Maryland state troopers stand guard as Baltimore residents clean up April 28 after an evening of riots following the funeral of Freddie Gray, who died of a spinal injury a week after being held in police custody. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
On Monday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest called tensions between police and communities around the country "fundamentally a local issue" and said that "there does need to be a commitment from local elected leaders and local law enforcement leaders to confront this challenge and to demonstrate some determination about trying to build bridges with the citizens that they're sworn to protect."
"Ultimately," he said after another question, "this is a problem that the federal government is not going to be able to solve."
By dawn on Tuesday, however, the issue didn't seem so local. The National Guard had been mobilized overnight to help an overwhelmed police force deal with protesters, looters, arsonists and rock throwers wreaking havoc in a city on President Obama's doorstep -- a city run by a black mayor, a black police chief, and a black city council president. In Baltimore, at least, bridges between local leaders and citizens of the sort that Earnest spoke of had been largely burned down.
[Rioting rocks Baltimore: Hogan declares emergency, activates Guard]
As violence spread Monday afternoon and into the night, the president remained silent. Obama, the nation's community organizer in chief, had put the problem onto community leaders. In the early evening, after he met with his new attorney general, Loretta Lynch, the White House put out a short statement saying that during a phone conversation with Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D), "the president highlighted the administration's commitment to provide assistance as needed."
The White House said that the president, who also spoke to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Monday, would receive updates from Lynch and his aide Valerie Jarrett.
Should Obama have said more? Could he have done anything that would have altered the course of events?
He is expected to say more Tuesday at a previously scheduled joint news briefing at noon with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
For Obama, there is a certain sense of déjà vu as Baltimore struggles with the aftermath of another death of a black man, apparently at the hands of police and seemingly without any crime having been committed.
[Live updates: Riots in Baltimore]
Many critics believe Obama did not show enough passion or persuasion to connect with or restrain angry African Americans after the killing of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. Instead, Obama sounded calls for restraint, lawful demonstrations, commissions of inquiry and slow, steady progress toward reform.
"It's not always easy for a black politician to gauge the right tone to take -- too angry? not angry enough? -- when discussing the enormous hardships facing his or her constituents," Obama wrote in his book "The Audacity of Hope," published in 2006.
Nine years later, he and other African American leaders are still trying to answer that question.
In the case of the shooting in Ferguson, the president could not simply condemn the system as many civil rights leaders did in the 1960s; he sits on top of that system. So after the Ferguson incident, he praised police in general while calling for reforms to avoid a repeat of the shooting of an unarmed black youth.
[Michael Brown’s family files wrongful death lawsuit against Ferguson]
"To the extent that the federal government can be supportive of local law enforcement officers as they consider some of the best practices that have been compiled by the task force, we're going to encourage them to do that," Earnest said Monday.
That made no impact in Baltimore, though. There, African American leaders from Obama to the congressman to the local police chief face a problem of class as well as race. Much of the rioting in Baltimore appeared to have been done in poorer parts of the city by economically disenfranchised residents, those who could feel empowered only through acts of violence.
Moreover, there was no shortage of respected black leaders in Baltimore calling for restraint, from the funeral of Freddie Gray early in the day through the early evening.
"The people I saw on the street ignored the pleas of the Gray family," said Kurt L. Schmoke, president of the University of Baltimore and former Baltimore mayor. "Those who participated were opportunists who took advantage of a defensive and reactive posture that they knew our police department had to assume."
Many local leaders accepted the president's posture of restraint and remained focused on the issue of police abuse.
"The federal government can be a partner with local government on this issue, but the federal government can't lead the effort,"Schmoke said. He said the federal U.S. attorneys and civil rights division of the Justice Department could prosecute cases of police violence, and the federal mediation service could bring warring segments of the community together.
But, he added, "it's local community leaders that have to resolve this problem through better recruiting and training of police officers and by hiring chiefs of police who will recruit officers in the spirit of service, not the spirit of adventure."
Steven Mufson covers the White House. Since joining The Post, he has covered economics, China, foreign policy and energy.
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