Police tactics

S E RV I N G T H E P U B L I C S I N C E 1 878 • W I N N E R O F 1 8 P U L I TZ E R P R I Z E S

TUESDAY • 09.19.2017 • $1.50

FEELING THE FALLOUT DAMAGES PILE UP; POLICE TACTICS UNDER SCRUTINY

DAVID CARSON • dcarson@post-dispatch.com

About 1,000 protesters stand outside the St. Louis city jail Monday, a day after police arrested more than 120 people. It was the fourth day of protesting in St. Louis.

Day of marches ends outside St. Louis jail

Protest chants, tone adopted by police, officials

FROM STAFF REPORTS

BY JEREMY KOHLER St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ST. LOUIS • Protesters took to

the streets again Monday, even at one point enduring a deluge to denounce last week’s acquittal of a former police officer in the fatal shooting of a drug suspect, as well as the police tactics used to end a similar protest the night before.

About 1,000 people converged at the city jail known as the Justice Center downtown Monday night to demonstrate against what they claimed was the continued incarceration of about 50 protesters from Sunday.

That claim couldn’t be confirmed Monday night.

Police closed Tucker Boulevard in front of the jail as the See STOCKLEY • Page A4

Gov. Eric Greitens is eager to show he’s not like a former governor whom he accused of tolerating looting and arson in Ferguson. So much so that his Facebook post Sunday about vandalism in the Delmar Loop dropped any claim to formality.

“Our officers caught ’em, cuffed ’em, and threw ’em in jail,” it said. “They’re gonna wake up and face felony charges.”

On Sunday night, as police officers marched downtown, a Post-Dispatch photographer heard them chant a refrain most often heard at Ferguson protests: “Whose streets? Our streets.”

Messenger: Chief wanted; chanting required • A2 Protesters question tactics used by city police • A5 Local high school students walk out of class • A7 Police union seeks donations for officers • A7 Editorial: Protesters need to outline their plans • A10 Opinion: A sober reminder of work to be done • A11

See LANGUAGE • Page A4

Ex-school board member accuses Greitens of strong-arm tactics gie Vandeven when the board meets Tuesday.

According to the one-page letter obtained by the Post-DisJEFFERSON CITY • A Springpatch on Monday, the first-year field businesswoman says she governor withdrew Gelner’s late was booted off the state school July appointment to the board board by Gov. Eric Greitens Gelner on Friday because she would because she wouldn’t agree with his request to oust the state’s top not commit to removing the commissioner. schools official.

Gelner, who is involved with SpringIn a letter to her former colleagues on the Missouri State Board of Education, field-based programs that serve chilMelissa Gelner said an aide to the Re- dren, had been among four new publican governor asked that she vote to remove Education Commissioner Mar- See SCHOOLS • Page A3

BY KURT ERICKSON St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Timeline of the Stockley verdict • stltoday.com FULL COVERAGE PAGES A4-A7 • STLTODAY.COM

Economic toll from protests is felt now, will have aftershocks

BY LISA BROWN AND JACOB BARKER St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A weekend of protests following the not-guilty verdict in the murder trial of former police Officer Jason Stockley has delivered what some activists promised: disruption to the metropolitan area’s economy.

For people who counted on big concerts downtown or small-business owners who banked on a weekend of sales, the loss is fairly easy to quantify. A smaller paycheck. An unexpected repair bill. Fewer customers.

The longer-term effect on the region — one that was convulsed just three years ago by Ferguson protests — is unclear.

Does the unrest make the seemingly quixotic bid to land Amazon’s second headquarters seem ridiculous now? Will the Washington Avenue entertainment district, which has had to wrestle with the perception that crime is on the rise, face an even bigger challenge in the wake of the vandalism that took place Sunday night? Will out-of-town parents who send their kids See ECONOMY • Page A6

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2 M Vol. 139, No. 262 ©2017

VERDICT AFTERMATH

A4 • ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

M 2 • Tuesday • 09.19.2017

‘NOT ABOUT PEACE’

Nonviolent action should still disturb, organizer says

CHRIS LEE • clee@post-dispatch.com

Protesters on Monday chant “Free our people!” on the steps of the Justice Center in St. Louis. Several dozen people were arrested the previous night after multiple businesses had their windows broken downtown. The vandalism and arrests Sunday followed a mostly peaceful day of demonstrations.

STOCKLEY • FROM A1

protesters chanted slogans, beat drums and withstood a rainstorm that left many drenched. Images from the previous night’s protest that ended with dozens of people in jail were projected on a wall of the jail, with those gathered alleging that the show of force used by police had been unnecessary.

“Police are people, like us,” said Kristine Hendrix, who was among the protesters. “There’s good, there’s bad, there’s ugly.

And so they do things, and they’ve been given permission by our president, by our governor, by our mayor through her silence, to keep attacking protesters in this way.”

The peaceful event came to an end after a few hours with no signs that the violent clashes that erupted the three previous nights would be repeated.

Police said they made 123 arrests Sunday, most of them after protesters began marching on downtown streets.

Most of the arrests were for “failure to disperse.” Among those facing that charge is St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Mike Faulk, who was arrested as police swept into the intersection of Washington Avenue and Tucker Boulevard late Sunday.

That sweep came after some of

the protesters broke windows and toppled planters downtown.

“Many of the demonstrators were peaceful, however after dark, the agitators outnumbered the peaceful demonstrators and the unruly crowd became a mob,” police said in a statement. It said multiple businesses also sustained property damage and one officer suffered a “serious injury.”

A judge on Friday found former St. Louis patrolman Jason Stockley not guilty in the fatal shooting of drug suspect Anthony Lamar Smith.

On Monday about 100 people began the fourth day of protests by marching in silence on Market Street in downtown St. Louis.

Police officers began blocking Market at 14th and 17th streets shortly before 8 a.m. The protesters stopped briefly at 14th Street and held their hands in the air. The crowd moved to the steps of City Hall, where protesters broke their silence and shouted familiar chants.

After stopping there, the protesters took their chants to the front of the Municipal Courts building, before moving north on Tucker Boulevard.

