Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Sunday endorsed a decision to lift curfew that has been in place in Baltimore since rioting broke out earlier this week. Hogan also announced that 200 city businesses, most of them minority owned, were destroyed in the rioting.
“The mayor and I both talked and we agreed it’s time to get the community back to normal again,” Hogan, a Republican said. “It’s going to take a little while to get back to normal, but I think lifting the curfew is a good idea.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced she was lifting the curfew earlier Sunday. The 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew has been in place since Tuesday night.
Both Rawlings-Blake and Hogan said the National Guard would also start leaving the city. Hogan said 3,000 members of the National Guard have been stationed in the city to combat the rioting, which erupted after death of Freddie Gray in police custody.
“We’ve already started withdrawing the guard,” Hogan said. “The trucks were filing out this morning. It’s not going to happen instantaneously.”
Hogan said the impact of the civil unrest in Baltimore has been devastating for the city’s business community.
“Many of them didn’t have insurance,” Hogan said of the 200 destroyed businesses. “Hundreds of millions of dollars have been lost. And folks that didn’t get hit, lost business for an entire week. A lot of people were impacted.”
Hogan pledged the state government will “do everything we can” to help those businesses.
Hogan said the charges against the police were just the beginning of the process but couldn’t promise that rioting won’t return if the six charged officers are not convicted in Gray’s death.
“I believe in the justice system,” Hogan said. “We want the truth to come out as everybody else does, and we’ll see what happens when it does.”
