On the second day after former St. Louis Police Officer Jason Stockley was absolved in the December 2011 killing of Anthony Lamar Smith, a day of peaceful, but disruptive, protests in St. Louis and on the University Loop devolved into widespread property damage on the loop. Many observers said that the protest proper had broken up before the acts of vandalism, and protest organizers disassociated themselves and the movement from the property damage. A student reporter for The American was embedded with the protest throughout, and these are his observations, with no distinctions drawn between protestor and agitator.
At 5 p.m. on Saturday, about 50 people had gathered at Kiener Plaza in downtown St. Louis to protest the Jason Stockley verdict, most of them huddled in the corner by Chestnut and 7th streets. The crowd didn’t resemble the mass that had been tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed at protests the night before.
A few teenagers played football on the green. Parents watched their children from the benches. People smiled and talked.
The crowd was also significantly smaller. The crowd from the night before covered an entire block and half of Lake Street. This crowd barely impeded passing strollers.
Nonetheless, a police chopper could be heard overhead. The crowd spotted a man watching the gathering with binoculars from the top of a parking garage and said he was police. Friends pointed out the observer to other friends and shared a laugh.
The protest started as a hangout in the park. The size of the crowd grew steadily in the first half hour. Slowly, however, the crowd shrank. The bottles of water and granola bars that had been set out for the crowd were being packed up and put back in cars. Small groups of two or three people would leave together, but the crowd appeared to stay.
The gathering had been moved to Delmar and Leland. By 6:30 p.m., a larger crowd was blocking off the intersection. Whether this move was intentional or not is difficult to determine. The change didn’t catch police off-guard; a police vehicle and two officers were at every intersection between Leland and Skinker, and the police chopper could be heard overhead again.
The crowd that started marching east on Delmar toward Skinker was smaller than the crowd that went to Mayor Krewson’s house the previous night. They covered Delmar and stretched a block long.
These protestors resembled the crowd from the previous night. One small group was armed with rifles. Some were armed with baseball bats wrapped in barbed-wire. Many of the protestors had their faces covered.
The crowd also had more problems than they did the previous night. After marching a single block, the crowd had to stop because the rear wasn’t moving. The crowd barely advanced another block before they had to stop for the same reason. When they got to Delmar and Skinker, they made a square around the intersection.
Motorists were not as supportive this time, although some drivers did leave their vehicles to momentarily stand with the crowd. One car passed through the square, despite the demonstration, and was met with yells and a full water bottle thrown at her door. Another car honked. At first the crowd clapped because the honk was confused with support. Instead, the driver clarified by holding down the horn while protesters yelled at him.
When the crowd settled down, they sat and asked for six minutes of silence for Anthony Lamar Smith, who was killed by Stockley. Unlike their attempt to do this at Euclid and Maryland the previous night, they completed six minutes of unimpeded silence.
The crowd made their way down Skinker to Forest Park Parkway, stopped traffic at the intersection, then went down Forest Park and ran into more conflicts. They stopped several times because some protestors had gone too far forward. Then they asked all media to stay in the front. When photographers stayed in the crowd, they yelled at them to move up front.
Further down Forest Park, a driver started arguing with one of the protestors because of the traffic that was being caused. Other protestors joined, until one of them yelled, “He’s packing.”
Protestors looked into the car, then confirmed to the rest of the crowd that he had a gun. The argument continued while other protestors tried to deescalate the situation as fast as possible. Photographers tried to get close to the driver’s window where the argument was taking place, so other protestors told media to move away. Three different groups of protesters were yelling over each other about three different problems: one trying to deescalate by telling everybody to move along, the other telling media to move, and a group of protestors yelling at the driver.
The crowd eventually calmed and moved down Des Peres while the motorists sat and watched the crowd move.
The crowd stopped multiple times on their way back to Delmar. At Delmar and Kingsland, the crowd stopped and someone announced that the demonstration was over. The crowd quickly shrank, but about 70 stayed.
A mother told the crowd that she was missing her 11-year-daughter, a light-skinned girl with a blond Afro. A few protesters told the nearby police, and they sent out the information on the girl. The crowd quickly moved on, and it’s not clear if or when the mother found her child.
The smaller crowd started moving east on Delmar again. Protestors threw empty water bottles and yelled at the police officers they passed. One group of three police officers got in their cars and left after protestors yelled in their faces and threw trash at them.
The crowd made it to Delmar and Skinker, stopped traffic, burned three police flags, then went back west on Delmar. At Leland, the crowd met a line of police in riot gear. The police momentarily blocked their way up Delmar, but then stepped out of the way. The protestors started yelling at the police and throwing objects. This continued without reaction by the police for close to an hour.
One protestor threw a metal chair through the window of a Starbucks. Everything escalated from there. The police arrested a 20-year-old white male Washington University student in the street next to the Starbucks. Police pushed him to the ground then lifted him by the arms and legs and carried him to a police car. At the police car, they dropped him on the ground and told media to step back and get off the street. Then one group of police put him in the police car while the another stood guard in front and pepper-sprayed everyone who was too close.
More objects were thrown at the police. One protestor pounded the hood of a police car with a hammer then ran off.
Police formed a line along Delmar and marched to move the protestors back.
The crowd was now small. There were close to 30 protestors scattered between Leland and Skinker.
While police marched, protestors started throwing traffic cones, trash can lids, water bottles and rocks at the police. Others started smashing store windows with bats. Everything standing outside, including chairs, tables, barrels, signs and trashcans, was either thrown into the streets or through store windows.
When the police announced that this was an unlawful assembly, many of the protesters yelled back, telling them to shut up.
Police came up the other end of Delmar and started arresting anyone caught vandalizing property.
Everyone was pushed back to Skinker and Rosedale. The crowd shrank to 10 people, not including media, which now outnumbered the crowd.
There was enough police to form two rows that stretched the width of Delmar and more stationed at every intersection.
The police stopped between Skinker and Rosedale for half an hour then left.
After the St. Louis County Police Department and St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department took over the operation after 10:13 p.m., they reported nine arrests. The St. Louis County Police Department reported seven arrests (five adults and two juveniles.) The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department made two arrests. Further details on these arrests will be released on Sunday. The University City Police Department also has been asked for information about its arrests before relinquishing command.
Bennito Kelty is a student reporter from the University of Missouri.