Leading some demonstrators in chants was state Rep. Bruce Franks Jr., D-St. Louis, who has participated in protests since St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy

Wilson’s not-guilty ruling Friday in Stockley’s bench trial.

“It’s not about peace,” Franks said in an interview with reporters before the protest began.

“Peace is not an option, but we have to realize that there’s a difference between peaceful and nonviolence. Nonviolence is an option. The point of an action is to disturb. The point of an action is to make folks uncomfortable.”

Franks, who owns an insurance office on Cherokee Street, expressed sympathy for the businesses that sustained damage during protests.

“Of course, I wouldn’t want anybody damaging my property,” he said. “You’ve got to understand that the reason why we’re out here is for black lives. The reason we’re out here is because we’re dying, so when we stop dying, when we stop being affected disproportionately by the system, then we’ll take a break. But until then, we’ll be here.”

Fred Scott, 65, of St. Louis, a retired post office worker, was involved in 2014 protests in Ferguson and said he is protesting again for his four sons because it is his “civic duty.”

“I’m tired of the fact that there’s no justice,” Scott said.

“Evidence doesn’t make any difference.”

Scott said he doesn’t support

the violent protests that had erupted the past few evenings.

“They’re not on the same agenda we are,” he said.

The Monday morning protest dispersed shortly before 9.

At Kirkwood High School, some students staged a demonstration by walking into the football stadium Monday morning.

Also Monday morning, about 250 University City High School students, clergy, police and activists gathered for speeches and poems outside the school. Some students were selling T-shirts to support University City businesses and others affected during weekend protests.

Stockley was acquitted Friday of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the shooting 2011 death of Smith, 24, of St. Louis, following a police chase.

After Friday’s verdict, a daily pattern seemed to emerge in which protesters during the day engaged in organized, generally peaceful demonstrations that ended before nightfall, followed by late-night violence, vandalism and clashes with police by what appear to be different groups of people than the ones who gathered during the day.

On Friday night, the clashes were in the Central West End. On Saturday, they were in the

Delmar Loop business district in University City, and on Sunday, they were downtown.

Protesters were expected to target the Loop again on Monday night. A crowd of a few hundred gathered on a parking lot there, but then organizers called off that demonstration and told those gathered to regroup at the jail.

Michael McMillan, president and CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, said in an interview Monday that the Stockley verdict created “a lot of disgust” among African-Americans, and that he was worried the controversy would undo any progress the area had made since the 2014 unrest in Ferguson.

“This area does not need the negative attention that we have been getting both regionally and nationally,” he said, “and the city, the county and the state certainly can’t afford the cost” of paying for the police overtime.

He added: “By no means do we support tearing down the very people we’re trying to help, who are the ones who are losing pay and work hours by these businesses being shut down.”

Joe Holleman, Nassim Benchaabane, Ashley Jost, Kevin McDermott and Joel Currier, all of the Post-Dispatch, contributed to this report.

Protests are often marked by verbal confrontations LANGUAGE • FROM A1

Later, after St. Louis police made more than 100 arrests downtown on Sunday night, Acting Chief Lawrence O’Toole’s words seemed meme-ready: “Police owned tonight.”

Michael Brown’s death in 2014 sparked months of protests over the treatment of African-Americans in the criminal justice system. The language of many community conversations since then has reflected nuance and understanding, such as in the Ferguson Commission report.

In fact, a story in the St. Louis American the day before the notguilty verdict was announced in the Jason Stockley murder case, O’Toole urged people who might have been dreading another round of unrest not to forget that protesters were trying to “shine the light on the injustices they see and feel.”

But after three days of protests, and some vandalism and attacks on police officers, the language of the establishment has mirrored the angry language of the protest movement.

Blame the Twitterization of political discourse, which has infected the words people use in 2017, said Mitchell McKinney, professor of political communication at the University of Missouri, who researches political rhetoric and civic engagement.

Protests are frequently marked

LAURIE SKRIVAN • lskrivan@post-dispatch.com

Meldon Moffitt, of Ferguson, squares off with police in riot gear in the Delmar Loop on Saturday while protesting the not-guilty verdict of Jason Stockley, a former St. Louis police officer.

by taunting and insults toward police, even by those considered to be peacefully exercising their rights to free speech. A PostDispatch reporter captured a brief video of a man standing at the skirmish line on Delmar Boulevard on Saturday night, nose to police shield, shouting at an unseen officer: “You and me go one on one, man on man, if you got the guts, the nuts, the heart, the dignity.”

To some, such verbal confrontations are akin to violence. To others, they are a means of communicating despair and outrage about inequality.

Officials using similar words “does not seem like a tactic that is intended to keep the peace,” McKinney said.

“It seems like government officials realize they have this megaphone of social media, and for it to be useful, for it to catch on, to be spread widely, there is a certain language that should be used,” he said. One example is Greitens’ statement on Facebook, which “doesn’t sound like an official press release from the governor’s office.”

He added, “We now expect our leaders to be advocates of one side and denigrate the other side.

From the president on down, that’s what we see all too often.

Whether it’s a Facebook post or a 140-character tweet, it’s easier to make a pithy attack than to formulate a nuanced message that is intended to acknowledge multiple perspectives.”

A nuanced message “probably runs the risk of alienating your base. You know what they want to hear, and you don’t want to upset them.”

Police co-opting a Ferguson protest chant was an example of a group reclaiming words they felt oppressed them, said John Baugh, a linguist at Washington University in St. Louis.

He said the police use of the chant was “a way to reclaim their authority.”

“Clearly, their usage of that expression was out of exasperation and reflecting the fact that the options they had available to challenge what the protesters were doing was limited.”

Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, sent a letter Monday night to Mayor Lyda Krewson, calling the chant “provocative and unprofessional.”

“Residents of the St. Louis region ... have a legitimate right to question how their police department uses force against them,” the letter said. “Many people see the chanting of ‘Whose Streets?’ as an attempt to intimidate protesters and raise

tensions at the demonstration.”

Some officers also were upset by the chant.

Sgt. Heather Taylor, president of the Ethical Society of Police, an association of 252 city police officers, mostly African-Americans, said in a statement that the “chant goes against the very code of ethics we swore to abide by.

Whether we agree with demonstrators, protests or acts of violence, it is our job to do our job free of personal bias.”

