Protests follow acquittal of ex-officer in killing

ST. LOUIS — A white former police officer was acquitted Friday in the 2011 death of a black man who was fatally shot following a high-speed chase, and hundreds of demonstrators streamed into the streets of downtown St. Louis to protest the verdict that had stirred fears of civil unrest for weeks.

Ahead of the acquittal, activists had threatened civil disobedience if Jason Stockley were not convicted, including possible efforts to shut down highways.

The judge who decided the matter declared he would not be swayed by “partisan interests, public clamor or fear of criticism.”

The case played out not far from the suburb of Ferguson, which was the scene of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, the unarmed black 18-year-old who was killed by a white police officer in 2014. That officer was never charged and eventually resigned.

Stockley, who was charged with first-degree murder, insisted he saw Anthony Lamar Smith holding a gun and felt he was in imminent danger. Prosecutors said the officer planted a gun in Smith’s car after the shooting. The officer asked the case to be decided by a judge instead of a jury.

“This court, in conscience, cannot say that the State has proven every element of murder beyond a reasonable doubt or that the State has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in self-defense,” St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson wrote in the decision.

Video from St. Louis television stations showed a crowd that swelled from a handful to several hundred in the hours after the verdict and marched through city streets.

By early evening, police said a protest at a downtown intersection was no longer peaceful and they were asking demonstrators to leave the area. Protesters had surrounded a police vehicle in front of the old police building near Tucker Boulevard and Clark Avenue and damaged it with rocks. Police approached and tried to secure the vehicle and some in the crowd threw rocks and pieces of curbing at them. Officers then used pepper spray on the group.

Thirteen arrests were made and four officers were injured.