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Community Outreach A Year After Freddie Gray Protests

Police Use Pepper Spray Against Crowd during Baltimore Riots
MSNBC
Police Use Pepper Spray Against Crowd during Baltimore Riots

BALTIMORE (AP) - In the year since Freddie Gray died, the Baltimore police department has worked on its relationship with the community and tried to heal wounds opened during protests and rioting last spring.

Part of the department's efforts have been putting more officers on foot patrol in poor, mostly black neighborhoods and encouraging beat cops to get more involved in the community.

Officer Ken Hurst is one of 450 police officers who are part of a foot patrol program aimed at getting police officers out of their cars and onto the streets of Baltimore's most dangerous neighborhoods, not to make arrests but to make friends. Hurst, a white officer, believes the efforts are paying off. Some in the community agree; others are skeptical.

Don Rush is the News Director at Delmarva Public Media. An award-winning journalist, Don reports major local issues of the day, from sea level rise, to urban development, to the changing demographics of Delmarva.