She said the sentiment behind it was common in the department and reflected deep differences within.

Before the verdict, the ethical society released a statement calling for Stockley’s conviction. That day, another sergeant posted a news story about the society’s call to his Facebook page. The wife of Stockley’s supervisor chimed in with the comment: “Let the racist (expletive) BLEED OUT. Hell is waiting for her.”

The wife said in a brief interview that Taylor was “a racist person and the harsh words that are going back and forth are of her doing” because the ethical society did not back Stockley.

Taylor’s response: “If you can’t voice your opinion without a layer of anger or hate, we’ll never get anything done.”

Jeremy Kohler • 314-340-8337 @jeremykohler on Twitter jkohler@post-dispatch.com

OTHER VIEWS

09.22.2017 • Friday • M 1 100 YEARS AGO TODAY ON THE EDITORIAL PAGE

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH • A13

NO PROTECTION FOR WRONG-DOERS • Not only are efforts being made to check the grand jury which is investigating irregularities in Jefferson City,

but those efforts are persistent and pestiferous. If a newspaper correspondent who reported results of the grand jury inquiry is held in contempt of court, what is the offense of those who interfered with the jury’s work and conspired to obstruct its purpose? Access the full item at stltoday.com/opinion

THE STOCKLEY VERDICT AFTERMATH

Going from ‘them’ to ‘us’ starts with confronting our biases It falls to each of us to learn about the events that haunt our fellow citizens.

BY RISHA GRANT

My grandmother was a maid for a prominent white family in the small town where we lived. She would take me to work with her sometimes.

One day her boss’s grandkids were in town; she took me along to play with them.

I loved my grandma and saw how much pride she took in Grant her duties, and I decided that when I grew up, I wanted to be a maid like her.

The adults were talking while we played on the floor. My grandmother was working in the kitchen. One of the adults asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. I don’t remember the other kids’ responses, but I

announced, aloud in a room full of white people, that I wanted to be a maid like my grandma. The adults began clapping and I was smiling, thinking I had made a good choice and that my grandmother would be proud of me, until she flew out of the kitchen.

She got on her knees and grabbed me by both shoulders.

Her glare felt like it was burning a hole straight through to my soul.

“You will never be a maid!” she said. “Do you think I am doing this because I want to? I’m doing this because I have to. You will go to college.”

There was complete silence and awkwardness among the adults.

On our way home that day, my grandmother explained that she always wanted to be a nurse but there were only a few places in the U.S. that would allow it. She wanted a better life for my sister and me than she had created for herself. Of course, at such a young

age, I didn’t understand this. I just thought she would be proud of me because I wanted to be like her. Why couldn’t she be a nurse?

White people.

I never heard her say anything bad about white people but what she didn’t realize is that she inexplicably taught me that there is a them and an us. My young mind understood that there were different rules and that they made them up. Bias was introduced to me innocently and unconsciously, as a way to protect me. As I grew up and had my own negative experiences with some white people, it reinforced my bias but I had to put it in perspective.

We know that not all cops are bad, not all black people are criminals, not all white people are racist, not all gay men are feminine, not all lesbians are masculine and not all Muslims are terrorists. I could go on but the point is that when we stuff groups of people

into one box based on the actions of a few, it’s BS, or bias synapse.

You cannot allow your biases to go unchecked, because they turn into the phobias and -isms like racism, sexism, homophobia or xenophobia — which in turn look like hate groups, police brutality, marginalized communities or violent protests.

More importantly, depending upon your role in society, bias can lead to death. We need to get comfortable discussing the uncomfortable and have the conversations that will make a difference personally and professionally.

History is full of pain and inequality. It falls to each of us to learn about the events that haunt our fellow citizens — the Holocaust for Jews, slavery for African-Americans, land theft for Native Americans, internment for Japanese Americans, and more. Real injustices have

laid the foundation for racism and suspicion. Yet, there is a gray area between recognizing difference and respecting everyone equally.

I’ve seen how the simple concept of respecting each other sometimes gets lost in the details of all this history. In missing the forest for the trees, people become jaded or feel blame and turn off to embracing the humanity in each other because competing narratives dredge up painful feelings on all sides. It is validated pain, but it is still pain that keeps us living in an us-versus-them world. This pain keeps us from acceptance and openness. We need to learn to identify, own and confront our biases because there is no them. It is only us. All of us.

Risha Grant runs Diversity & Inclusion communications and consulting firm and is author of “That’s BS! How Bias Synapse Disrupts Inclusive Cultures.” Contact her at risha@rishagrant.com.

Two takeaways from the Stockley verdict Hard work required to ensure justice

BY RAY SHERROCK

CHRIS LEE • clee@post-dispatch.com

St. Louis Police Officer Benjamin Bayless talks with Jay Weaver of north St. Louis at a block party organized by the St. Louis Downtown Neighborhood Association in the 900 block of Olive Street on Monday.

The force of law — and ethics — rather than the law of force St. Louis can learn from other cities in transforming the culture of the police department.

BY TOBIAS WINRIGHT

As a former correctional officer, reserve police officer and police academy ethics instructor, I can sympathize with how difficult the job can be for law enforcement officers, but I expect policing to be just rather than just policing that is business as usual or status quo.

Interim police chief Larry O’Toole’s remarks, however, worry me that the latter remains the case: “We’re in control. This is our city, and we’re going to protect it.” Here he emphasizes only one part of the familiar police motto to “serve and protect.” Moreover, he seems to hold a limited view with regard to the possessive pronoun “our.”

Same goes for those officers who allegedly chanted, “Whose streets?

Our streets!”

Such words are evidence of what is known as the “military” model of policing, which focuses on the use of force and “fighting crime” as the essence of the job. It’s about the law of force — might makes right — rather than the force of law.

It also fosters an “us versus them” mentality and correlates with excessive force and brutality.

As Tony Rothert, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, noted about the “kettling” tactic that was employed on Sunday night, “It’s really a military tactic for controlling crowds.” That’s just one example.

In recent decades, especially with the “war” on drugs during the 1980s, police departments have obtained and used armored vehicles, along with other military-grade equipment and weapons, much of it from the federal government. After Ferguson, the Obama administration placed some restrictions on this, but the

Trump administration is again promoting it.

