title: BALTIMORE PURGES CONFEDERATE STATUES In Dark Of Night…MAYOR Explains: “I did not want to endanger people in my own city”
text: In a city whose former Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, told police officers to  stand down  in the middle of a full-blown riot started by Black Lives Matter activists, Baltimore s new mayor Catherine Pugh, has now ordered the city to be whitewashed of any history that pertains to the Civil War era.In a stealth purging of history, the city of Baltimore removed four Confederate statues from city property under cover of night early Tuesday morning.City crews began the destruction of the monuments just before midnight and finished by 5:30 a.m., the Hill reported.The city council quietly approved the removal late on Monday in a unanimous vote. It s done,  Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh told the Baltimore Sun.  They needed to come down. My concern is for the safety and security of our people. We moved as quickly as we could. I did not want to endanger people in my own city,  the African American mayor said.  I had begun discussions with contractors and so forth about how long it would take to remove them. I am a responsible person, so we moved as quickly as we could.    Breitbart NewsBaltimore Sun: Pugh declined to say how much it cost to remove the statues, or where they had been taken. She said the city would provide cost details soon, but planned to keep the location of the statues secret to avoid conflict.The monuments were loaded onto flatbed trucks and hauled away before sunrise Wednesday, bringing an abrupt end to more than two years of indecision across two mayoral administrations.The four monuments   the Lee-Jackson Monument, a monument to Chief Justice Roger B. Taney at Mount Vernon Place, the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Mount Royal Avenue and the Confederate Women s Monument on West University Parkway 