In a fourth-floor conference area at Baltimore police head office, 2 training officials in blue T-shirts and blue pants lowered themselves onto the carpeted flooring to illustrate the leg hold officers applied to restrain Freddie Gray the day he was detained – and suffered a deadly spine injury.

As 1 expert played Gray’s part, lying face down on the floor, the other bent his crossed legs back toward his head. Observing carefully were members of the law enforcement task force looking into Gray’s death, and Dr. David L. Higgins, a Maryland orthopedic surgeon who has previously worked with the U.S. Olympic squad.

Higgins had previously examined cellphone video displaying the 25-year-old’s arrest in West Baltimore, which include clips with him yelling in pain or protest as officials dragged him to a transport vehicle. Now, Higgins was questioned what traumas a person could endure in such a leg hold.

“From that maneuver, even if you slammed him or dropped him like a wrestling move, you still won’t have a neurological injury,”

stated Higgins, carrying on to clarify in more detail.

“OK,” stated Maj. Stanley Brandford, the Homicide Unit commander who guided the task force. He noted another task complete. Yet another question about Gray was clarified.

The scenario on Thursday was elemental of a high-stakes law enforcement analysis – and came as Baltimore was whirling from protests that helped bring thousands of marchers, and some violence, to city streets. International attention was aimed on the city, and many locals were protesting apparent police brutality and calling for criminal charges.

The Baltimore Sun was provided special accessibility to the task force and supervised the research for days. The Sun decided not to post specifics about the research until Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby determined whether to prosecute any of the police officers included in the Gray occurrence, though reporters persisted to use other sources for information. On Friday, she launched charges against 6 officers.

Mosby’s statement came just a day after police supplied her with a extended review on their probe, but prosecutors had brainstormed with law enforcement from time to time, and Mosby stated she likewise utilized an independent crew of investigators. Her statement Friday took individuals of the police task force by shock.

Officials designated to the task force had been working for 2 weeks to finish an investigation that could normally have taken months. They scaned West Baltimore for witnesses and mapped out the locations of security camera video. To reconstruct Gray’s 45-minute ride in a police vehicle, plainclothes officials rolled a $250,000 laser imaging system on a tripod down potholed roads and cracked sidewalks, prepared to inform citizens who questioned them that they were city surveyors.

At least 30 individuals of the Police Department were pulled onto the task force, which included personnel from the crime lab, Force Investigation Team, Internal Affairs, Homicide, and automobile CRASH team. Each introduced with them an expertise to help answer the questions a volatile city frantically required: how Gray suffered the severed spine and other traumas that led to his death on April 19, a week after his public arrest.

They all understood the magnitude of their investigation and that they were part of a critical instant in Baltimore history. There were no days off.

“As I’ve said before,” Col. Garnell Green informed the task force Thursday morning. “What happens … rests on our shoulders.”

The investigation was conducted out of Green’s conference room in the Administrative Bureau. Associates of the task force met there 2, sometimes 3 times a day, meeting around 2 large tables that had been pressed together. They used a checklist to keep a record of their investigation, and the checklist grew daily until it had 145 tasks – many accomplished, some still open – on Thursday.

On one wall was a timeline that outlined Gray’s arrest and all of the police van’s stops. Each place on the timeline was furnished with photos of Gray, the authorities who interacted with him at that location, time stamps and blurry screen shots taken from surveillance video. On an additional wall, autopsy images of Gray looked back close to a color-coded map indexing all the private and public surveillance cameras along the van’s path. In the back was a table with Gatorade and water bottles.

The task force functioned though being powerless to question the 6 police officers, beyond preliminary claims the police officers had supplied. Detectives were informed to reconstruct the officers’ activities not only for April 12 but a number of days and even years earlier, utilizing internal records and “run sheets,” which log officers’ daily activities.

While each task force member concentrated on a particular task – meeting with witnesses, serving search warrants, bringing up-to-date a “living” timeline of events – top-level commanders considered the big picture with the Police Department’s credibility in mind. They understood the investigation would be gutted by many people in Baltimore, like the thousands of protesters outside their door. In the middle of the accusations of brutality, they desired to show that they would leave no stone unturned. They needed an answer for any question prosecutors, lawyers and the public might request.

They concentrated on the task of collecting intell, and showed no sign of distress while investigating co-workers on the police force – knowing that the choice to bring criminal charges would rest with Mosby and not them. Over and over, they stated they “would follow wherever the evidence leads.”

