US judge orders St Louis police to change protest response
CHICAGO: A judge Wednesday ordered a US city’s police department to change how it responds to street protests, after numerous reports of abusive tactics.
Now, among other changes, police in St Louis are barred from using chemicals like pepper spray against peaceful protesters.
Reporters, protesters and witnesses in St Louis have accused police of using excessive force, including the unjustified use of pepper spray.
The midwestern city’s police have also been accused of arresting people en masse, even if they were protesting peacefully or were uninvolved bystanders.
The charges have led the city’s mayor and police chief to call for an investigation of alleged abuses.
Both peaceful and violent protests were sparked by the Sept 15 acquittal of former officer Jason Stockley, who is white, in the 2011 fatal shooting of Anthony Lamar Smith, a black man.
Within days, accusations emerged of questionable police tactics in response to the protests.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued on behalf of several protesters, asking a judge to issue a preliminary injunction against police.
Federal judge Catherine Perry agreed Wednesday with the AC LU, barring city law enforcement from using chemical agents such as pepper spray against peaceful protesters who are not threatening any violence.
The judge, finding that the lawsuit was likely to prevail, also barred the city’s police from declaring a peaceful demonstration as ‘unlawful’, which then triggers arrests.
Perry criticised the police department’s current policy, which she said “permits officers to arbitrarily declare ‘there’s no more assembling’.”
The city mayor’s office released a statement in late September calling allegations of police abuse ‘troubling’, but issued no public response to the judge’s preliminary injunction ruling.
A mayoral spokesman told the St Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper that the city would comply with the order.
The ACLU applauded the decision, saying the order required police to adopt ‘common-sense solutions’.
The same judge in 2014 issued a preliminary injunction against police responding to violent unrest and protests in nearby Ferguson, Missouri, after another racially-tinged police shooting.
Groups advocating for press freedoms last month also accused St Louis police of mistreating journalists covering the demonstrations. — AFP