Baltimore, Dec. 17 – Today, an older woman was hit by a speeding Baltimore City cop. This reckless violence happened right by the Lexington Market subway station. People around the area who watched the accident say the woman was sent sliding across the street.
The community quickly rushed to aid her, but were met by armed police pushing them away. The cops attempted to put up crime scene tape to separate the people from the older woman.
However, the community, who vastly outnumbered the police, quickly broke through the tape barrier, moving in closer to film the incident and question the cops. BPD met them with immediate hostility, even though the crowd was solely focused on ensuring the safety of the older woman whom BPD nearly killed.
This life-threatening incident comes just months after Baltimore cop Robert Parks was seen in a viral video chasing a person with a police cruiser in late October. Parks has been charged with second-degree attempted murder, first- and second-degree assault, and reckless driving.
This incident also occurred only six months after Bilal Abdullah was brutally murdered by the BPD. In both the Bilal tragedy and this attack near Lexington Market, police immediately met a grieving community shaken by such acts of violence with more immediate threats of violence and the erection of barriers and barricades.
What played out near Lexington Market follows a well-known pattern: militarized forces treating civilian spaces as hostile territory.
That same pattern has been seen when Israeli occupation forces use tanks, bulldozers, and military vehicles against Palestinians, and when U.S. troops in Iraq used armored vehicles to intimidate, force civilians off the road, or run them down in the name of “security.”
Incidents like what happened near Lexington Market today are sadly normal in Black communities, and it is only through smashing the racist systems of this country that we end the systemic death of Black Baltimore.
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