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Judi Lynn

(160,545 posts) Sat Sep 23, 2017, 06:59 PM Sep 2017

Some forcibly arrested in St. Louis weren't protesting

Source: Associated Press

Updated 5:22 pm, Saturday, September 23, 2017

ST. LOUIS (AP) — An undercover St. Louis police officer and an Air Force lieutenant who lives in the neighborhood were among several people who say they were forcibly arrested last weekend in the city even though they were not participating in protests over the acquittal of a white former officer in the killing of a black suspect.

About 120 people were arrested — most for failing to disperse — about two hours after vandals broke windows and threw items at police last Sunday. The officers used a tactic called kettling that boxed in demonstrators and others in the area.

Protests continued on Saturday, when several people were arrested at the upscale Galleria mall where more than 200 demonstrators marched and chanted among shoppers. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported officers briefly cleared the mall after some members of the group became unruly.

St. Louis County police said in a series of tweets that about 150 people dispersed before 22 people were arrested. Charges were expected to include trespassing, rioting, assault on a law enforcement officer, and disorderly conduct. One officer was taken to the hospital for a back injury and two demonstrators suffered minor injuries.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Some-forcibly-arrested-in-St-Louis-weren-t-12223259.php

5 replies

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Some forcibly arrested in St. Louis weren't protesting (Original Post) Judi Lynn Sep 2017 OP

Trumps upcoming Nazi's. Doreen Sep 2017 #1

Same dept that doxxed not-proven-guilty arrestees Crash2Parties Sep 2017 #2

IMO, all those arrested were "set-up", not allowed to "leave" and tortured by the police. Sunlei Sep 2017 #3

heres just a few more names of people set-up by these police. Sunlei Sep 2017 #4

facism is here. Locrian Sep 2017 #5

Doreen

(11,686 posts)

1. Trumps upcoming Nazi's.

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Sat Sep 23, 2017, 10:50 PM

Sep 2017

Crash2Parties

(6,017 posts)

2. Same dept that doxxed not-proven-guilty arrestees

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Sun Sep 24, 2017, 12:23 AM

Sep 2017

who then received threatening phone calls from Trumpanzees.

Sunlei

(22,651 posts)

3. IMO, all those arrested were "set-up", not allowed to "leave" and tortured by the police.

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Sun Sep 24, 2017, 01:52 AM

Sep 2017

slammed to ground, kicked, zip-tied causing hand nerve damage, pepper sprayed while tied up, personal stuff broken, stolen.

Sunlei

(22,651 posts)

4. heres just a few more names of people set-up by these police.

Reply to Sunlei (Reply #3)

Sun Sep 24, 2017, 02:15 AM

Sep 2017

One of the most-repeated complaints of those swept up in the mass arrest was that they had nowhere to go. William Waldron, 38, who was in town from New York to build the stage for the U2 concert, which was canceled, said he was leaving a bar on Tucker Boulevard and had no idea police had given any order to disperse. He said he tried to get back into the bar but was shoved back by a police shield.

“They threw me on the ground and told me I was being arrested,” he said. “The guys inside were trying to come out and tell them I was a part of their crew, and police told them if they opened up the door they were going to arrest them.”

“In one way, I felt like they were doing what they felt they needed to do,” he said. But he felt the police went “way overboard.”

A documentary filmmaker from Kansas City, visiting with his wife, said he was knocked unconscious during the sweep. Drew Burbridge, 32, said he never heard orders to disperse until officers started to advance, banging their batons and chanting, “Move back.”

“I turned my camera off and asked if there was anywhere I could go, but I was denied the right to leave,” he said. “I didn’t want to be a part of this.”

Officers ordered him to turn his camera off and get down on the ground, and he complied.

“The only thing I cared about then was putting my arms around my wife,” he said. “I just, I just kept saying: ‘It’s going to be OK.’”

Burbridge said officers then grabbed him by both his arms and dragged him away.

“I just said: ‘I am a member of the media, I am not protesting, I am not resisting,’” Burbridge said.

An officer sprayed his face with a chemical, his head was forced into the ground and an officer ripped his camera from his neck.

Burbridge claims his hands were then bound by zip ties before two officers started kicking him in the back, neck, arm and legs while he lay restrained on the ground. He said he was knocked unconscious on the pavement for about 10 to 30 seconds.

After he came to, Burbridge said an officer lifted his head by his hair and pepper sprayed him in the face again.

Another journalist was caught in the sweep. Scott Olson, 57, of Chicago, was on assignment for Getty Images. He said he had covered several protests in his career but had been arrested only one time: by a Missouri state trooper in Ferguson in August 2014. (He was not prosecuted.)

Olson said he shot many photos of vandals causing damage downtown. The area had quieted down considerably, and he was getting ready to leave for the night when a friend tipped him off that police were planning to clear the streets and that he might want to stick around.

As the “kettle” closed in, he shot photos until an officer ordered him to get to the ground and drop his cameras. He got to his knees and gently placed his $15,000 equipment on the street.

