Pro-Obama Celebration Turns to Riot In BaltimoreI am hearing via my niece who is at Johns Hopkins that the police have been unable to maintain order.
Update: News
report here; predictably the focus is on the fact that the police were supposedly too aggressive in getting the celebratory crowd away from a hospital's emergency entrance.
Sterling Clifford, a Baltimore Police Department spokesman, said officers had been monitoring the gathering at St. Paul and E. 33rd streets for two hours. About 2 a.m., police received five complaints from the neighborhood concerning the loud noise, including one from nearby Union Memorial Hospital, and "made the determination it was time to close it down."
"As is sometimes the case, there were people who did not want to go home," Clifford said.
Clifford said Union Memorial reported that one of its entrances and an intersection near the hospital were blocked by members of the crowd. He said that a student liaison from Hopkins was trying to help police disperse the crowd with a bullhorn but that the crowd chanted: "These are our streets. We won't go."
