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Gunshot Reminds Residents That Tension Still Hangs Over Baltimore

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

When a prosecutor announced charges against Baltimore cops she responded to protesters who said, no justice, no peace. She said she needed peace while she sought justice. Baltimore's peace is being maintained, but it's not easy as the sound of a single gunshot demonstrated yesterday. Here's NPR's Hansi Lo Wang.

HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: Police resurrected a wall of riot shields at the center of Baltimore's protest.

(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Hey, yo (ph), you all shot my brother.

WANG: Eventually a protester cut through the people gathered there trying to figure out what happened. The rumor was that the Baltimore police had shot a young black man.

(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)

UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: Back up.

WANG: You're about to get sprayed, one officer warned as the protesters edged closer. They slowly backed down after police handcuffed one of them.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

LT. COL. MELVIN RUSSELL: Listen real quickly. We had an incident up here at Penn and North unfortunately.

WANG: Lt. Col. Melvin Russell later told reporters that the incident involved a man police found with a revolver.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

RUSSELL: Police come in - a very short, brief foot pursuit. He pulled the handgun - or attempts to pull it out. There's a sound of a discharging, the sound of a weapon discharging. The police never discharged any weapons.

WANG: Russell emphasized that the man was not injured and there were no gunshot wounds. But many of the protesters said after the Freddie Gray case, they didn't believe it.

ISHINA KING-KUADZI: They're trying to cover for theirselves (ph) once again. They tried to cover the first time, but we got a good outcome on that. Now, what's going to be the outcome of this here?

WANG: Ishina King-Kuadzi stood near a pharmacy that burned a week ago. With the way tensions are quick to flare up in this city, King-Kuadzi said she can't stand it much longer.

KING-KUADZI: I'm about to leave Baltimore, and this is a nice city.

WANG: You want to move?

KING-KUADZI: Yes, sir, I do.

JEFF MCCLEESE: It's really getting bad, you know? I just see police walking off the job. I mean, you know, it isn't worth it. It isn't worth it anymore.

WANG: Jeff McCleese left the Baltimore City Police Department in the 1980s. He served for two years. His father was on the force for more than 30. To rebuild the relationship between the police and community, he says body cameras could be a good start.

MCCLEESE: If you could prove or disprove every incident, do think the trust would come back?

WANG: That's not easy to answer for Baltimore resident Roy Goodridge.

ROY GOODRIDGE: It's also not something that you can gain overnight in any incident. So who knows how long it'll take, if it'll ever happen?

WANG: Goodridge lives a few blocks away from where the demonstrations have been taking place. He's been seeing more traffic around his neighborhood these past few days, but hearing that police are saying one thing and people are believing another, that, he says...

GOODRIDGE: That's not new. No, not at all - been going on forever - here. I don't know about in other places, but it's been going on forever here.

WANG: In Baltimore, he says, it's normal. Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News, Baltimore. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) is a national correspondent for NPR reporting on the people, power and money behind the U.S. census.