80 people arrested in Baltimore protests on Monday released

(Image credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

published 30 April 2015

Over the course of Wednesday afternoon and evening, close to 80 people who were arrested Monday during Freddie Gray protests in Baltimore were released from the city's Central Booking and Intake Center. Baltimore police say that more than 200 people were taken into custody that day.

Natalie Finegar, a lawyer from the Baltimore public defender's office, said the protesters were released because they had been held for more than 48 hours without receiving charging documents or seeing a court commissioner, The Washington Post reports, and the law requires that a person who is taken into custody must stand before a court commissioner within 24 hours. "Many of them don't even know what they're charged with," Finegar said. "I am concerned that this is going to further erode the public's confidence in our criminal justice system."

 Baltimore resident Dwayne Torrence told the Post that on Monday, he was talking to police officers when another group of officers came up and started to arrest people. Torrence said he ran and was caught, and believes he likely would have been charged with disorderly conduct. He said he never received any documents explaining charges and did not see a court commissioner. The holding cell Torrence was in was very crowded, he added, and people were starting to get angry. Another person who was released confirmed how cramped the cells were, and said when it came time for people to sleep, they had to use their shoes for pillows.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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