And racism exacerbates this problem. St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson wrote, “The court observes, based on its nearly 30 years on the bench, that an urban heroin dealer not in possession of a firearm would be an anomaly,” but it is just as much an anomaly for a police officer to be convicted for murdering an African-American man in St. Louis or anywhere else in the country.

This is not how policing has always been. When Sir Robert Peel (after whom the “bobbies” are named) established the London Metropolitan Police in 1829, he intentionally distinguished them from the military. The new police would wear blue rather than red coats. They were unarmed. Proactive rather than reactive, fellow citizens and partners rather than an occupying force, they were what we used to call them: peace officers.

Prominent police ethicist John Kleinig refers to this as the “social peacekeeper” model of policing, and community policing at its best exemplifies it. The use of force may still be necessary, but it is not central. Instead it will be strictly proportionate and limited.

After all, the “our” that the interim chief and the officers invoked should mean all of us. Not, as Mayor Lyda Krewson seemed to imply when she distinguished “demonstrators” and “agitators” from “citizens” and “residents.”

Nor are they “criminals” as the interim chief called them prior to their being proven guilty at trial.

They are all citizens, and even if they are not citizens of the city of St. Louis, they are citizens of the United States.

As St. Louis searches for a new

police chief and as we prepare to vote for a half-cent sales tax increase for public safety in November, we have an opportunity to transform the culture of our police department. We should learn from other cities that are changing their ethos of policing, such as Camden, N.J., where more police are walking neighborhood patrols, knocking on doors, introducing themselves and partnering with fellow citizens. Not coincidentally, the number of homicides there has dropped dramatically.

We should also study what police in other lands, such as Northern Ireland and Scotland, are doing. At the end of 2014, a number of American police visited Scotland and were impressed by lessons learned from the police there in avoiding deadly force when dealing with armed suspects.

Moreover, like Northern Ireland, where there are now as many Catholic as Protestant police officers, so too should the composition of the St. Louis Police Department reflect the city’s racial demographics. In a city where nearly half of its population is black, why isn’t its police department reflective of that?

The police are meant to serve and protect everyone. More attention needs to be given to that word, serve. And more medals should be given to them when they find a lost child, stop someone from committing suicide, do CPR to save a victim in a car wreck, or simply help someone learn how to tie a necktie. That, after all, is most of what they actually do, rather than “fighting” crime.

Tobias Winright is an associate professor of health care ethics at St. Louis University and is writing a book on just and unjust policing. Contact him at tobias.winright@slu.edu.

After reading the Jason Stockley decision for the third time, I’m stuck in the dissonance between what I perceive to be the limitations within our law and the expansive view I and many others have of justice.

What if Judge Timothy Wilson’s decision is appropriate, as he states over and over, within the legal code in which his logic is built?

I may not agree, but, ultimately, we live in a nation of laws, imperfect as they are.

But, what of justice? Consider that we, rightfully perhaps, expect our law enforcement officers to act in a way that always values an individual and his or her rights and life — even after this individual flees, ramming your car, and initiating a dangerous high-speed chase. I don’t rise in defense of Jason Stockley, but I do wonder.

If these police officers had done everything perfectly — had they managed to stop, and safely arrest Anthony Lamar Smith — we never would have heard of them or celebrated their restraint and persistence.

But, what of our best selves and our highest hopes for justice?

Smith’s death matters to his family and friends, and should matter to us. I know he matters to many of the young men I teach. One of the sweetest students I know told me that he had found his “inner angry black man.” Heartbreaking. I can’t speak to him about the limitations of law. He needs to hear: “You are valuable. You should feel safe. You should have a life.”

Throwing bricks and screaming at police officers neither improve the law nor make my student feel any safer.

To wade into the troubled waters that lie between the limitations of law and an expansive vision of justice calls us to long and hard work. How can we improve police training? How can they be better supported while being held more closely accountable? How can we help, where must we invest, to help all young people come to value their lives so as to never place themselves in danger? What are we doing well already? What must change?

Where to begin? I suggest Psalm 85:10: “Loving kindness and truth have met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Take this to the streets, the courts, the schools and the home.

Ray Sherrock is a teacher at De Smet Jesuit High School in Creve Coeur.

Decision indicates cultural, institutional prejudice

BY EDWARD G. TAYLOR

There are a number of points Judge Timothy Wilson presents to show why he ruled Jason Stockley not guilty of murder or armed criminal action. Reading the decision, I wonder why the state did not do a better job presenting a case; some aspects seemed a bit sloppy.

The prosecution argues that the fifth shot, delivered after a pause, was the kill shot and was indicated by a puff of smoke. However, witnesses do not testify there was any lapse in time after the first four shots, and an autopsy showed the fifth shot was not a kill shot.

The puff of smoke was likely exhalations in the cold air; no evidence was given that Stockley’s weapon made smoke upon firing.

The state’s argument about a planted weapon seems weak: No video shows Stockley having any place to conceal a weapon, and the argument that Smith’s DNA was not on the weapon was debunked by more than one expert stating that an absence of DNA does not mean a weapon was not touched by someone.

Finally, the argument that it was self-defense, not premeditated, seems to be supported by the 15-second lapse from the time Stockley got to Smith’s door and Stockley’s shooting Smith — and Smith’s wounds in his left flank and abdomen (which would have been near the driver’s door) could be explained by Smith reaching over to the passenger side. The defense argues that Smith was reaching for a weapon.

But there are other items in the decision that are worrisome.

Stockley’s “we’re killing this (expletive)” is dismissed by the judge as “people say all kinds of things in the heat of the moment.” Isn’t that when we reveal our true selves?

Stockley admits carrying an AK-47 in “violation of department policy,” which suggests something about his attitude.

Wilson states that since Stockley did not know Smith prior to this encounter and that previous court rulings state that “deliberation” is defined as “cool reflection,” there was no premeditation or intent. Although legally correct, the arguments seem to suggest that it would be very difficult to prove murder since officers would often not know the victim and presumably all of these instances would be under stress, not cool reflection.