Investigators attempted to figure out what had happened during the foot and bicycle pursuit that forwent the takedown of Gray. Did he fall? Had Gray been in a fight preceding the arrest? Was the Internet gossip about an insurance settlement for a car accident valid (it was not). When was he sitting and when was he “prone,” without a seat belt, in the vehicle?

Task force members persisted to investigate all prospects even though they felt assured that Gray had endured a “catastrophic injury” while being taken from the public arrest at Gilmor Homes to the Western District police station. They found that the van’s video camera was busted and that one of the police officers during the transfer stated Gray had “jailitis” – a faked illness – when he lamented about his affliction.

And they invested many hours retracing the activities of Officer Caesar R. Goodson, Jr., the wagon driver. Goodson, the investigators stated, had heard Gray inquire for medical help a number of times – a key element in the charges Mosby would bring against him. Still, there were conciderable gaps along the path where no video or witness reports existed.

The investigators wanted to know why Goodson had made a stop that was uncovered in a review of video camera footage. All they could figure out was that Goodson looked into the back of the vehicle, but did not touch Gray. But they questioned: Were there other stops?

To find out more about the vehicle path, authorities took to the streets.

Last Sunday, at the place Gray had been detained, a makeshift memorial included a sign that stated “F*** the Police. I would kill all 6 of u bitches.” A half block away, crime lab technician Tom Wisner and detectives Michael Boyd and Timothy Hamilton rolled the laser imaging device along a wheeled yellow tripod. They donned T-shirts and cargo pants to keep a low profile and stay away from long conversations or, worse, a conflict in a neighborhood where residents’ anger was still raw from violent protests the past evening.

“Google-team rollout,” Boyd stated – a joshing referral to Google’s mapping procedure – after the trio completed a segment of streets.

They had almost 70 scans to do, each acquiring a circular image as far as 850 feet apart, and a tight time frame to finish them.

On the clear sunny day, they went about their work devoid of any disturbance. One man walked by with a rose in a pint bottle that his girlfriend had presented him. A man in a car slowed to a near stop, but then moved on. No one actually inquired what they were carrying out.

The “Google team” scanned streets and avenues: Presbury, Cumberland, Calhoun, Gilmor, Dolphin and Druid Hill.

Wisner, who is not a sworn officer, was assigned with making detailed multi-dimensional maps that would demonstrate the path and terrain. His job was to meticulously stitch the maps together until the van’s route was recreated – a approach that was only moderately finished by the time Mosby launched the charges.

Taken by surprise

Late last week, Brandford, the homicide commander, stated he was feeling “confident” about where his investigation was leading, but he never locked onto an answer for Gray’s spine injury. He left open the chance that Gray was pummeled or handled way too roughly.

“We’re still going strong as far as this task force is concerned. We have to fight fatigue,” he explained to his team. “I feel confident we have a solid case here but we still have things to do.”

On Friday, more continued. The task force was preparing to go full-bore straight through the weekend, giving additional information to Mosby’s office, and the investigation was to stay active forever, according to Brandford.

“Important that the state’s attorney continue to get things as we collect them,” Brandford explained to his tired associates Friday morning.

Then his cellphone rang. He walked into the hall and failed to return.

Minutes after, task force members found out why: Mosby was having a news conference on the steps of the neighbouring Baltimore War Memorial. From a flat-screen television set in Green’s office, they observed a live transmit.

They stood still as Mosby started talking. A lieutenant dressed in a suit and bow tie relaxed his left hand on a leather chair; Green was standing in uniform against the wall, hands behind his back. As Mosby read off the charges – which includes second-degree depraved-heart murder, the most severe, against Goodson – shocked looks crossed their faces.

They had not anticipated the state’s attorney’s office to take action so quickly.

Later on Friday, Mosby stated the charges were the outcome of prosecutors working 12- and 14-hour days alongside law enforcement investigators. She also stated prosecutors had been working on a “parallel investigation” that involved utilizing city sheriff’s deputies.

“This was not something that was quick, fast and in a hurry,” she stated. “We reviewed hundreds of hours of camera footage and statements. This is something we worked really hard to get to the bottom of.”

Still, a lot of things continued to be on the police task force’s checklist. Affiliates shortly were back to their investigation.