Richmond Heights Police reported on Facebook that Friday afternoon seven out of approximately 70 protesters at the Galleria were arrested for “failure to disperse.”
The police report:
About 1:30pm today protesters began chanting and walking through the St. Louis Galleria. About 70 protesters were loudly chanting “shut it down” and “these killer cops have got to go”, etc. as they walked through the mall corridors. Richmond Heights Police were on scene with Mall management and allowed protest to continue south through mall. At 1:55pm the Richmond Heights police gave a series of orders to disperse. Protesters continued chanting, walking through the mall.
At 2:22 pm Richmond Heights police issued a Code 1000 request for police assistance from neighboring communities since protesters refused to obey police order to disperse.
At about 2:30 seven arrests made for Failure to Disperse along with additional charges to include one charge of Assaulting a Police Officer.
Saint Louis Galleria closed at about 2:30pm and reopened by 3:30pm.
Police need to stop killing unarmed black people. Period.
Rehire, retrain, retool, revise. Do whatever you have to do institutionally. But stop killing unarmed black people.
Absolutely on point.
Ben – I used your handy non biased website to look at police murders in St. Louis this year. Did you look at this closely? Something must be wrong, 12 of the 13 victims were armed, not unarmed. But that doesn’t fit with the narrative does it?
I just checked out the website also
Interesting that they were all armed.
It would be even more interesting to see a website detailing all murders and see who is killing who. I think the numbers would dwarf the police murders . That is where the focus of the protests should be, stopping all the murders and crime.
Allegedly Armed or Unknown is the category, but you’re right. Police definitely shouldn’t be killing unarmed folks either, they should be de-escalating the situation as many of them are trained to do (and, yes, more training would help.
I will agree more restraint/training would be helpful in unarmed situations. But if you are dumb enough to pull a gun on an officer, then you deserve the consequences. It is unreasonable to ask someone to “talk it out” when a gun is being pointed at them or is about to be. People need to follow the law or people need to change the law, but you can’t complain about consequences when you are unlawful.
I don’t understand what these people are trying to accomplish. Black lives matter–so why do they kill EACH OTHER in record numbers as if life has no value? Of all the police killings, less than 5% are black lives. If they don’t want to be killed, why be defiant and refuse to stop and obey the commands of the police? Stop when ordered and keep your hands in plain sight so it doesn’t look as if you are reaching for a weapon. Your history of violence has police officers on edge. A few militant people have ruined many job opportunities and nice shopping areas. An example would be the closing of shopping centers north and moving towards the south, i.e. Northland, River Roads, Jamestown, Northwest Plaza, the Mills, and many of the downtown St. Louis retail stores. Now the avenue to get people to quality jobs, the Metro Link, is facing a shady future. Leave the property of others alone! If black lives matter so much, show respect for yourselves and your immediate surroundings first.
Interesting stats, Dave. See the link. I assume you are doing a lot of work in black communities that have been harmed for centuries by oppressive policies and practices (to put it mildly) to address the root causes of crime, namely poverty? https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/