On Saturday, at 1:00 PM, a group of over 100 protesters gathered in Kiener Plaza downtown for what organizer Melissa McKinnies called the “Justice for Us” rally and march. The march called for justice for Anthony Lamar Smith, a black St. Louis man who was killed by white St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley in 2011. Stockley’s murder trial ended last week, and the verdict will likely be announced soon.
The marchers gathered to demand that Stockley be convicted. They carried a large banner that said “Convict Killer Cops #JasonStockley.” There was even one that quoted something that Stockley said in his police car seconds before killing Anthony Smith: “We’re gonna kill this [expletive].” Though most marchers were unarmed, 3 were carrying guns. The others carried signs and bullhorns, or just used their voices.
“They murdered one of us in cold blood. It was malicious. Premeditated. He’s been going through the trial, and he thinks he’s going through something. Just think about the family of Anthony Lamar Smith,” said McKinnies, as the crowd gathered around Carnahan Courthouse. Alongside Smith’s family, marchers recognized the family of Isaiah Hammett, a white St. Louis man who was killed by a SWAT team who burst into his house on June 7th of this year.
“They murdered my son on June 7th, and they think I’m just gonna forget about it?” Torres said. “I’ll be out on these streets every day, every night. Night and day…I’m not shutting up, I’m never going to quit. They killed the wrong kid when they killed my kid, because I’ll be their worst [expletive] nightmare.”
Cori Bush, a St. Louis native and senatorial candidate, also spoke at the march. The group moved from the Carnahan Courthouse to the America’s Center convention complex, which was hosting the American Correctional Association’s 147th Congress of Corrections. The ACA is a private accrediting body for prisons, and acts as a trade union for correctional officers.
A few African American policemen stood by the convention center doors.
“Y’all fit the description. When y’all take those uniforms off, you fit the description of what they call a threat to society!” a protestor told them.
“Jason Stockley is out on a 1 million dollar cash bail paid for by the City of St. Louis Police Department,” said protester LaShell Eikerenskoetter. (10% of Stockley’s bail was paid by his police union, the St. Louis Police Officer’s Association.) “These people in these uniforms, these people in this building, they condone these behaviors. Killing black people is something that they are committed to, and they will help each other out. A million dollars. You have people that are locked up in this system for a lot less, and they cannot get out. The City of St. Louis Police Department stands for it. This is who they are, it’s in their DNA. You wear that uniform, you are condoning murder.”
The group eventually moved away from the growing crowd of bystanders at the convention center, and the people looking out the windows of the building itself. As they continued, they chanted familiar words from Ferguson: “Indict, convict, send that killer cop to jail!” alongside chants like, “you got hate, we got love!”
“We are not the hate group,” said a protester to onlookers. “We stand with those in Boston, in Charlottesville.”
“I have seen injustice too much. Too many times, I’ve seen the faces that looked like that of those mothers. Hurt, in pain. We go through this way too much,” said McKinnies.
The rally remained peaceful for the two and a half hours it lasted. There were no confrontations with police officers.
“As a black person, as a person of color, we see these same trends over and over again, and it’s hateful and it hurts,” said Eikerenskoetter. “So you wonder why we stand out here in these streets, you wonder why we uplift our voices?”
