So the "Justice" department is going to tell black folks in Baltimore what they already know...

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Foot chases and use of force

So, when Freddie Gray made eye contact with one of the officers that morning, he ran, and the police chased him, evidently for no reason other than the fact that he was fleeing and in a high-crime area. That's no coincidence either. "When officers encounter civilians who flee from them, officers nearly always give chase, without weighing the severity of any suspected crime, whether the person poses a threat, and any alternative, safer means to affect a stop or seizure," the DOJ found.

The police report of Gray's arrest says he was taken into custody "without force or incident." But witnesses and cellphone video tell a different story. Those at the scene say he was forcibly taken to the ground, that an officer pinned a knee to his neck and that another bent his legs backward, "like he was a crab or a piece of origami," as one witness put it. And that's not uncommon either. The DOJ reports that Baltimore police foot chases frequently result in the use of force out of proportion to the needs of safety or the suspected criminal activity — and remember, in this case, they had no specific suspicion at all. Foot pursuits are high-adrenaline activities that frequently render officers unable to make sound judgments and prone to unconstitutional use of force, the report says.

For that reason, departments need clear policies and specific training on foot chases, but Baltimore police have neither, the DOJ found. According to the report, the department has been aware of the need for a policy since at least 2013 but has never adopted one. Until 2015, the department had no specific training on foot pursuits for new recruits at the police academy or refresher training for experienced officers.

Dangerous transport practices

The video of Gray's arrest shows officers dragging him into a police van. Video from a later stop shows him handcuffed and shackled and loaded face-down into the back. At no point was he seat belted. Those decisions — to put Gray in a defenseless and unrestrained posture in the back of the van — were likely the ones that led to his death. They were also standard operating procedure for the Baltimore police.

The DOJ report confirms that Baltimore police had for years routinely flouted a policy that detainees should be secured with seat belts in the back of vans, that commanders knew it and did little about it. The department conducted sporadic audits of seat belting practices in 2012, 2014 and 2015. "With each audit, BPD inspected one transport vehicle from each of the districts, one time," the report says, and though some of the audits showed improvement, their findings were contradicted both by reports from officers and detainees. "One officer who spoke to us described the transportation process before Freddie Gray's death as 'load and go,' often with little regard for seatbelts," the DOJ reported.

The vans themselves were dangerous — the way they were partitioned made it "possible for detainees being transported, if not properly secured, to strike their head on the divider or walls relatively easily; and there is virtually no padding to protect the person from injury." The vans lacked functional video cameras or any other means for the driver to observe the passengers, or even to hear them well, so it's altogether plausible that the officer transporting Gray would have had no way to know he was injured until he reached the Western District. A post-Freddie Gray retrofit of the vans still has substantial flaws that fail to address that problem.

The DOJ report may not provide any insight into how Freddie Gray died, but it says a lot about why. Every element of his encounter with police that morning reflected a pattern of practices by the Baltimore Police Department that was at best flawed and at worst unconstitutional. For those still wondering why the city agreed to a $6.4 million settlement with Gray's family before they even filed a lawsuit, there's your answer.

The DOJ report doesn't say how Freddie Gray died, but it does explain why.