The day after Freddie Gray’s death from injuries suffered in Baltimore Police custody, Officer Zach Novak — who was involved but never charged in Gray’s arrest — responded to a text message from another officer about how he was holding up by expressing concern for a third colleague, Officer Edward Nero.

“I’m good. Nero’s a wreck,” Novak wrote. “They put him and 3 others on admin leave until further notice. He’s beating himself up over it even though he and nobody else did anything. [There] was literally no force at all involved in the whole incident.”

Gray had been found unconscious and not breathing in the back of a police van after a nearly 45-minute ride around the city, and speculation about what had caused his injuries was rampant.

“People hate police to begin with so everyone assumes we must have brutalized this guy,” Novak wrote. “This is fueled by the recent anti-police sentiment. Now everyone has to wait for the facts to slowly come out and exonerate everyone.”

“They will still riot and burn down their own community,” the second officer responded.

A week later, on April 27, 2015, rioting did erupt and the city did burn, most notably in the West Baltimore neighborhood where Gray grew up and was arrested.

Over the course of the next year, three officers — including Nero — would be acquitted of all the charges against them, and three others would have their charges dropped. And last month, disciplinary proceedings against five of the officers concluded with none of them receiving major punishment.

All of the officers are back to work on the police force.

Mike Davey, a police union attorney who helped represent the officers in the Gray case, declined to comment on their behalf this week.

The text messages from Novak and other officers were included in thousands of pages of investigative case files released this week by the Baltimore Police Department in response to Public Information Act requests from several media outlets, including The Baltimore Sun. The files include statements from witnesses, lists and descriptions of evidence, Gray’s criminal history and autopsy, DNA and serology reports from bloodstains in the van, court records, investigators notesand hundreds of photographs.

The text messages from Novak’s cellphone were gathered as the result of a deal prosecutors struck with Novak, in which they offered him immunity in exchange for his cooperation.

The messages included chats between Novak and other uninvolved officers, friends and family, and messages that appeared to have been deleted. They also included what appeared to be an ongoing group chat of messages between Novak and several of the officers who were charged criminally in the case — Nero, and Officers Garrett Miller and William Porter.

The messages were not introduced or discussed in the officers’ criminal or administrative trials. But they reveal something about their mindset during a time when they were not speaking publicly about the case.

In their private conversations, the officers were candid, even vulnerable. At times they resorted to gallows humor. They also expressed resentment that Gray’s death — which they described as being entirely unrelated to their own actions — had put them in the position they were in and caused so much strife and violence in the city.

In the heat of the rioting on April 27, 2015, the officers were focused on the city. They wanted to be out responding to the chaos with their fellow officers.

Nero wrote the rioting was “a tragedy. We hope this all stops.”

—Kevin Rector

Baltimore Sun reporters Catherine Rentz and Tim Prudente contributed to this article.