A Plan to Avoid More Riots in Baltimore

Since the riots that broke out there last spring, Baltimore’s reputation has been defined, in many corners, by its impoverished communities and the roles police have played in dealing with the people who live in them. So it was with a great deal of relief that the mistrial declared in December in the case of Baltimore police officer William Porter, who’d been charged for his role in Freddie Gray’s death, did not end in the kind of rioting seen during the “Baltimore Uprising.”

But of course the problems undergirding last spring’s riots—a lack of living-wage employment, blighted properties, a lack of affordable housing and reliable public transit—are nowhere close to resolution. And there are still at least six more trials connected to Gray’s killing yet to come, one for each of the police officers implicated in his death. Any one of these, Baltimore leaders fear, could lead to another flare up.