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Commissioners had an inkling something was up at their Tuesday night meeting when people in the audience's first three rows stayed seated during the opening invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance.
About 15 members of Dream Defenders, a group that has been staging street protests against police violence, quickly found their voice once the pledge finished. They stood up and started shouting their grievances against the police, with one of the leaders taking a microphone to address the meeting.
Police already in attendance quickly contained the protesters when they didn't obey the mayor telling them to stop, grabbing the man with the microphone and struggling with him to take him out of the chambers.
The other protesters mostly watched the altercation, filming it on their upheld cellphones while chanting "When black and brown bodies are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back."
They continued the chanting as they walked out of the meeting, escorted by police. The total interruption lasted about five minutes.
Demetrius Vaughn, the 22-year-old from Lauderdale Lakes at the microphone, was complaining "the police department told me they would shoot me." He was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, disturbing a public assemblage and resisting arrest without violence.
The group also included Didier Ortiz, a city commission candidate, and Nathan Pim of Food Not Bombs.
The members were protesting the recognition being given to police at the meeting for their assistance during December's Winterfest Boat Parade, which protesters tried to interrupt by blocking several streets. They said they staged Tuesday's protest because they were told they would not be allowed to speak at the meeting.
Jasmen Rogers said she and another member were arrested at the parade. Rogers said the group was upset that the police "were being awarded for their negative behavior."
"We were mistreated out there," Rogers said.
The Dream Defenders Facebook page describes the group as trying to "develop the next generation of radical leaders to realize and exercise our independent collective power."
Tuesday wasn't the first time a commission meeting has been interrupted. In October, homeless advocates protesting a law regulating outdoor homeless feedings made so much noise outside the commission chambers that it was hard to hear the meeting inside.
In November, police interrupted the start of another meeting when they removed and arrested Ray Cox, a homeless man who comes and speaks on every commission agenda item, on an outstanding warrant for failing to show up at a court hearing on a charge of urinating in public.
The Twitterverse sprung into action quickly after Vaughn's arrest and has raised $1,135 for the bail needed for his release from jail. Bond was set at $100.
No free rein for misinforming and confusing jurors
After the Post-Dispatch and a few other papers last month covered a Ferguson grand juror’s initiating a lawsuit against the prosecutor, all media have been stone silent since then on the suit. On Jan. 25, the National Press Club held a forum, “Coverage of Race in America,” regarding media, race and justice, from Ferguson to Staten Island. Post-Dispatch Editor Gilbert Bailon was a key panelist and took justifiable pride in the paper’s coverage of Ferguson and the new lawsuit. There would be enormous gaps in information without the Post-Dispatch’s leadership.
This lawsuit, Grand Juror Doe vs. Robert McCulloch in his official capacity as a Prosecuting Attorney,” deserves updates and editorial endorsements. It is a unique way to punish prosecutors for potential fraud against the court through misinformation, confusion and lack of timeliness as the grand juror points out in the complaint, which is supported and litigated by the ACLU. Specifically, Doe filed that “the presentation was made in a muddled and untimely manner.” Fraud against the court is a prosecutable offense.
This is the charge that McCulloch and his team, including assistant prosecutor Kathy Alizadeh, could face. Alizadeh handed the grand jury a 1979 Missouri law that claimed it is legal to shoot a fleeing suspect — and did not tell them that the Supreme Court overturned the law 30 years ago, in 1985. Two weeks later, she gave the grand jury a document that reflected the current state of the law. But she told the jurors to fold in half the first document in order to remind themselves not to “necessarily rely on that because there is a portion of that that doesn’t comply with the law.” Confused, a juror asked if U.S. Supreme Court rulings overturn Missouri law. Instead of answering a simple “Yes,” another assistant district attorney spoke up and responded, “We don’t want to get into a law class.”
As a result, the grand jury operated on an unclear understanding of the relevant law for whether Darren Wilson was legally justified to shoot Michael Brown as he ran away (regardless of the confusion of whether he was surrendering or not).
