State Senator Catherine Pugh: "Please Call Your Children"
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Baltimore residents continue to take an active role in restoring calm, answering the call of city and state leaders---among them, State Senator Catherine Pugh.
Pat Warren has more.
It's familiar voices that have the most influence and one of the city's most active is Senator Pugh.
The message sent from State Senator Catherine Pugh Wednesday night: compliance with the curfew is not to be construed as abandoning the crisis.
"We will not rest until there is a full, clear investigation of our police department, as well as the police who were involved in the death of Freddie Gray and the practices that are going on that allow people to go into custody to end up dead," Pugh said.
The former city council member stood with Congressman Elijah Cummings Wednesday, with Governor Hogan on Tuesday and on Monday with WJZ in the heart of the battleground.
"What I want to say to Baltimore and to the members of our district, please call your children," Pugh said. "Over in some parts of west Baltimore, it looks like the 1968 riots just finished and you have people walking out of their doors and what they're looking at are boarded up houses."
The violent aftermath of the death of Freddie Gray points directly to economic issues that Pugh believes are too long ignored.
"You can't do this by yourself. You need not just the state, not just the city---in this case, you're going to need the federal government to come in and look at these communities and say they are worth saving because these people are worth saving," she said.
Work on a neighborhood Save-A-Lot provides encouragement, as are neighbors willing to be an influence for progress.
"It's just, it gets to a boiling point," a resident said.
"That's why we're here, that's why you're here, that's why I'm here," she said. "I can tell you reasonable minds can help calm, bring about the calm."
It's a shared responsibility for change.
It's also important, according to Pugh, that people be allowed to express their views and protest in a peaceful manner.
