Anti-police violence movement
'taking it up a notch,' organizers say; St. Louis cops respond with pepper
spray, arrests
by Massoud Hayoun
Scores of protesters at the
helm of the ongoing nationwide movement against police violence stormed the St.
Louis Metropolitan Police Department Wednesday, aiming to “evict” officers they
accused of “perpetrating police brutality on our citizenry.”
Five of the roughly 25
demonstrators who linked arms in the lobby of the police department were
arrested in the headquarters, the St. Louis Police Department told Al Jazeera.
Police pepper-sprayed and forced other protesters off the premises.
The detainees — four women and
one man — were charged with “trespassing and peace disturbance,” said Leah K.
Freeman, the department's spokeswoman.
The man was charged with “assault 3rd [degree] for assaulting a City
Marshall inside the lobby of police headquarters.”
Among the protesters was a
white couple who pretended to open an account at the St. Louis Police Credit
Union, located inside the building. The arrested included a white college
student, a young Mexican-American man, one black woman and a
Palestinian-American mother in her 50s. Organizers said the detained activists
— like the rest of the demonstrators who stormed police headquarters — were
peaceful and did not conduct themselves differently from their fellow
activists.
“We got a lot of people in
there because we didn’t look like what they think protesters look like,” said
Elizabeth Vega, 48, one of the organizers, explaining that the police were
likely expecting more black demonstrators. Originally from Mexico, Vega has
lived in the St. Louis area for 14 years.
Protesters who were driven
outside erected a makeshift “barricade” at the headquarters’ main entrance, organizers
said. By mid-afternoon local time, that barrier separated a small line of
police from the demonstrators, whose ranks swelled to 75 from the original 25.
Another 18, including 12 females and 6 males, "were arrested for impeding
the flow of traffic" outside the station, Freeman said. One was charged
with "interfering with an officer" after allegedly hurling a
projectile at the police.
“We specifically chose this
date, because we knew it would be a skeleton crew,” said one of the protesters,
Jessie Sandoval, 41, of the police being short-staffed on New Years eve.
Sandoval travelled to Ferguson, Missouri in August to protest police brutality
after a white police officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed Michael Brown, an
unarmed black teenager, on Aug. 9, sparking an outcry against the policing of
communities of color across the country.
Protests have spread from the
St. Louis area across the nation since Brown’s killing, one of several police
killings of black men this year that focused international scrutiny on the use
of lethal force as a law enforcement tactic.
Among a list of demands the
protesters delivered Wednesday to police before officers arrested and pepper
sprayed protesters was a meeting with police officials and the immediate
dismissal of white officers they identify as having unjustly killed young black
men. VonDerrit D. Myers Jr., 18, was reportedly brandishing a jammed gun in a
standoff with white police officer Jason H. Flanery when Flanery shot and
killed him in St. Louis. People at Wednesday’s protest cite Flanery’s online
diatribes against gays and Muslims as a sign of his discriminatory policing.
Kajieme Powell, 25, was killed
by St. Louis police on Aug. 19. The police officer told the media at the time
that the officer had followed protocol and killed him in self-defense, but they
have yet to reveal the name of the officer involved in the incident.
“There are too many young
people getting shot by police. We’re just taking back” the police department,
Vega said.
“We’ve not been listened to. So
we’re just taking it up a notch and doing traditional acts of disobedience.”
