Baltimore Protesters Jailed Without Food For Days, Attorneys Say

In Baltimore’s Central Booking, protesters and rioters are being withheld food for up to 18 hours, denied medical attention and detained for extended periods of time with up to 20 people in small cells intended to hold many less, two Baltimore public defenders told ThinkProgress.

Deputy District Public Defender Natalie Finegar said she spoke with her clients Wednesday night as they were being released from detention. Many spoke about the inhumane conditions and overcrowding and questioned why they were being held unlawfully.

“One [story] I heard described was that folks went 18 hours without food at one point and that when they were given food, it was a series of slices of bread with a small slice of cheese,” Finegar said.

The facility is facing a higher arrest rate than it’s capable of handling due to the influx of arrests following the riots that occurred on the streets of Baltimore over the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray.

“In cells that were designed for 8 people, they had 15 to 20 people,” she said. She also described one person who had an open wound and was worried he wasn’t getting the necessary medical attention to check for infections.

The stories Finegar heard corroborate the information shared by another Baltimore public defender, Marci Tarrant-Johnson, who posted on her personal Facebook Thursday about the conditions she observed. Her post, which described hearing that people saved their bread slices to use as pillows, quickly went viral.

“They were very upset,” Tarrant-Johnson told ThinkProgress about the women she spoke with, many of whom had been held for days without speaking to any officials. “We were dealing with a particular group of people who hadn’t even been charged with anything, so they were very confused about what the process was, why they hadn’t been seen, why nobody had talked to them.”

Some of the women were from out of town and had friends, family members and employers wondering where they were and why they had been missing for days, she said.

“The purpose of that booking process is all supposed to happen in a matter of hours,” Finegar said. “Under the Maryland rules, you should either be committed or be released… and certainly within 24 hours. So this process is not supposed to be taking days and folks should not be spending that much time on the booking floor in the cell.”

Close to 100 people were released on Wednesday with no charges filed against them, according to the Guardian. Because of an executive order signed by Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), law enforcement was given the right to hold people for 48 hours before they were presented to district court officials for booking.

“As a lawyer representing these individuals that were subject to his proposed order, we believe he didn’t actually have the authority to grant that order,” Finegar said.

Even when those arrested are being committed and offered bond, people are being assigned widely varying bond amounts, some reaching up to $750,000, according to the Pretrial Justice Institute. While Tarrant-Johnson said the Baltimore detention system has systematic problems and not all of the issues are new, it’s unusual for people to be held so long without charges.

“I’ve been a lawyer at the public defender’s office for 20 years and I’ve never seen anything quite like this.”