O’Malley heckled in Baltimore
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) was heckled when he hit Baltimore’s streets on Tuesday after riots over the death of a black man in police custody.
O’Malley, who is considering a 2016 presidential bid, cut short a European trip to be in the city he served as mayor for seven years, from 1999 to 2007.
O’Malley was on a packed street corner Tuesday near a burned-out and looted CVS pharmacy, when he was taunted by a pair of men on motorcycles, The Washington Post reported.
{mosads}The men hurled expletives and blamed zero-tolerance policing he pushed while mayor for the eruption of violence in the city, according to the report.
“Every mayor does their very best to strike the right balance, to save as many lives as we possibly can,” O’Malley told local NBC affiliate WBAL-TV when asked about the hecklers.
“Most people have been very nice to me. You’ve got to be present in the middle of the pain, man,” the Maryland Democrat said. “Everybody needs to step up.”
He was also seen shaking hands and posing for selfies as he walked through the crowd.
Protests have roiled part of Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, while in police custody. Rioting erupted in the city on Monday following Gray’s funeral.
“I just wanted to be present. There’s a lot of pain in our city right now, a lot of people feeling very sad,” O’Malley told reporters at the scene Tuesday.
“Look, we’ve got to come through this together. We’re a people who’ve seen worse days, and we’ll come through this day.”
Earlier on Tuesday, former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele (R) also linked Gray’s death to tough-on-crime policies during O’Malley’s term as mayor, suggesting they created distrust between law enforcement and the community.
“Everything was on lockdown. You couldn’t sit on your stoop. People were harassed,” Steele, also the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said of the policies on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“This is really sort of the boiling point around Freddie Gray’s death,” Steele said. “All these tensions have been building and simmering for some time.”