David Simon, creator of hit HBO drama "The Wire," condemned the Baltimore riots on Monday, saying it was a shame they had overshadowed the weekend's peaceful protests.
"If you can’t seek redress and demand reform without a brick in your hand, you risk losing this moment for all of us in Baltimore. Turn around. Go home. Please,"
he wrote in a blog post.
As a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun, Simon set his five-season crime drama on the streets of the troubled city, and has become one of its hometown heroes.
On Monday, protests broke out following the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died in police custody. Those protests soon turned violent, and led to 144 vehicle fires, 15 structure fires, and nearly 200 arrests, the mayor's office said Tuesday. Many commentators said Gray's death and the subsequent riots looked eerily similar to those in Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
"[T]he anger and the selfishness and the brutality of those claiming the right to violence in Freddie Gray’s name needs to cease," Simon wrote.
"There was real power and potential in the peaceful protests that spoke in Mr. Gray’s name initially, and there was real unity at his homegoing today. But this, now, in the streets, is an affront to that man’s memory and a dimunition (sic) of the absolute moral lesson that underlies his unnecessary death."
Actor Wendell Pierce, who played Detective Bunk Moreland on "The Wire," also spoke out about the violence in Baltimore on Monday.
"Baltimore. These are not protestors. These are criminals disrespectful of the wishes of the family and people of good will,"
he wrote on Twitter.
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