Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said Tuesday that police in Baltimore — where rioting erupted on Monday in the latest U.S. flashpoint over race and policing — behave like an "occupying force" toward residents because they are not required to live in the city where they work,
Mediaite reports.
Many Baltimore police officers live in the suburbs, and some as far away as Pennsylvania, Jackson told Amy Goodman of the syndicated public television news show, "Democracy Now!"
"So they come in as an occupying force, not as neighbors," he said.
Jackson said that Baltimore should have a residency requirement for its police officers, because without one, "often people are afraid of [police], because they're not taxpaying neighbors whose children go to school with their children."
Chicago, headquarters of Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, requires all of its municipal employees, including police, to live within city limits.
"Those who get nectar from the flower should sow pollen where they pick up nectar," said Jackson.
Jackson was in Baltimore and spoke on Monday at the
funeral of Freddie Gray, 25, who died one week after suffering a severe spinal injury following his arrest April 12 in the impoverished West Baltimore neighborhood where he lived.
Six officers connected to the case are suspended with pay while an investigation into Gray's arrest continues, authorities said.
Baltimore is under curfew after rioting overnight that resulted in more than 200 arrests, injuries to several police officers, and dozens of fires in buildings and vehicles,
the Baltimore Sun reports.
Asked about Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan calling rioters "lawless gangs of thugs," Jackson asked, "What do you call those who did the killing where there was no camera?" — a reference to police officers involved in deadly force incidents that are not captured on bystander video or on police dashboard or body cameras.
"We need not engage in name calling on that matter," he continued. "We know that that strategy does not work."
Jackson also brought up "bankers who engaged in subprime and predatory lending and took people's homes and drove them out of the middle class into poverty."
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