(St. Louis Public Radio) –
Missouri Governor Eric Greitens met with clergy members in St. Louis on Monday as the region awaits a verdict in the murder trial of a former St. Louis officer.
Greitens said neither he nor the two dozen pastors he met with want to see violence if Jason Stockley is acquitted in the 2011 shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith. It’s not clear when the judge will announce the verdict, but Greitens and other politicians and organizations have spent the past week addressing activists’ promises to protest.
Greitens compared his conversation to how his predecessor, Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon, handled the case of former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in 2014. Nixon met with clergy members and civic leaders after Michael Brown was killed, and reached out to clergy the night before it was announced Wilson would not be charged.
“We want to find ways to work together, and we’re doing so proactively, rather than reacting to a situation that comes to us,” Greitens said.
Clergy members delivered a letter to the judge on Friday, urging a just verdict and warning that anything but a guilty verdict “will make you liable for any ensuring unrest or acts of aggression.”
“In biblical terms, ‘the blood will be on your hands,’” the letter, signed by 17 clergy members, said.
Not everyone was impressed with Monday’s meeting. Linden Bowie, the president of the Missionary Baptist Convention of Missouri, said he believes Greitens is sincere about trying to avoid a repeat of the property destruction and violence in Ferguson.
“But I want to push back on the fact that whenever people outside of our community want to try to deal with issues within our community, they have a select group of people that they go to and thinking that if I push these buttons, it’s going to take place,” Bowie said. “Those days are gone.”
Bowie urged the governor to meet with and listen to protest leaders who are still seeking to be heard. One of them, state Rep. Bruce Franks, D-St. Louis, made the same suggestion in a Facebook Live video later Monday.
“The first thing you want to do is meet with clergy. There’s a distinct difference between what the church used to be and what it is now,” Franks said. “You ain’t meeting with the folks who’ve been pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed …”
Greitens said he “wanted to reach out to as many people as possible,” but spokesman Parker Briden didn’t return calls asking whether that meant he would be willing to meet with younger activists.
The city’s business and political leaders are also hoping for calm if Stockley, who is white, isn’t convicted in the death of Smith, who was black.
St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson released a YouTube video last Tuesday saying she also wanted to keep talking to people about the “history and policies that have shaped the St. Louis area and privileged some over others.”
And the St. Louis Regional Chamber’s president, Joe Reagan, echoed the mayor’s request in a letter last week, asking people to “take a moment to listen to someone who views the verdict differently than you do. Either way, we ask everyone to respect the right for all Americans— even those we disagree with — to assemble and be heard.”
Republished with permission of St. Louis Public Radio: http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/missouri-gov-greitens-meets-clergy-st-louis-region-awaits-stockley-verdict