In addition, McCulloch and his team never confronted Officer Wilson sufficiently about why and how Michael Brown was shot the second time from 35 feet away. Since the officer claimed he was aware that Brown was unarmed, why didn’t the policeman shoot the final shots at the legs to disable rather than the head to kill?
The ACLU, representing juror Doe in the case, asks that the judge lift restrictions on Doe’s First Amendment right to discuss the prosecution’s actions. The juror further argues that prosecutor McCulloch discussed the nonindictment in a way that falsely made the grand jury’s findings appear unanimous. However, only four of the 12 were sufficient to block the indictment and as many as eight, a majority, may have voted to indict.
Prosecutors could also be held accountable in Staten Island, where the videographer who shot the footage of the illegal death-inducing choke hold and the “I can’t breathe” statements was dismissed after just 10 minutes of testimony, with no penetrating questions regarding what he saw, the angles, the time duration, the results and the like.
There are a lot of proposals to improve future prosecutions’ objectivity, including police body cameras, training and community policing. These are all excellent and necessary, but prosecutors are the final bulwark when injustice is actually committed. The knowledge that they, too, are subject to prosecution and criminal cases will go a long way toward equalizing race and justice in America.
The Doe case is an excellent first step, but is not as far as the jurors could and should go, not only for the right to speak but to hold the prosecution accountable. Tony Rothert, legal director of the Missouri ACLU, said his group is also supporting suits that would directly confront McCulloch and his team for fraud and removing McCulloch from office. Rothert says he “wants to get the conversation going.” These suits are also underreported in the media.
The grand juror’s courage in initiating the Doe v. McCulloch case could be a national model, and it deserves public support as well as ongoing media coverage. Prosecutor McCulloch’s response to the case was due Monday. He asked for two more weeks. The court is mandating that he respond. The train of justice may be coming.
Missouri cities sued over municipal court practices
Civil rights lawyers filed federal lawsuits Sunday night accusing authorities in Ferguson and Jennings, Mo., of running the equivalent of debtors’ prisons by illegally jailing hundreds of mostly poor, black residents for unpaid debts, many of them from traffic tickets.
Local plaintiffs represented by lawyers with Washington-based Equal Justice Under Law, Arch City Defenders of St. Louis and Saint Louis University School of Law sought class-action status in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, charging that the two cities’ municipal court policies violate the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits jailing those too poor to pay and allows the punishment only for those with means who willfully refuse.
The suits, reported by the New York Times and NPR, are part of an effort by legal advocates nationwide to target what they call racially and economically skewed practices by which the criminal-justice system has increasingly passed costs on to defendants. The practices criminalize poverty, civil liberties groups say, fueling the kind of frustrations that erupted after the fatal police shooting last August in Ferguson of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.
In a report last year, Arch City Defenders, a nonprofit legal clinic, traced tensions between many low-income black residents and mainly white local authorities in part to policies by many of the area’s decentralized local courts.
More than half the courts in St. Louis County engage in “illegal and harmful practices” of charging high fines and fees for nonviolent offenses and arresting people who do not pay, the group said. The group’s co-founder, Thomas Harvey, cited as typical “poverty violations” driving with a suspended license or expired registration or no proof of insurance.
An October study by the nonprofit group Better Together found that municipal courts in St. Louis and St. Louis County collected nearly half of the $132 million in fines paid statewide, despite being home to fewer than 1 in 4 Missourians. The county collected one-third of the statewide total, with just 1 out of 9 state residents.
More than a dozen small towns reap more from traffic-court fees and fines than from sales or property taxes, each with large black populations, the study found.
In Ferguson, population about 21,000, such revenue was the second-largest source of income, $2.6 million of $20 million collected. Overall, the city issued three arrest warrants per household, with traffic-fine revenue increasing 44 percent since 2011.
Ferguson and Jennings officials could not immediately be reached for comment Sunday night.
“I understand the frustration from the defendants,” John Adams, court administrator for Jennings’s municipal division, said in a Friday interview reported by the Times. “At the same time, the defendants should be responsible and take the step of at least showing up in court. It would resolve so many issues,” he reportedly said.
