3rd day of demonstrations hit city
POLICE SHOOTING /
ST. LOUIS — Several hundred protesters marched in downtown St. Louis near the city’s police headquarters Sunday evening, and later through the St. Louis University campus, beginning a third day of demonstrations over the acquittal of a white former police officer charged in the shooting death of a black suspect.
The crowd observed six minutes of silence in front of the police department building, then chanted “stop killing us” as officers looked on from headquarters windows. Afterward, they resumed marching, chanting slogans such as “this is what democracy looks like.”
Protesters said Sunday that the six minutes of silence symbolized the six years between the death of Anthony Lamar Smith and the acquittal of former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley, who was charged in the black man’s shooting death. The verdict was issued Friday.
Authorities closed off several blocks around the police headquarters Sunday afternoon in anticipation of the demonstration, which followed two days of nonviolent marches and two nights of violent skirmishes.
Suburban St. Louis shop owners on Sunday swept up broken glass and boarded up storefront windows that were shattered overnight when a day of peaceful protests turned violent.
Saturday night’s clash between police and a few dozen protesters in the Delmar Loop area of University City, a suburb about 10 miles west of St. Louis near Washington University, resulted in the arrests of at least nine people. At least half of the shops on one side of a two-block stretch of the popular nightlife district were broken by the time the area was cleared.
Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens issued a warning Sunday on Facebook that anyone caught destroying property would be held accountable and could face felony charges.
“Saturday night, some criminals decided to pick up rocks and break windows. They thought they’d get away with it. They were wrong. Our officers caught ‘em, cuffed ‘em and threw ‘em in jail,” the first-term Republican governor wrote.
The protests began Friday after a judge acquitted Stockley in the 2011 fatal shooting of Smith, 24.
Saturday night’s violence capped a day of noisy but peaceful demonstrations at suburban shopping malls.
On Friday night, nearly three-dozen people were arrested and 11 police officers suffered injuries, including a broken jaw and dislocated shoulder. Five officers were taken to hospitals. Police said 10 businesses were damaged that night, and protesters broke a window and spattered red paint on the home of St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson.