Mass US protests spread

The largely peaceful protests were a far cry from the violence and looting that followed the funeral of Freddie Gray. Picture / AP

Thousands of people have demonstrated in major American East Coast cities demanding equal treatment for all by police, after a young African American died of injuries sustained in custody in Baltimore.

The biggest show of people power was in Baltimore, where several thousand demonstrators paralysed city blocks in a major rally through the downtown area to City Hall.

Thousands more protested in New York, Washington and Boston in solidarity, as decades-old simmering anger at police tactics and discrimination again bubbled to the surface. The protests were overwhelmingly peaceful and good-natured, although New York police arrested more than 60 demonstrators, CNN said.

"We're protesting the ongoing injustices that police have perpetrated on black men particularly. Police are trigger-happy and we need to stop that," Jonathan Brown, 19, a student at Johns Hopkins University, said in Baltimore.

The 2000 National Guard personnel who have flooded Baltimore this week kept a low profile and only small knots of demonstrators remained on the streets when a curfew came into effect for a second night. The largely quiet streets were a far cry from the violence and looting that followed the funeral of Freddie Gray, 25, on Tuesday.

The circumstances surrounding Gray's death are not clear, but six officers have been suspended with pay. Adding to the confusion, the Washington Post, citing a police document, said a prisoner sharing a police transport van with Gray told investigators that he could hear Gray "banging against the walls" of the vehicle and believed that he "was intentionally trying to injure himself". The prisoner, who is in jail, was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him, the report said.

Gray died seven days after his arrest with 80 per cent of his spine severed at the neck, lawyers for his family say, portraying him as just the latest young African American to die at the hands of the police.

Meanwhile, a woman captured on video slapping her teenage son for taking part in the Baltimore riots has won praise from the city's police commissioner and was heralded on social media as "Mum of the Year".

She was videotaped by Baltimore television service WMAR on Tuesday chasing a teenager, wearing a hoodie with his face covered, beating him and demanding he "take that f***ing mask off"- a reprimand that went viral online. They were identified by CBS News as Toya Graham and her 16-year-old son Michael.

Graham said she pulled her son away from the crowd because "at the end of the day, I don't want him to be a Freddie Gray", according to CBS News.

- AFP, Telegraph Group Ltd