St. Louis Police Now Just Arresting And Taunting Protestors

According to news reports, St. Louis police arrested 80 protestors overnight Sunday, as unrest continues after a judge ruled — once again — that it is legal for cops to kill black people.

St. Louis police are obviously saying that the protestors were “criminals” and “agitators.” They’re arresting journalists too, but that’s just par for the course. Officer Jason Stockley said “we’re going to kill this motherf**ker,” then chased off after the suspect, then shot him five times, then allegedly planted a gun in the dead man’s car. When that’s the kind of “police” you’re dealing with, being merely arrested for reporting on them or breaking a window is a mercy. The police are capable of far worse.

But the police did something more chilling than usual. Multiple reports say that the cops started chanting “whose streets, our streets,” while arresting protestors. Folks, that’s really messed up.

A) “Whose streets, our streets,” is a sometimes refrain used by #BlackLivesMatter protestors. While I’m sure your Nazi friends on Facebook think that it’s hilarious and appropriate for the police to throw the chant back in the protestors’ faces, it’s not really the best de-escalation strategy. The goal of the police should be to calm people, not bait people. Officer Troll wouldn’t have a job in an actually free society.

B) When local agents of the state are already out there goosestepping over people’s civil liberties, it’s really not cool when they come up with a clever chant to emphasize their “ownership” of the public space. Make no mistake, the streets DO NOT belong to the cops. They belong to the rest of us. A cop chanting “whose streets, our streets” is like a bouncer saying “I own da club” to a person waiting to get inside. Hired goons should not confuse themselves with actual owners.

Armed, local militias are walking around like they own the place, and there’s really nothing we can do about it. There’s nothing the federal government is going to do about it either. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

The U.S. Department of Justice concluded a year ago that there was insufficient evidence to pursue a separate federal civil rights prosecution of St. Louis police Officer Jason Stockley, who was declared not guilty Friday by a St. Louis judge on state criminal charges in the 2011 shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith.

The DOJ withheld disclosing its conclusion while Stockley’s murder trial was underway in St. Louis, a spokeswoman told the Post-Dispatch in an email.

That decision was made under Loretta Lynch’s Department of Justice. Again, under the laws as they are written and interpreted, it is entirely legal and proper for cops to murder black people. White law enforcement officials might seem giddy about the reality, black law enforcement officials might feel it’s “tragic” when cops happen to kill unarmed civilians because of the color of their skin, but law enforcement AGREES that it’s legal for them to kill you.

Well kill me, and my children, at least. Federal, state, and local officials are all on the same page that if my black child pisses off a cop, he can be shot in the street like a dog.

And if I don’t like it, I can go out to protest and get arrested for being an “agitator.”

Whose streets? Not mine. I get it. Don’t have to tell me twice.

St. Louis officers chant ‘whose streets, our streets’ while arresting protesters [Washington Post]
Department of Justice won’t prosecute Stockley for civil rights violation [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

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Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.

Earlier:

https://abovethelaw.com/2017/09/white-cop-promises-to-kill-black-man-kills-black-man-gets-acquitted/