Protesters Descend on St. Louis, and Police Respond: ‘We’re in Control’

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/st-louis-police-tactics.html

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ST. LOUIS — “We’re in control,” the acting police chief of this city announced early Monday, as he reported scores of arrests in protests that culminated with broken windows at downtown businesses, overturned trash cans and upended concrete planters. “This is our city,” Lawrence O’Toole, the acting chief, went on to say, “and we’re going to protect it.” Police later reported that 123 people had been arrested.

In the four days of street protests following the acquittal of a white former police officer who shot and killed an African-American man in 2011, St. Louis has been a city with contrasting scenes: Peaceful marches with chanting demonstrators, some pushing strollers, during the days, and flashes of violence and clashes with the police after dark.

By Monday, after a weekend of canceled concerts and community events and back-to-back demonstrations, the message from the city’s mayor and Acting Chief O’Toole sounded more forceful that ever: No violent acts will be tolerated in their city.

We asked law enforcement experts and activists to assess the police reaction to the demonstrations and the increasingly muscular rhetoric from city officials. Here are their comments, which have been edited for length.

Since the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 amid a rising debate over how police treat black people, police departments around the country have responded to demonstrations calling for greater police reform and accountability. In St. Louis, only miles from Ferguson, state and city officials had braced for large-scale protests after the acquittal of the former police officer, Jason Stockley, in the death of Anthony Lamar Smith, a 24-year-old black man. So far, the police have reported at least a dozen injuries to law enforcement officers, but no life-threatening injuries to either officers or protesters.

But the police drew criticism on social media on Monday when, according to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, officers were heard chanting “Whose streets? Our streets,” a common protest refrain. Schron Y. Jackson, a spokeswoman for the St. Louis police, said department officials were reviewing a video that appeared to show the chant. “We hold our officers to the highest standards of professionalism, and any officer not meeting those standards will be held accountable,” she said in an email.

After some people threw rocks into windows and at officers and toppled planters downtown, arrests were essential, the experts said, especially once officers gave clear orders for the increasingly volatile crowd to disperse.

Swept up in the arrests late Sunday and early Monday was a journalist, Mike Faulk, a reporter for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Mr. Faulk wrote on Twitter that while covering the protests, he had become trapped with a group of about 100 people and could not follow police orders to leave. In a photo of his arrest, Mr. Faulk’s press credentials were hanging visibly around his neck.

In an early morning news conference on Monday, Chief O’Toole, who has been the acting chief since April, praised the officers on his force, and said that the police were “in control,” adding: “I’m proud to tell you the City of St. Louis is safe, and the police owned tonight.”