As Freddie Gray's family prepared to bury him on Monday, officials reiterated their calls for calm after a massive demonstration on Saturday left some businesses and cars vandalized, 35 people arrested and a city on edge over the 25-year-old's death from injuries sustained in police custody. 
 
 "I got so many calls and messages last night and this morning from people who certainly expressed frustration and grief about the tragic death of Freddie Gray but wanted to also explain how heartbroken they were that our city was vandalized by a small group of individuals," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said Sunday. 
 
 Rawlings-Blake was joined at an evening press conference at Bethel AME Church by community and religious leaders and Rep. Elijah Cummings, who reminded the public that Gray's family had pleaded for peace. 
 
 "I haven't come here to ask you to respect wishes of the family," Cummings said Sunday. "I've come here to beg you." 
 
 Cummings said the violence "becomes a distraction," drawing attention from Gray's family and those fighting to make reforms. 
 
 Gray was arrested April 12 after making eye contact with officers and fleeing from them. While in custody, he suffered a severed spine and crushed voicebox, and died a week later. Daily protests culminated Saturday with a large and mostly peaceful gathering that turned destructive on the west side and outside Camden Yards, where fans attending a game against the Boston Red Sox were temporarily not allowed to leave for safety fears. 
 
 Rawlings-Blake reminded residents that they were in the national spotlight. 
 
 "But we define ourselves by how we respond, and I hope that as the eyes of the country are on Baltimore, that we see very clearly that this is a community that's willing to confront tough issues, that's willing to demand accountability, but also demands peace and progress at the same time," she said. 
 
 On Sunday, Gray's family held a viewing at the Vaughn Greene funeral home in Govans that drew both those who knew him and those who simply have been moved by what happened to him. 
 
 On Monday, after a one-hour public visitation, Gray's services are scheduled for 11 a.m. at New Shiloh Baptist Church, 2100 N. Monroe St. Burial will follow at Woodlawn Cemetery, 2130 Woodlawn Drive. 
 
 Algerina Perna / Baltimore Sun Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake takes questions from the press after government officials and clergy held a press conference at Bethel AME Church about maintaining the peace in the wake of Freddie Gray 's death while in police custody. Behind her is Rep. Elijah Cummings. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake takes questions from the press after government officials and clergy held a press conference at Bethel AME Church about maintaining the peace in the wake of Freddie Gray 's death while in police custody. Behind her is Rep. Elijah Cummings. (Algerina Perna / Baltimore Sun) 
 
 The family is accepting donations at gofundme.com/thefreddiegrayfund or The Harbor Bank of Maryland, 25 W. Fayette St., Baltimore 21201. 
 
 President Barack Obama will send three aides to represent his administration at the funeral services, the White House said Sunday. 
 
 Broderick Johnson, assistant to the president and Cabinet secretary, who also chairs the administration's My Brother's Keeper task force, will attend. Johnson, a Baltimore native, will be joined by Heather Foster, an adviser in the Office of Public Engagement, and Elias Alcantara, with the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. 
 
 Police released the names of the 31 adults who, along with four juveniles, were arrested during Saturday's protests. Among the various charges were disorderly conduct, assaulting a police officer, malicious destruction of property, throwing rocks, rioting, theft and failure to obey an order. 
 
 Six officers suffered minor injuries during the protests, police said. 
 
 Despite police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts' insistence that a minority of out-of-town instigators caused the violence, online court records showed that only three of those arrested during Saturday's protests were from outside Maryland. Police said not every outbreak of criminal activity led to an arrest, and that they still believe there were "outside agitators" in the crowd. 
 
 In an internal email to officers, Batts called the department's response to the protests "scary good." 
 
 "In more than 30 years of law enforcement experience, I've been involved in many protests. Today, the restraint, professionalism, and attention to duty you demonstrated were nothing short of remarkable," Batts wrote in an email obtained by The Baltimore Sun. "I am proud and truly humbled to lead this organization. You stood tall in the face of challenge after challenge and you were a credit to the city and your families today." 
 
 Batts in his email said these "have been challenging days and there may be more ahead," but he encouraged his officers to keep doing what they have been doing. 
 
 "We will be tested, and as today showed, many will try to provoke you just to record a response. Don't give it to them," he wrote. "Once again today, we represented Baltimore on a world-wide stage, and you did so in a very impressive manner." 
 
 Batts said media "across the country commented on your calm and restraint in the face of extraordinary circumstances," and asked his team to remain calm and work together. 
 
 "I'm proud, your Command Staff is proud, you should be proud of the honor your actions brought to the badge today," Batts wrote. "You all were scary good." 
 
 Clergy embraced Gray's family on Sunday. Members of Empowerment Temple Church of Baltimore, responding to an emotional service in the morning, donated money toward Gray's funeral services. 
 
 With his family in the pews, more than half of the hundreds of congregants approached the altar and offered alms after their pastor, Rev. Jamal H. Bryant, delivered a sermon touching on their loss as well as issues of police misconduct and the demonstrations Saturday. 
 
 "I told the family that with everything they're dealing with, I do not want on their plate trying to figure out how to pay for the funeral," Bryant told the congregation. "I told them Empowerment Temple was going to step up to the plate." 
 
 Bryant has been at the forefront of efforts to call city officials to task for Gray's death, leading rallies and calling for the six officers involved in Gray's arrest to be criminally charged. But he was also among the religious leaders calling for peace. 
 
 Bryant asked his congregation to applaud efforts of "good police officers ... who put their lives on the line to help protect our community." The congregation responded with a standing ovation. 
 
