Black In America

"It brought a tear to my eye. Seeing it doesn't feel like the city that I love."
"I am glad they're [ National Guardsmen] here, but it's hard to watch."
Jascy Jones, Baltimore, Maryland

"You look around and see unemployment. Filling out job applications and being turned down because of where you live and your demographic. It's so much bigger than the police department."
"This place is a powder keg waiting to explode."
Robert Stokes, 36, Baltimore resident

"The death of Freddie Gray is probably the opportunity and pretext for riotous fun, thrill, risk and profit [looting]."
"[Rock throwing, arson and looting by youth looked] like a party at the end of a long winter. [What transpired, with more criminal looters and rioters outnumbering protesters represented a phenomenon called emotional contagion where] everybody gets excited and the arousal level just goes up."
Frank Farley, professor of psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images   A man faces down a line of Baltimore Police as a CVS burns during violent protests following the funeral of Freddie Gray, April 27, 2015 in Baltimore.

Professor Farley, a past president of the American Psychological Association, pointed out the differences between Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland. In Ferguson the town administration was all white, and so was the police force. In Maryland, in contrast, the mayor is black, the chief of police is black, the state attorney is black and the city council president is also black.

In Baltimore, of the population of 652,000, 63 percent is black. The police force is comprised of 48 percent black members. Hours after the funeral of a young black man, Freddie Gray, who died while in police custody from a fatal spinal cord injury which has not been explained, protests began. Chanting crowds of people soon gave way to rock-and-bottle throwing at police attempting to establish order, and eventually looting.

'Demonstrators' climb on a destroyed Baltimore Police car during protests/Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

"[The] slow rolling crisis [of young black males being killed by police in America] was no excuse [for the Baltimore violence; rioters should be treated as criminals]. "They aren't protesting. They aren't making a statement. They're stealing", said President Barack Obama in a public statement, urging Americans to "do some soul-searching".

"We have seen too many instances of what appears to be police officers interacting with individuals, primarily African-American, often poor, in ways that raise troubling questions. It comes up, it seems like, once a week now", he said. Condemning both the targeting of black men by the nation's police, and the response by young black males setting out to trash their own neighbourhoods in a paroxysm of violent rage, with more than a tinge of glee.

"There is no doubt in my mind that behind Baltimore lies Ferguson. There's always a grievance -- there's always some sense of people being oppressed, unable to express themselves, discriminated against and held back. [But] there's also a kind of exuberance that goes along with violence like this. It's almost an excuse to smash things, to go a little wild, to steal and basically raise a little hell."
"That's why people get hurt and stores get scorched and cars get turned over. People sort of feel as if they are caught up in the mob -- in a sense they surrender to the direction the mob is taking and there's a certain kind of pleasure in that as well. People feel as if they belong to some larger, more powerful entity."
Dr. Ken Eisold, New York psychologist/psychoanalyst

Jerry Jackson/AP    Protesters face police following the funeral of Freddie Gray, April 27, 2015, in Baltimore.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake commented: "The same community they say they care about, they're destroying. You can't have it both ways." And Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts added: "I had officers come up to me and say, 'I was born and raised in this city. This makes me cry." At least 20 police officers were injured, one person critically in a fire. Over 200 adults and 34 juveniles were arrested. Almost 150 cars were burned out.

The city and its residents are much the worse for wear after the celebratory rage foisted upon it. People are decrying the damage produced in their own neighbourhoods. Hundreds of Baltimore residents have become part of a volunteer brigade, coming out with brooms and trash bags to sweep up the streets of glass and debris, taking back their neighbourhood.