Attorney General Loretta Lynch met on Tuesday with Freddie Gray's family. As the AP reports:
The new attorney general met privately at the University of Baltimore with [the] family, days after the state's attorney charged six police officers involved in Gray's arrest. Gray's injury in police custody and death a week later sparked protests and riots that prompted Maryland's governor to bring in the National Guard.
I think it problematic -- as potentially prejudicial -- for the Attorney General to have had this well-publicized meeting, even as I recognize that there may be legitimate reasons for it.
My question, however, is less about the meeting she had than about the one she didn't. To my knowledge, Ms. Lynch has not met with, nor expressed any interest in meeting with, the family of Brian Moore.
Moore, who at 25 was the same age as Gray, admittedly did not have Gray's history, including 18 arrests and several convictions. Instead, Moore had two exceptional service medals from the NYPD. He was on duty last week when he was murdered in cold blood by Demetrius Blackwell.
Blackwell's attorney cautioned against a "rush to judgment." One listens in vain for something remotely similar from our Attorney General -- and still less for her to show an iota of concern for Officer Brian Moore.
What are the "legitimate" reasons for it?
When did the practice of the AG privately meeting with relatives of victims of alleged crimes start?
I think there would have been sound reasons for the AG to meet with, for example, the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. A major wound like that may require doing something more than the routine stuff from the Attorney General.
As I'm sure you know by now, I am hardly in favor of placating race-huckstering and the culture of entitlement and victimization. A good deal of that seems to me to be going on in this Freddie Gray case, and I am dead set against it, but there's more to it than that, IMHO.
I don't know if present charges against the Baltimore police are true. I have significant doubts, and think there is a non-trivial chance the whole case will fall apart. But it also looks to me like there was some degree of police malfeasance that contributed to Gray's death, and I think it not out of line for the nation's Number One law enforcement officer to show some concern about this.