 But he sharply criticized what he called "corrupt" police and city officials, saying Gray's death and the circumstances surrounding it have exposed city failings that must be fully investigated. He did not name any official specifically. 
 
 Other officials also decried how a mostly peaceful day was marred by vandalism, and shopkeepers began cleaning up the mess on Sunday. 
 
 "I was encouraged to see that the vast majority of the protesters and the protests themselves where peaceful and represented the strong character of Baltimore City," Gov. Larry Hogan said in a statement Sunday. "Unfortunately, those few who engaged in acts of violence only worked to betray the cause of the many law-abiding citizens who are simply seeking answers and justice in the death of Freddie Gray." ||||| At his Friday press conference, Malik Z. Shabazz, itinerant inciter of outrage from the Washington, D.C.–based Black Lawyers for Justice, warned Baltimore that, to protest the mysterious death of Freddie Gray, “a wave will roll downtown to City Hall.” He forgot to mention that it was a crime wave. 
 
 In a 79-second clip filmed by a female Russia Today reporter, one young man (“Rest in peace to my man, Freddie G”) is joined by two other young men (“F*** the police”), who are joined by several other young men, each of whom, shouting, displays his middle finger to the camera. It takes just seconds for a dozen young men, likely more, to gather; they push against the camera, yell, and flash their own middle fingers. Then, suddenly, the camera drops, the men scatter, and the RT camerawoman gives chase to a young man, shouting, frantically, “Give it back!” He has stolen her handbag. 
 
 It’s harrowing footage. It’s also representative of this weekend in Baltimore, where hundreds of individuals honored the deceased Freddie Gray by throwing trashcans, smashing storefronts, blocking traffic, brawling in the streets, and perpetrating general mayhem. The only thing missing was a blazing Quiktrip. 
 
 The “Black Lives Matter” crowd will contend that writing censoriously about Baltimore’s rioting masses misses the point, which should be Freddie Gray’s fatally severed spine. And, indeed, that the 25-year-old Baltimore man’s brief ride in a police van following his arrest on April 12 resulted in his death one week later is shocking — as is the fact that we still do not know how it happened. It is difficult to think of an explanation for Gray’s death in which police were not, at best, grossly negligent. The community appears to have legitimate grievances. 
 
 But that is no justification for lawlessness — or so you might think. Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake begs to differ: 
 
 I’ve made it very clear that I worked with the police and instructed them to do everything they could to make sure that the protesters were able to exercise their right to free speech. It’s a very delicate balancing act. . . . We also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well. We worked very hard to keep that balance. 
 
 That penultimate sentence will serve nicely as law and order’s epitaph. 
 
 There used to be a bright, easy-to-spot boundary to legitimate, peaceful protest: namely, when it stopped being peaceful. No longer, apparently. Instead, the “wish to destroy” public and private property, commit assault in broad daylight, etc., is an act of self-expression best met with “safe spaces.” You can wreak havoc; just let us zone for it first. (UPDATE: See below for a clarification from the mayor’s office.) 
 
 The riots, of course, had nothing to do with Freddie Gray. The anger over his death simply provided for the type of person who wants to rampage the excuse to do so. What makes the situation alarming is that the reaction of the powers-that-be was not to squelch hundreds of stampeding criminals, but to intellectualize away their animalism. Rather than clamp down on hordes of opportunistic thugs, Baltimore’s Oberlin-alumna mayor treated them as just extra-passionate protesters, whose interests required from the government a “balanced” response. 
 
 Put another way: The reaction of the head of the government of Baltimore to the subversion of that government by wanton lawbreaking was to say that citizens were free to violently subvert that government — just as long as they did it in approved areas. 
 
 Saturday in Baltimore was a shameless convergence of destructive tendencies high and low. Under the pretense of ending “business as usual,” delinquent throngs embraced their worst impulses, smashing and mobbing and robbing. And then the governing authorities effectively blessed them as partisans in the Struggle. 
 
 It is true that police have committed abuses in cities across the country. It is true, too, that restoring fractured relations between police departments and the communities they serve is an urgent priority, and that police departments must take a significant portion of the responsibility. But neither Freddie Gray nor Ferguson explains why a gang of young men thinks it alright to swarm and assault and rob a defenseless woman. 
 
 In the name of “justice”? Now that’s a riot. 
 
 — Ian Tuttle is a William F. Buckley Fellow at the National Review Institute. 
 
 UPDATE: The mayor’s office maintains that she was not suggesting that protesters be given “space to destroy.” A Rawlings-Blake communications adviser says the following:
– The Baltimore landscape is becoming more dire as police and demonstrators continue to clash following today's funeral for Freddie Gray, who died while in police custody on April 12. And when protests about Gray's death initially started turning violent on Saturday, local sports broadcaster Brett Hollander took to Twitter to highlight damaged storefronts, proclaiming in one tweet that "protests should not violate the basic freedoms of non-protestors." That's when Baltimore Orioles COO John Angelos stepped in, throwing out his own perspective with a series of tweets that USA Today's For the Win says amounts to "a qualified and brilliant defense of those protesting." "Brett, speaking only for myself, I agree with your point that the principle of peaceful, non-violent protest and the observance of the rule of law is of utmost importance in any society," he begins, citing MLK, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela as examples of "great opposition leaders." Angelos' "greater source of personal concern, outrage and sympathy," however, isn't on the smashed windows, or even on the damaging acts themselves. Instead, he points out "the past four-decade period during which an American political elite … have plunged tens of millions of good, hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil rights protections." To wit: "An unfairly impoverished population [is] living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state." (Head over to Angelos' Twitter feed to read what else he had to say.)