Prosecutors are expected to continue Thursday to attempt to prove police Officer William Porter bears some responsibility in the April death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray.
The first witness, Officer Alice Carson-Johnson, was one of Porter’s instructors at the Baltimore Police Department’s Professional Development and Training Academy in January 2013.
She told jurors Porter was trained in how to respond to medical emergencies in the field and that part of her job is instructing police recruits on how to call for help when people said they are injured or in distress. Carson-Johnson said officers must make sure they are safe, but when someone asks for a medic, officers should call for help.
Under cross-examination, Carson-Johnson acknowledged that officers sometimes must "do a little detective work" to determine if a subject's medical complaints are valid. That fits with defense arguments that Gray showed no signs of needing medical help when he complained to police.
But under direct examination, she said she hoped an officer would already have called for an ambulance before doing that “detective work.”
Gray was arrested April 12 and died a week later from a severe spinal cord injury suffered in police custody. Porter is the first of six officers to be tried on charges related to his death.
In his opening statement, Chief Deputy State’s Attorney Michael Schatzow said Porter was present at five of six stops a transport van made after Gray was arrested and could have easily called for help.
He said Porter one point asked Gray if he needed a medic and Gray replied that he could not breathe and could not move from the floor of the van, where he had been placed head-first and in plastic handcuffs and leg shackles.
Instead of calling a medic, prosecutors say, Porter picked Gray up from the floor and placed him in an upright position on the bench, and did not secure him in a seatbelt.
Schatzow said Gray's injury occurred in a section of the spinal cord where the nerves control the chest and the diaphragm. He said such an injury would have hindered Gray's ability to breathe.
He said the evidence will show that Porter "criminally neglected" his duty to keep Gray safe.
Defense attorney Gary Proctor said in his opening statement that Gray “showed no signs of needing medical attention” when he asked for aid because “he hadn't suffered the injury yet.” He characterized Porter as a man born and raised in West Baltimore who became a police officer "not to swing a big stick, but to help people."
He told the jury that they "may hope finding him guilty will quell unrest," but that Porter committed no crime.
“Show Baltimore the whole damn system is not guilty as hell,” Proctor said.
Circuit Judge Barry Williams said the mostly black and female jury should get the case by Dec.14.