As he was led away, he asked, “What about my camera?”

An officer responded, “(expletive) your camera,” he said. But another officer grabbed it and placed it around his neck.

Dillan Newbold, a medical school student at Washington University working on a doctorate in neuroscience, said he also was videotaping the protest when he got caught in the kettle.

Newbold said he never heard an instruction to disperse but soon officers converged, and one told him to stop filming. Newbold said he turned off the camera on his phone and was immediately sprayed with a chemical irritant.

Newbold said he was restrained with zip ties that were so tight that he lost all feeling in his hands and his fingers began to turn purple. He said his hands still burn, and there are still areas that have not regained feeling.

“It felt like the officers were treating it like some kind of sport,” Newbold said. More stories from people arrested Sunday

Rodney Ford

Rodney Ford, 28, of Denver, said he had driven to St. Louis on Friday for a family wedding on Saturday. He and his fiancée, Tabetha Esry, 29, came downtown to protest on Sunday night.

“We thought we could have a lawful assembly,” he said. “We thought that’s what this was. But that right was stripped away from us.”

He said he had heard there was vandalism downtown but “didn’t see people yelling toward the police when I was there.”

Ford said after lines of police officers closed in on him, he and his fiancée put up their hands and knelt. The officers sprayed them with chemicals, and zip tied them.

He said Esry suffered a bruise to her thigh from being stepped on by an officer’s boots and was dragged off aggressively.

Ford had a new 9mm pistol on him that cost $600 at Bass Pro Shop. He said he had never fired it. He said police took the weapon and told him it was going to ballistics.

“They just disarmed a civilian,” he said. “Now I have no right to protect myself. My firearm has been stolen. When I went to retrieve my phone at the (area station), they had no information about my gun.”

On Friday, Mayor Lyda Krewson asked the director of public safety to investigate how an undercover officer became bloodied during his arrest Sunday when he was mistaken for a suspect believed to be carrying chemicals that could be sprayed on officers.

“The allegations are disturbing,” Krewson’s spokesman Koran Addo wrote in a statement.

That incident began when two uniformed officers near the protest ordered the man to show his hands, sources said. When he refused, they knocked him down and hit him at least three times and zip tied his hands behind his back. When he stood up, his mouth was bloodied, the sources said.

Marcus Anderson

Marcus Anderson, 22, was out with a friend downtown when they decided to walk with the protesters. They stopped at the corner of Tucker Boulevard and Olive Street to take photographs of the demonstration.

“Then this truck came up and started shooting mace and rubber bullets,” Anderson said. Then, the police tackled him.

“They tried to say I was resisting arrest but I wasn’t,” he said. “They threatened to tase me, break my arm and beat me. They put their knees in my back and neck. They said they were tired of me, and tired of my people looting. But I wasn’t looting, and nobody I was with was looting. They were just putting me in this category.”

Anderson was arrested and jailed overnight. He had a laptop in his bag when he got arrested. When he got home from the ordeal, the laptop was cracked and had loose pieces that were not loose prior to the arrest, he said.
Mario Ortega, 36, had just arrived in St. Louis from an out-of-town trip and met a friend downtown around 10 on Sunday night. They saw the protests happening, and decided to ask protesters in the streets about future protests.

“We want to make change happen here in St. Louis,” Ortega said. He’s lived in the area for about seven years. He originally came to Washington University as a student and stayed to work. He’s now a post-doctoral researcher in neuroscience.

Ortega’s educational background helped him realize what kind of damage was inflicted by too-tight zip ties used to restrain him and his friend when they were kettled and arrested.

“They were really, really tight, to the point that we still have nerve damage,” Ortega said. “I went to the doctor for that.” He received medication and will have to return for a follow-up, he said. Ortega didn’t get the impression that the same level of tightness was used for every arrestee.

“It seemed like if they didn’t like you for some reason, you got it really tight,” he said. “My left hand went purple and both of his hands went purple.”

—Janelle O’Dea

Fareed Alston

Fareed Alston of East St. Louis was filming the protests for his company City-Productions and Publishing when he was arrested.

“It was like imminent danger, a wall of police circling around us,” Alston said. “They told us to get on the ground and everyone complied. Even as we did that they started pepper spraying us and kicking us to the ground with their foot and taking people’s phones.”

Alston, 28, said as he was being taken to the police van he saw officers giving high fives, taking selfies and smoking cigars.

“I feel like the police were much more aggressive and tactical,” he said. “When I look at the footage it’s almost like I’m filming a royal formation or a military drill.”

—Blythe Bernhard

from http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/undercover-cop-air-force-officer-med-student-among-those-police/article_e2dcc3de-f228-5311-a35f-e60e1bd9ebee.html

Locrian

(4,522 posts)

5. facism is here.

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Sun Sep 24, 2017, 11:26 AM

Sep 2017

It may not be connected into a unified structure - but the cancer cells are here and growing.
All it's gonna take is someone to connect it all up.

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