Dean Renée Hutchins Laurent, JD, stood before a crowd at Westminster Hall, recounting how she watched Baltimore's 2015 unrest unfold after Freddie Gray's death. She described seeing students stranded without transportation near Mondawmin Mall while police in riot gear gathered nearby.
Iman Freeman, Baltimore Action Legal Team, addresses the audience at Westminster Hall.
"I saw crowds of children who had been turned out of school because city leadership thought it would be 'safer' to cancel classes," said Laurent. "But the city also shut down the public transportation that many of those children normally used to get home."
The anecdote opened "Still Rising 10 Years After Freddie Gray's Death: How Legal, Faith-Based & Community Advocacy Changed Policing in Baltimore," held Friday, April 11 at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. The day-long event brought together advocates, legal experts, and policy makers to reflect on the decade since Gray's fatal encounter with police.
The event, co-sponsored by the Maryland Carey Law Gibson-Banks Center for Race and the Law and the Campaign for Justice Safety and Jobs, began with welcoming remarks from Monique Dixon, JD, executive director of the Gibson-Banks Center.
"We hope to accomplish three things today," Dixon said. "First, we will remember Freddie Gray. We will share the collective work that has taken place over the past 10 years to advance fair and accountable policing here in Baltimore. And then we will consider the work ahead, because we know that there's so much more work to do."
On April 12, 2015, Baltimore police officers arrested Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man, who sustained fatal injuries throughout the process of his arrest. Gray’s death sparked weeks of unrest in Baltimore; a federal investigative report, which found that the Baltimore Police Department engaged in a pattern of unconstitutional and racially discriminatory policing and led to a federal court consent decree; and ongoing advocacy for police accountability.
The “Still Rising” event featured a conversation between William H. "Billy" Murphy Jr., JD ‘69, senior and founding partner of Murphy Falcon Murphy, who represented Gray's family following his death, and Michael Pinard, JD, Maryland Carey Law professor and faculty director of the Gibson-Banks Center. Murphy described his methodical approach to the case.
"We had to do a prompt and thorough and dogged investigation. And so we immediately hit the streets, and we located every possible witness we could, because the motto of the firm is, do all the work all the time," Murphy said.
Murphy ended with a forceful call to action for law students and lawyers in attendance.
"Choose sides and be warriors. Don't sit back and watch events unfold without your signature being on the documents," he said.
The first afternoon panel, "Community and Legal Action in the Wake of Freddie Gray's Police-Involved Death," featured Ralikh Hayes, NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Iman Freeman, Baltimore Action Legal Team; Melvin Russell, retired Baltimore City Police Department chief; Michaela Brown, Organizing Black; David Rocah, ACLU of Maryland; and Reverend Todd Yeary, PhD, JD ‘19, Douglas Memorial Community Church.
Panelists described how Gray's death was the breaking point after years of tension between Baltimore's Black community and police. Michaela Brown of Organizing Black explained that the relationship between police and her West Baltimore community "has never really been good" throughout her life and the feeling of being overpoliced was a powder keg.
Ray Kelly of the Citizens Policing Project added that police were viewed as "enforcers" in his Sandtown neighborhood and the death of Gray proved to be the spark that ignited explosive protests.
"That powder keg exploded on the day he died,” said Kelly referring to April 19, when unrest began to escalate across the city. “You have these black people stewing for years since Trayvon Martin. Then you have this powder keg placed in our community, it explodes with Freddie Gray," Kelly said.
A second panel on "State and Local Policy Advocacy for Fair and Accountable Policing" examined legislative and policy changes resulting from Gray's death, including the consent decree between the Baltimore Police Department and the Department of Justice. Panelists included Heber Brown, Black Church Food Security Network; Jill Carter, Maryland State Senator Emeritus; Ray Kelly; Lawrence Grandpre, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle; and Heather Warnken, Center for Criminal Justice Reform, University of Baltimore School of Law.
David Rocah of the ACLU highlighted limitations of legal remedies but said that persistent pressure can provide results. Rocah described how his organization worked to address a critical piece of the accountability puzzle – transparency. He highlighted their multi-year effort to pass Anton's Law in 2021, which changed Maryland's Public Information Act to make police disciplinary records accessible to the public. "You can't change what you can't see," Rocah explained, noting that opening the records to public scrutiny was an important step toward meaningful reform.
Maryland Carey Law's impact extends beyond hosting the April 11 event. In 2015, the law school created a course called "Freddie Gray's Baltimore: Past, Present, and Moving Forward," bringing together law and social work students with professors, elected officials, and civic leaders.
"One of the things that followed Freddie Gray's death was this recognition of all sorts of different systems of oppression," Pinard said of the course. "Students really had a holistic understanding of the ways in which systems operate in coordination to exclude and oppress."
The law school also played a crucial role in facilitating community input during the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation, hosting a town hall meeting at Westminster Hall on September 7, 2016.
That 2016 town hall, attended by approximately 300 residents, activists, students, and elected officials, gave community members the opportunity to share their experiences with DOJ representatives as they negotiated the consent decree with the city.
The 2025 event concluded with reflections on lessons learned during the past decade. Participants highlighted significant reforms — including the consent decree, increased transparency in police disciplinary proceedings, and local control of the Baltimore Police Department — while acknowledging continuing challenges.
"We are still not where we want to be in terms of public safety," said Dixon. "We want to ensure that public safety is available to everyone, regardless of race, color, or national origin."
“There has been progress made on the policing front” said Pinard emphasizing the importance of persistence in advocacy work. “It's two steps back, one step forward. It takes sustained attention over time, rather than responses to flash points and specific tragedies to make lasting change.”