Wilson also points out that the case must leave “the finder of fact ‘firmly convinced of the defendant’s guilt.’” Here is another problem: the prejudice of the “finder of fact” who wrote, “Finally, the court observes, based on its nearly 30 years on the bench, that an urban heroin dealer not in possession of a firearm would be an anomaly.” No proof of a weapon, but the judge presumes Smith had one.

How many times have we seen self -defense used to excuse killing a black man? Or killing a black adolescent, or a child? One armed with a wallet, a cigarette, a toy gun, nothing? If self-defense can be based on fear of a black male — and some African-Americans have stated having a fear of an unknown black man — can police officers be convicted for shooting a black male?

The decision is technically correct, but it shows we have both a cultural and an institutional prejudice. We need to recognize the prejudice and call it racism. We need to not just say, but prove, that black lives matter.

Edward G. Taylor is a teacher at Oakville High School.

S E RV I N G T H E P U B L I C S I N C E 1 878 • W I N N E R O F 1 8 P U L I TZ E R P R I Z E S

SATURDAY • 09.23.2017 • $1.50

CITY RESOLUTION ANGERS POLICE

GOP’s health bill all but dead

Aldermen issue remembrance of Anthony Lamar Smith as mayor pledges to support strengthening the Civilian Oversight Board

BY CELESTE BOTT St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ST. LOUIS • As the city continued to grapple with protests over the acquittal of former police officer Jason Stockley, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen on Friday unanimously approved a resolution remembering the man he fatally shot in 2011.

Also Friday, Mayor Lyda Krewson pledged to support strengthening the city’s Civilian Oversight Board, which investigates complaints against police.

Both the resolution in remembrance of Anthony Lamar Smith and the mayor’s statement sparked outrage from St. Louis police officers, who contend city leaders are bowing to political pressure from the

CELESTE BOTT • cbott@post-dispatch.com

St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson hugs Annie Smith, the mother of Anthony Lamar Smith, after the Board of Aldermen passed a resolution Friday regarding her son.

McCain again deals the blow

ongoing unrest. “(Smith’s) death has sparked a universal cry for justice and accountability throughout the City of St. Louis,” reads the resolution, which bears the names of all 28 aldermen. It mentions Smith’s interests in sports and the arts, as well as his dream of becoming a professional clothing designer.

After the resolution was read and approved, Board of Alderman President Lewis Reed and Krewson hugged Smith’s mother, Annie Smith.

Alderman John Collins-Muhammad, who introduced the resolution, said the board acted in part to help ease Annie

McCain

BY ERICA WERNER AND ALAN FRAM Associated Press

WASHINGTON • Sen. John McCain declared his opposition Friday to the GOP’s last-ditch effort to repeal and replace “Obamacare,” dealing a likely death blow to the legislation and, perhaps, to the Republican Party’s years of vows to kill the program. It was the second time in three months the 81-year-old McCain emerged as the destroyer of his party’s signature promise to voters.

“I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried,” McCain said of the bill, cowritten by Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, his best friend in the Senate, and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

“Nor could I support it without knowing how much it will cost, how it will affect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it.”

McCain, who is battling brain cancer in the twilight of his notable career, said he could not “in good conscience” vote for the legislation.

See SMITH • Page A6

See HEALTH • Page A4

Obama-era guidelines on campus assault are replaced DAVID CARSON • dcarson@post-dispatch.com

Protesters march Friday along Main Street in St. Charles. The St. Louis area has seen daily protests since former police Officer Jason Stockley was declared not guilty in the 2011 shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith. Story on Page A6

BY MARIA DANILOVA Associated Press

describe allegations of abusive police.

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.

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

The 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.

Commanders the next day told the of-

WASHINGTON • President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday scrapped Barack Obama-era guidance on investigating campus sexual assault, replacing it with new instructions that allow universities to require higher standards of evidence when handling complaints.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has said that the former president’s policy had been unfairly skewed against those accused of assault and had “weaponized” the Education Department to “work against schools and against students.”

The change is the latest in Trump’s broader effort to roll back Obama policies. Women’s rights groups and elected officials, including Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., slammed Friday’s decision, saying it will discourage students from reporting assault.

“Secretary DeVos has taken the progress we’ve made protecting survivors and making our campuses safer, and thrown that progress into

See ARRESTS • Page A7

See ASSAULT • Page A4

ACCOUNTS FROM ARRESTS

BY JEREMY KOHLER, CHRISTINE BYERS AND ERIN HEFFERNAN St. Louis Post-Dispatch

One was an Air Force lieutenant who came out of his downtown apartment to witness the commotion in his neighborhood.

Another was a Chicago-based photojournalist for Getty Images assigned to cover the latest bout of unrest in St. Louis.

And still another was a St. Louis police officer working undercover at the protest.

They were among more than 120 people forcibly arrested downtown on Sunday by St. Louis police cracking down on protests. The arrests came at least two hours after vandals had broken some windows and flower pots a few blocks away.

The police were congratulated by their acting police chief, who said they “owned tonight,” and got praise from Gov. Eric

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Greitens for their tactics. But as more details emerged about heavy-handed police tactics, criticism mounted. A lawyer for the Post-Dispatch condemned the “inappropriate and disturbing” arrest of one of its journalists. A lawsuit on Friday alleged that the police violated people’s civil rights. And two top city officials on different days used the word “disturbing” to

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LOCAL

09.23.2017 • Saturday • M 1

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH • A7

‘WAY OVERBOARD’

ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Residents and business employees on Washington Avenue talk with a St. Louis police officer clearing the area on Sunday. More than 120 people were arrested.

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.”

— Jeremy Kohler

MARVIN MALONE Marvin Malone, 27, was in the crowd to document the protests as a freelance photographer. He was at the corner of Olive Street and Ninth Street on Sunday night when he decided he wanted to go home. He and his girlfriend walked to Tucker Boulevard to cross, but a police officer stopped them. She directed Malone and his girlfriend, who was also taking photographs of the demonstration, to walk to Tucker and Washington Avenue. They were under the impression they’d been directed to that intersection because it was a clear avenue to exit.

