Justice for Freddy Gray: Remember???

Today, I watched three hours of news coverage about Baltimore. The various news outlets were very detailed when reporting about the clean up process, businesses trying to recover and reports from an unidentified prisioner that claimed Freddy Gray was trying to hurt himself while in the police van and he obviously is a credible witness with x-ray vision because he allegedly witnessed this despite being separated by a solid metal partition. Over a week ago, Freddy Gray died from a severed spinal column while in custody of the Baltimore Police Department. The day Gray was being laid to rest, residents began to lash out because of their frustration. Almost immediately, the news shifted from the death of Freddy Gray to what many news outlets referred to as riots.

I was watching the news as they reported about the riots; the social unrest of those living in Baltimore. There was no denying that some businesses were destroyed and looting was taking place but there was no backstory. In order to find out what happened prior to the social unrest, we had to look to bloggers, social activists and other non - conventional methods of obtaining information to find out what happened. While watching CNN, MSNBC and FOX, there were no reports about the black baby dolls hanging from trees, the alleged calling of black demonstrators, who peacefully gathered for six days, niggers and referring to white protesters as nigger lovers. Almost every reporter focused on getting the person they were interviewing to condemn the violence. Also, there were false reports that members of the Bloods and Crips called a truce to attack police officers.

With each report, more attention was diverted away from the death of Freddy Gray and focused on the police in riot gear, the buildings that were burned and the clean up efforts. For the past two days, all attention has been focused on the mother that attacked her son when she spotted him throwing rocks at police officers. Again, the conversation was not about Freddy Gray but had people chiming in on the mother's action, with groups debating if her actions were justified or not. All of this reporting from Baltimore focused on everything except the death of Freddy Gray. As we look at the events unfold before our eyes, we become engaged in other discussions without realizing we're being lead astray with stories of mass distraction. Once the mother retuens home from her press tour, the debris is bagged, the broken glass replaced and the fires extinguished, we realize that stores can be rebuilt, broken glass can be replaced but Freddy Gray remains in a grave and we don't have any definitive answers regarding the events that caused him to suffer a severed spinal column while in police custody. Watching the news, it seems that broken glass is more important than broken spines. While we're getting distracted, there are six police officers on paid administrative leave and we don't know there names. The question that's still on my mind is why does the destruction of property garner more outrage and media coverage than the destruction of a h6man life?