Baltimore Mayor Fires Police Chief

The Mayor of Baltimore has fired the city's police commissioner after the release of a report about the handling of riots that rocked the city and grabbed international headlines after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody.

The New York Times reports that the Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake justified firing commissioner Anthony W. Batts by referring to a surge in violent crime in West Baltimore that took place after the riots.

Rawlings-Blake said she did not fire Batts to satisfy the local police union, which released a report that attacked the city's response to the rioting. The report said that officers were not provided with the proper equipment and training they needed to bring the situation under control, and they also said they lacked leadership, which only made the riots worse.

Dozens of people were murdered as the police in Baltimore kept a low profile after the riots that occurred in late April after Gray passed away having spent a week in a coma. His cause of death was determined to be a homicide and six officers have been charged with various crimes related to his death.

Gray died from a crushed vocal cord and severed spine. It is unclear when he sustained these injuries, but the most likely scenario is that they occurred during his transportation to the police station, in what has been referred to as a "rough ride." The city of Baltimore has previously paid out millions of dollars to people injured in rough rides, which is when the police officer driving a police van makes deliberately fast and dangerous stops and turns with the intent of injuring the prisoners inside. In at least one of the settlements, the victim was paralyzed.