“That’s when police started kettling,” Malone said. “As they told people to disperse, they wouldn’t let people leave. We were there for about 30 minutes, and then the police gave the final warning to disperse, but wouldn’t let people leave. That’s when the police started rushing and macing.”

First, the police arrested Malone’s girlfriend, he said, at which point he “told them to go to hell and arrest me, as well.” The police used zip ties to handcuff those in the kettle crowd.

“They put them on extremely tight, and I don’t have the best blood circulation because of thirddegree burn scars, so my hands were completely numb.” Malone and his girlfriend spent the next day in jail, with no way to contact family, friends or employers, he said.

— Janelle O’Dea

MARK GULLET JR. Mark Gullet Jr., 24, was at the demonstration as a freelance videographer. His wife is in the same business, and the two want to do a film on St. Louis crime. They set out on Sunday to get b-roll, or background footage, of the demonstrations for the new film.

Gullet got downtown around 11 p.m., “after all the vandalism had happened.” He arrived on Washington Avenue, where he saw groups of people and police standing around.

“I was not a part of any vandalism. I was on the sidelines with other media. Out of nowhere, we hear marching and batons hitting shields,” Gullet said.

Gullet and the people standing around him were boxed in, “with nowhere to go,” and minutes later the police were given the order to make arrests.

Gullet obeyed when he was ordered to the ground, he said, but was still coated in pepper spray. He shut his eyes but felt the sting of the spray in his mouth and on his skin. The effects lasted for hours after the arrests, Gullet said, and made for an especially uncomfortable environment once he was packed into a holding cell with roughly three dozen others.

“It was nothing but coughing and sneezing, because of the pepper spray,” he said.

—Janelle O’Dea

ARRESTS • FROM A1

ficers they had arrested one of their own.

Police arrested another officer on Sunday – an Air Force lieutenant who lives with his wife in an apartment on Washington Avenue.

Lt. Alex Nelson, 27, who works in cyberoperations at Scott Air Force Base, was walking around his neighborhood with his wife when they became trapped between quickly closing police lines. He said he was kicked in the face, blinded by pepper spray and dragged away.

“It’s our street,” he said. “I hear the police say it was their street, but it’s literally my street.

I have coffee on that street, and I own property on that street. We were not active protesters. We were looking into the neighborhood to observe events that were unfolding.

“I’m very sad how they treated me and my wife through the escalation of violence they used on me. It was incredibly unnecessary. I’ve had training on how to arrest and be arrested, and I capitulated to every demand that was made of me, even before I was on the ground. We were told to move back, and we moved back. We were told to move this way, we moved this way. We obeyed every command that we heard. We were never given an order to disperse. Not once.”

He said while waiting to be loaded into a police vehicle, he said he was an officer in the military. He said the police officer replied, “Shut up. Stop. I don’t care.”

CAUGHT IN THE SWEEP 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 then sprayed him in 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.

Blythe Bernhard and Janelle O’Dea of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this article.

Jeremy Kohler • 314-340-8337 @jeremykohler on Twitter jkohler@post-dispatch.com

MORGAN LATHAM Morgan Latham, 19, has bruises she said are from a police officer pulling her under her arms and getting shot with pepper pellets before she was arrested.

“Honestly, it felt like a drive-by shooting,” said Latham, a student at St. Louis Community College in Florissant.

Latham said she heard police using racial slurs.

“I don’t think it was them being racist, I think it was them wanting people to know they didn’t have any power,” she said.

—Blythe Bernhard

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.

—Janelle O’Dea

MARIO ORTEGA 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 tootight 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

S E RV I N G T H E P U B L I C S I N C E 1 878 • W I N N E R O F 1 8 P U L I TZ E R P R I Z E S

THURSDAY • 11.16.2017 • $1.50

JUDGE LIMITS CITY POLICE TACTICS USED IN PROTESTS

Police can’t declare an unlawful assembly unless protesters are acting together and threatening or using force or violence Police can’t declare an unlawful assembly in order to punish people for exercising their constitutional rights Police can’t use or threaten to use chemical agents against peaceful protesters in order to punish them for exercising constitutional rights Police can’t order peaceful protesters to disperse or use chemical agents without giving them clear guidelines and warnings so they can leave the area

BY ROBERT PATRICK St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ST. LOUIS • A federal judge issued on

Wednesday wide-ranging restrictions on the ability of St. Louis police to declare protests “unlawful” and use chemical agents against protesters.

U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry’s order says that police can’t declare an “unlawful assembly” and enforce it against those “engaged in expressive activity, unless the persons are acting in concert to pose an imminent threat to use force or violence or to violate a criminal law with force or violence.”

Police also can’t use that unlawful

See POLICE • Page A4

MASSIVE FIRE CONSUMES ST. LOUIS WAREHOUSE

2

3

4 PHOTOS BY J.B. FORBES • jforbes@post-dispatch.com

1 • Firefighters battle a five-alarm warehouse fire Wednesday in the 3900 block of Park Avenue in St. Louis.

1

2 • An outside wall of Park Warehouse Service collapses.

3 • A firetruck was destroyed when an outside wall fell and crushed the cab during the fire. Firefighters continued to use the ladder to spray water.

4 • Several firefighters were forced out of the building when a shot of heat and smoke blew out of an opening. The firefighters were shooting water into the building from a loading dock at the time. St. Louis Fire Capt. Garon Mosby said one firefighter was treated for smoke inhalation.

Hazardous material stored in building prompts concern

DAVID CARSON • dcarson@post-dispatch.com

BY DENISE HOLLINSHED St. Louis Post-Dispatch

St. Louis firefighters remained late Wednesday at the scene of a huge, five-alarm fire in a warehouse that created a plume of thick black smoke that could be seen for miles from the Botanical Heights neighborhood and sparked fear that hazardous materials might

U.S. scientists use gene editing to fight disease

BY MARILYNN MARCHIONE Associated Press

OAKLAND, CALIF. • Scientists for the first time have

Granderson

have been released.

A firetruck was smashed when a wall of the building collapsed about 11:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Smoke continued to pour from the warehouse at 11 p.m. The fire started small in the basement of the warehouse near 39th Street and Park Avenue about See FIRE • Page A4

3 indicted in fatal carjacking of De Smet football coach

tried editing a gene inside the body in a bold attempt to permanently change a person’s DNA to cure a disease.

