“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Bishop Derrick Robinson told St. Louis County police making mass arrests in downtown St. Louis on October 3. “You locked up 14 clergy here tonight.”
Ferguson Commission Co-Chair Rev. Starsky Wilson and organizer Rev. Darryl Gray were among those detained.
“If Jesus were out here, you would have probably locked him up too,” an activist known as Lala told the police.
“And Jesus would be out here – because this is the type of work that he did on earth,” another protester said.
They were arrested on suspicion of occupying I-64 east to shut down highway traffic as disruption of civic life continues in ongoing protests of police unaccountability in the wake of the not-guilty verdict in the Jason Stockley case.
First a few, then several dozen and finally more than 200 protestors occupied all the lanes of eastbound I-64.
“If we don’t get it, shut it down,” protesters chanted. “Whose highway? Our Highway!” They stood chanting for several minutes before they proceeded to slowly march down the highway for the better part of an hour.
“Look at this [expletive],” a Metrobus operator said to his coworkers looking on from over the viaduct as protesters make their way down the highway. “Look at all those white people shouting, ‘black lives matter.’ That’s what I’m talking about.”
They marched defiantly towards downtown with the expectation that an ugly confrontation with law enforcement, as officers were attempting to maneuver through traffic. They came from the city, county and the Missouri Highway Patrol.
Protestors exited the highway without incident at 20th and Chestnut and crossed over to Market Street. Though they wouldn’t need the gas masks they had packed after all, it was here that they would suffer the consequences of their direct action. They chanted and marched to Market and Jefferson, where St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department riot police were in formation. Protestors, legal observers, clergy and live streamers retreated to the sidewalk.
At Walnut and Jefferson, St. Louis County Police Department riot police were in formation. A law enforcement officer announced that everyone in between the two rows of riot cops was to be arrested.
“What? No!” LaLa said as she broke down crying.
She had made it out the arrest perimeter on the opposite sides of police.
“Everybody’s going to jail? Everything was peaceful! Why are you guys doing this?”
A handful of protestors who managed to escape arrest on the Walnut side discussed the mass arrest, as it was underway, with St. Louis County Police Lt. Jerry Lohr, who has a good relationship with protestors thanks to a naturally easygoing demeanor.
“They didn’t give a dispersal order or anything,” LaLa said to Lohr.
“They blocked the highway. That’s punishable by arrest,” Lohr said. “If I caught a person shoplifting, I don’t have to tell that person that they have to disperse or I will arrest them. I can just arrest them.”
“But how do you know that all those people over there were blocking the highway,” Lala shot back.
“There are pictures and footage,” Lohr said.
“But you aren’t arresting them based on pictures and footage – you are arresting them for being over there on that sidewalk,” Lala said.
“That’s fair to say,” Lohr said. “But it’s also fair to say that it’s probable, but not likely that they are just innocent bystanders.”
The people were zip-tied, lined up and carried away in the fleet of police vans.
“Shout out your name and birthday so that we can pass it along to jail support,” a woman was shouting through a megaphone as they stood waiting to be transported on the Market and Jefferson side.
The names and birthdays, including those of 14 clergy, kept coming – and coming. There were 143 arrests made.