Authorities from Washington State to Colorado to Ohio have backed away from similar practices amid growing attention from public defenders, law professors and activists, including the American Civil Liberties Union.
In December, the Missouri Supreme Court required local courts to allow installment plans, waive or reduce fines for the indigent, and hold “show cause” hearings before issuing warrants for failure to appear.
State Attorney General Chris Koster (D) targeted 13 county municipal courts with a lawsuit over financial reporting requirements, while lawmakers have discussed measures that would consolidate courts that one said function as “little more than ATMs.”
Ferguson has capped court revenue at 15 percent of the city budget, abolished the “failure to appear” offense and related fines, forgiven warrants for nearly 600 defendants, and eliminated fees to tow vehicles and revoke warrants.
“Debtors’ prisons have no place in society that values equality and justice,” said Alec Karakatsanis, co-founder of Equal Justice Under Law, after the group sued Montgomery, Ala., last year in coordination with the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Karakatsanis’s group alleged that Montgomery required plaintiffs to pay fines immediately or sit in jail to pay off debts at a rate of $50 a day, or $75 a day if they also agreed to perform janitorial tasks. The city agreed to reforms, provided attorneys to municipal court defendants, and created new community-service and hardship provisions for the indigent.
Protesters plant fake tombstones in Mayor Slay's yard 6 months after Michael Brown's death
About two dozen protesters staged a "Monday Mourning wake-up call" demonstration in front of Mayor Francis Slay's home in south St. Louis early Monday, erecting fake tombstones in his front yard and calling for changes in how police shootings are investigated.
But their calls were unanswered as the mayor never came to the door. The group, which carried a mock coffin and bullhorn, marched about a half-block in the Boulevard Heights neighborhood, near Germania Avenue and Interstate 55. They left by about sunrise as more police officers and Police Chief Sam Dotson arrived. There were no arrests.
The protesters said they planned similar protests at other city officials' homes on upcoming Mondays. They say they want the city to set up civilian review of police-involved shootings and get rid of the hot-spot policing, which they claim is racial profiling.
Upcoming talk by Ferguson police shooting prosecutor divides Saint Louis University law school
ST. LOUIS — An upcoming law school lecture by St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch is drawing criticism from some Saint Louis University students and professors who object to his handling of the investigation of Michael Brown's shooting death in Ferguson.
McCulloch is set to speak at a Feb. 20 law school event billed at addressing police after Ferguson. He'll be joined at the student law review symposium by County Police Chief Jon Belmar and social scientists from five other universities, including American, South Carolina and Wake Forest.
Members of the Black Law Students Association and others have asked the school's dean, former state Supreme Court chief justice Michael Wolff, to rescind the invitation. They point to legal and ethics challenges to McCulloch's tactics before a grand jury that declined to indict former Ferguson officer Darren Wilson, who is white, in the August death of Brown, 18, who was black and unarmed.
McCulloch has acknowledged calling witnesses whom he said "clearly lied" to the grand jury, including a woman who claimed to have seen Brown charge at Wilson. The elected prosecutor and two assistants also face a disciplinary complaint alleging that they provided grand jurors with improper instructions on the legal standards for use of force by police.
"One of the first things we learn is you don't put a witness on the stand that you know is lying," said third-year law student Christina Vogel, who volunteered as a legal observer at the frequent protests that followed Brown's death.
Vogel and others plan to share their concerns at a university meeting on Monday, which is also the six-month anniversary of Brown's death.
School President Fred Pestello has cited academic freedom in defending the decision to bring McCulloch to campus.
"These conversations need to happen — and SLU needs to be a place that supports and contributes to them — if we are to improve the quality of life for everyone in our region," he said in an email to students, faculty and staff.
Wolff said in an interview that the school has no intention of rescinding the invitation. He noted that student organizers, not administrators, invited McCulloch, who is expected to answer audience questions for 25 minutes after his 35-minute talk.
The Jesuit school was the site of a six-day campus takeover by police shooting protesters in October. They left after the university said it would spend more money on the school's African-American Studies program and work to increase black student retention.
