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Baltimore is in trouble –no doubt. But is there one person who can help turn things around? A lot is riding on the shoulder of recently elected State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who is Black and from a family of cops. It is she who will decide whether to move forward on the Freddie Gray case. She will decide on whether to charge any police officers in Freddie Gray’s death.
The city’s 35-year-old state’s attorney was raised in the inner city. And her husband, who is also African-American, is a Baltimore city councilman.
Here’s a twist: Her father, mother, and grandfather were police officers. She set her sights on becoming a prosecutor when she was 14, after her teenage cousin was a victim of violence. Her cousin was shot to death in a robbery right outside her family’s home. “The cousin, 17-year-old Diron Spencer, was a college-bound honor student described by all as the perfect kid. He had just come back from working as a lifeguard and was still wearing his swimsuit,” reports The Daily Beast.
“I’ve seen my family blood, the same blood that runs through my veins, spilled on my front door,” she said when she announced her candidacy for state’s attorney last year.
Mosby has always been vocal about her support of police.
“It is my genuine belief despite what we might all want to think, what we might want to believe, the police officers in this city are doing their jobs,” she said. “I repeat, the police officers in Baltimore city are doing their jobs and taking bad guys off the street.”
Mosby, who was elected by 10 points, will have been on the job for just five months on Friday, when the Baltimore police hand over to her their investigation into Gray’s fatal injuries while in custody. She is doing her own investigation as is the U.S. Justice Department, now headed by newly-sworn Loretta Lynch.
Mosby has her work cut out for her. Talk about baptism by fire.