The experiment was done Monday in California on Brian Madeux, 44. Through an IV, he received billions of copies of a corrective gene and a genetic tool to cut his DNA in a precise spot.

“It’s kind of humbling” to be the first to test this, said Madeux, who has a metabolic disease called Hunter syndrome. “I’m willing to take that risk. Hopefully it will help me and other people.”

Signs of whether it’s working may come in a month; tests will show for sure in three months.

If it’s successful, it could give a major boost to the

BY ROBERT PATRICK St. Louis Post-Dispatch

See GENE • Page A9

See COACH • Page A9

ST. LOUIS • Three St. Louis residents were indicted on

federal charges Wednesday and accused of at least five carjackings since August, including one that ended in the fatal shooting of De Smet Jesuit High School assistant football coach Jaz Granderson last month.

Granderson, 27, was found fatally shot Oct. 16 in the 5100 block of Minnesota Avenue.

A 10-count indictment accuses Floyd Barber, 22, Jherrica Dixon, 24, and Kurt Wallace, 24, of acting together in the carjacking of Granderson’s 2017 Jeep

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LOCAL

M 2 • Thursday • 11.16.2017

Hospitals give out face masks

‘Did you know our warehouse is burning down?’

BY ASHLEY JOST St. Louis Post-Dispatch

CHRIS LEE • clee@post-dispatch.com

Dark plumes of smoke could be seen for miles from the warehouse fire that burned in the Botanical Heights neighborhood Wednesday.

DAVID CARSON • dcarson@post-dispatch.com

People stand on trash bins to watch firefighters battle a warehouse fire Wednesday in the 3900 block of Park Avenue. A section of the building collapsed about 11:30 a.m. after firefighters were ordered to get out.

FIRE • FROM A1

10:15. a.m. But it proved difficult for firefighters to find and contain in the smoky interior of the business, Park Warehouse Service at 3937 Park. The area is west of Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center.

Eventually, firefighters were ordered out of the building by radio call and loud horn blast.

About 11:30 a.m., a section of the south part of the building collapsed. There was a whooshing sound, and black smoke billowed out of the building’s doors and windows. Fire burst through the roof, and a wall on the south side of the building collapsed onto a firetruck.

Bricks and other debris littered the street around the firetruck, and aerial images showed the roof of the truck’s cab caved in, but no one was injured in the collapse.

The pillar of black smoke was so thick it blocked out the sun.

“Very intense fire, burning for a long time,” said St. Louis Fire Capt. Garon Mosby. “Any structure is going to be weakened. Collapse was more or less imminent, and it happened sooner rather than later.”

Mosby said one firefighter had suffered smoke inhalation and was treated and released from a hospital. About a dozen workers were inside when the fire started, but they all escaped. One worker was taken to a hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation.

Mosby said Cardinal Glennon and St. Louis University hospital officials were notified of the smoke headed their way and advised to shut down their heating and air conditioning systems so that they would not pull the smoke inward.

Mosby said there were hazardous materials in the building, such as Styrofoam products, and that officials planned to talk to the operators of the businesses at the warehouse to find out what other materials were stored there.

He said he knew of no nearby evacuations.

Late Wednesday, the department tweeted a warning to neighbors about the possibility of inhaling dangerous chemicals from the fire. “If your home is in the path of the smoke plume, keep your windows closed and discontinue the usage of your HVAC system to reduce the amount of smoke drawn into

J.B. FORBES • jforbes@post-dispatch.com

A firefighter runs away after an explosion sent a rush of heat and smoke out of Park Warehouse Service in St. Louis. The fire started in the basement of the building, which dates to the 1920s.

your home,” it said.

The fire started on the south end of the building, which extends a block. It was still burning and spreading as of 2:45 p.m., when Mosby said fire crews had learned about more than 150,000 citronella candles stored inside of the building. The fire had not yet gotten to the candles. Citronella is an essential oil primarily used as an insect repellent.

“That’s just fuel,” Mosby said when asked why they were concerned about the candles.

The smoke was visible from long distances, and a haze settled in the area of the hospital. SSM Health was giving out face masks at the nearby hospitals “out of an abundance of caution.”

SMOKE, THEN EVACUATION Mosby said the building dated to the 1920s. Part of the building has sprinkler systems, but the basement area where the fire was spreading may not. He described the basement as maze-like.

Cara Papavramides said she worked in the building and was inside Wednesday morning when she noticed a burning, electrical smell. The lights started flickering, and smoke began coming out

of electrical outlets. She said she started screaming for people to get out.

“It got bad within 10 seconds,” Papavramides said. “It was scary, but I’m glad everybody’s safe.”

Bob Grana, a part owner of the building, also works there at a freight logistics company. He said he was on the phone when he heard women screaming. He discovered smoke when he opened his office door and left the building.

One of those companies, Reedy Press, is a small publisher that specializes in local interest and commemorative projects. Hundreds of copies of books by area authors went up in the plume of smoke seen across the city.

As the fire continued about 1 p.m., Patrick Davis stood watching the building. He had arrived early for a 1:30 p.m. job interview to find his potential workplace ablaze. Davis, 42, of St. Louis, said he was to interview for a job as a forklift operator.

“I hope they haven’t lost the facility, with all that smoke billowing in the air,” he said.

Erin Heffernan, Ashley Jost and David Carson of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

Author Cameron Collins called it “a dark day.”

Collins was leaving a presentation on his book “Lost Treasures of St. Louis” Wednesday when he sent a text message to his publisher letting him know how well the event had gone.

His publisher responded, “Did you know our warehouse is burning down?”

Collins said.

Reedy Press, a small publishing company, is among the companies that leased space at Park Warehouse Service at 3937 Park Avenue, which caught on fire about 10:15 Wednesday morning and continued to burn through the afternoon.

Owner Josh Stevens said his company had “hundreds of titles and many thousands of units” in the space, which it used as storage for inventory.

Book sales support the salaries of Reedy’s employees and the authors, Stevens said.

In addition to the books, Stevens said packing machines and other equipment were also a loss.

“We’re trying to figure out how to put it all back together,” the owner said, calling the day “surreal.”

