claimed. One of these stops was to let officers put Gray in leg irons. Why was that? He has his hands cuffed behind his back, he is in a police van, but leg irons are required because he might run away? The new van occupant was picked up just six blocks from the station and didn’t experience the earlier “rough ride” if indeed there was one. If there wasn’t a rough ride then how did Gray break his back? According to these fiction writers he did it by throwing himself around, while in handcuffs and leg irons, in the back of that van.

It takes a lot of kinetic energy to break the back of a healthy mid-twenties man. Kinetic energy depends upon the square of the velocity. How much velocity could be generated in the six feet or so available to Gray in the back of that van? The answer is not very much.  One thing is not disputed: Gray was not attached to a seat belt as was required by the police department.  No excuse of that oversight has emerged. If that simple rule had been followed Baltimore might have saved millions of dollars, but then the cops wouldn’t have had any fun, the fictional stories would stop and Scheherazade would lose her head.

P.S. As of shortly ago six cops involved in this episode have been charged with various serious crimes and are under arrest. I guess Scheherazade survives another night.