"The reality is, the university has done a lot to be a part of the solution," said law professor Brendan Roediger, who opposes McCulloch's appearance. "This undoes a lot of that work."
Protesters removed for interrupting McCulloch's speech at SLU law school symposium
ST. LOUIS • Protesters tried in vain to halt his speech, but St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch kept talking at a St. Louis University law school symposium Friday morning, even joking at one point when a protester got his name wrong.
McCulloch spoke at the St. Louis University law school symposium titled "The Thin Blue Line: Policing Post-Ferguson" about 9 a.m. After about 15 minutes of interruptions, the SLU president asked the protesters to leave, and campus security officers escorted some of the protesters out of the room.
"I'm always amazed when those who profess their rights to free speech won't let anyone else speak," McCulloch quipped.
When they chanted, "Black Lives Matter," McCulloch said: "I'm pretty certain all lives matter."
One protester was dressed in a judge's robe and mockingly "sentenced" McCulloch for "gross injustice" for his role in the grand jury investigation into the Michael Brown killing. Despite the interruptions, McCulloch kept speaking. At one point a shouting protester got his name wrong, and the prosecutor joked: "It's McCulloch, by the way. At least get the name right."
There was a mix of roughly 12 protesters and students escorted out by campus security. The building was on lockdown.
The fact that McCulloch was invited to speak upset some students and professors, who cited his conduct during the investigation into Michael Brown's death. Brown, 18, was fatally shot by a police officer in Ferguson on Aug. 9.
McCulloch's office presented evidence over weeks to a St. Louis County grand jury, which decided in November not to indict Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson for any crime connected to the shooting.
During his hour-long speech, McCulloch defended his office's role in the grand jury investigation and said he wasn't going to walk away from his responsibility when critics called for a special prosecutor.
McCulloch said his "main concern" in the county is its fragmentation with so many police agencies and cities.
"For decades we've tried to work with departments that shouldn't be departments, we've tried to work with municipalities that shouldn't be" municipalities, he said.
The symposium started quietly as Michael A. Wolff, the dean of the St. Louis University School of Law, introduced McCulloch. Wolff said Ferguson has become synonymous with societal questions related to race, economic inequality and policing.
McCulloch, a SLU law grad, was greeted at first by warm applause.
"There's always room for improvement," McCulloch said, "whatever job you do."
Then, someone shouted to interrupt his speech, but McCulloch kept talking. For the next 15 minutes or so, the interruptions continued. There appeared to be maybe a dozen or so protesters, popping up in different spots in the room.
He made it clear he wouldn't avoid the hot topic. "It's gonna be difficult to talk about post-Ferguson if we don't talk about Ferguson," he said.
McCulloch talked about the history of the grand jury process, and stressed that the grand jury is independent. "They're certainly not an arm or branch of the prosecutor's office."
Protesters held up signs with the names of black men shot by police. The protesters sang, "Which side are you on?" as McCulloch continued his speech. One of the event organizers banged a gavel to try to silence the protesters. SLU President Fred P. Pestello asked them to leave, and police escorted some protesters out of the room.
All the while, McCulloch continued his speech with an even tone.
He said the job of prosecutor is "to see that justice is done." That may mean an indictment, or may not, he said.
McCulloch also addressed some confusion during the grand jury process over Missouri's use-of-force statute. The Missouri statute is out of sync, he said, with a Supreme Court ruling in a case called Tennessee vs. Garner. But the jury instructions are not.
"It put us in the position of having a statute that said one thing and an instruction that said another," he said.
McCulloch said there is a "genuine question," though, of whether the statute needs to be updated. He noted that the Garner case was a civil case.
He said any conversation about solutions needs to broaden.
"The reality is, if you want to dump all the societal ills in this country at the doorstep of the criminal justice system, we're going to continue to have problems," he said.
The speech was followed by a question-and-answer session, during which McCulloch said he was initially surprised by the amount of attention the case drew on social media. Asked what he would do differently, he said "We will be picking this apart for the next several years." He said he learned he needs to better communicate with the public.