He estimated the leased space was about 9,000 square feet.

The publishing company moved to the warehouse just over two years ago to meet its needs while business boomed. Previously they stored the inventory in a building the near Civil Life Brewing Co. in Tower Grove South.

“We were having our best year ever,” Stevens said. “We know this will steal our momentum.”

Collins estimates there were about 500 copies in the warehouse of his book after a recent second print run.

“I have maybe 40 copies in my car and about two orders for 50 (books) each and I don’t know how I’m going to fill that now,” Collins said.

He said that with the holidays coming, sales had been high.

That’s the case for several authors. Reedy, which started in 2003, publishes a range of books with a specialty in local interest and commemorative projects.

Collins said he and other local authors were already talking about ways they can band together and help out Stevens and the rest of the Reedy crew, who are like family, he said.

Ashley Jost • 314-340-8169 @ajost on Twitter ajost@post-dispatch.com

Federal judge restricts St. Louis police conduct during protests POLICE • FROM A1

assembly order or threaten the use of chemical agents to punish protesters for exercising their rights, she wrote.

Perry barred the use of pepper spray, mace and other chemical agents against “expressive, nonviolent activity” without probable cause to make an arrest and without providing “clear and unambiguous warnings” and an opportunity to heed those warnings.

Police cannot give dispersal orders without giving people specifics about what area they must leave, what chemical will be used, time enough to leave and allowing a way to leave that area, she wrote.

She also immediately ordered both sides to mediation, something Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU of Missouri, called unusual at this stage in a case.

Rothert said that the ACLU was open to working something out with city officials.

Asked for comment about the ruling, a mayoral spokesman said in an email that the city would “comply with the order.”

Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, asked Eastern District of Missouri U.S. Attorney Jeffery Jenson on Wednesday to launch a federal investigation into what Clay called “alleged unconstitutional practices by St. Louis area local law enforcement agencies in response to protests” after

Stockley’s acquittal.

Clay called St. Louis “the poster child for the need of federal intervention to address decades of bad police relations that reinforce the decline and erode the trust of police-community relations.”

In a 49-page memorandum accompanying the order, Perry said that based on the evidence presented so far, the ACLU was likely to succeed in its underlying lawsuit over police practices. She faulted police use of mace against nonviolent protesters and those recording police activity, and said police had improperly declared an “unlawful assembly” on some occasions and then gave protesters and others unreasonable and vague dispersal orders.

She said a controversial police “kettle” on Sept. 17 at the intersection of Washington Avenue and Tucker Boulevard “cannot meet constitutional standards.”

It was conducted without evidence of “force or violence to officers or property in this mixed commercial and residential area.”

The scene was “calm,” she wrote based on witnesses and videos, with no reported violence for hours before the kettle. Some protesters were “voicing their displeasure with police,” but others in the intersection were bystanders.

She said some of the ACLU’s witnesses “reasonably believed” that any dispersal order didn’t apply to them because of its

vagueness.

At hearings last month, witnesses including an Air Force officer, his wife, and others said they were not protesting but were caught up by police on Sept.

17, pepper-sprayed and arrested.

Post-Dispatch reporter Mike Faulk was also arrested, but two other reporters were able to escape advancing police lines by entering nearby buildings.

Rothert said that kettles carried “too high a chance for error” and that under Perry’s order, “what happened on Sept. 17 would not be allowed to happen again.”

Tony Rice, who was arrested in the kettle and testified during the hearings, said he was “delighted and elated” when he heard about Perry’s order. He said “the one thing I was really happy about” was that “Judge Perry did believe the bystanders and the known protesters,” as well as the video evidence.

In a statement, Rothert called the judge’s decision “a win for the people of St. Louis and for the First Amendment.”

“By requiring police to adopt these common-sense solutions, we can protect rights of the people to express their concerns about the troubling racial disparities in policing,” the statement said.

In a telephone interview, Rothert said that Perry’s order was more narrow than what the ACLU sought, but “appropriately

so.” Rothert said she restricted it to those engaged in “expressive activity,” but he believed it would also cover reporters and those simply watching the protests but not engaged in them.

That suit was filed by the ACLU after complaints over police behavior during protests that followed the acquittal in September of former St. Louis police Officer Jason Stockley for the fatal shooting of Anthony Lamar Smith in 2011.

Protesters say police beat and pepper-sprayed them without warning and without provocation.

In hearings last month, police and officials denied any pattern of police misbehavior and said they needed to be able to clear streets and send protesters home in situations such as that on Sept. 15, when some protesters damaged St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson’s house. They also said that Stockley protests were treated no differently than any others.

In court filings and the hearings, the ACLU claimed any police officer could declare an “unlawful assembly” when they spotted someone violating any law, even if protesters were nonviolent and simply “congregating on sidewalks or streets closed by police for protest activity.”

Police officials testified that an incident commander would typically make that decision, but acknowledged that it was within

individual officers’ discretion.

That police practice gives no notice to citizens of “what conduct is unlawful, and it permits officers to arbitrarily declare ‘there’s no more assembling,’” which “impermissibly” curtails citizens’ First Amendment and free speech rights, Perry wrote.

She said dispersal orders given by police were vague and given without adequate warnings.

They failed to tell protesters and others the area they had to leave, where they were allowed to go and how long they had to stay away, she wrote.

Perry wrote that the ACLU was also likely to prevail on its claim that police unconstitutionally use chemical agents “without warning on citizens engaged in expressive activity that is critical of police or who are recording police.”

Although police testified that a previous lawsuit settlement and their special orders governing the use of chemicals don’t apply to hand-held mace, Perry did not agree.

She said witness testimony and videos shown during the hearings “shows that officers have exercised their discretion in an arbitrary and retaliatory fashion to punish protesters for voicing criticism of police or recording police conduct.”

Robert Patrick • 314-621-5154 @rxpatrick on Twitter RPatrick@post-dispatch.com

A L E E E N T E R P R I S E S N E W S PA P E R • F O U N D E D BY J O S E P H P U L I T Z E R D E C . 1 2 , 1 8 7 8

Thursday • 11.16.2017 • A14 RAY FARRIS PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER •

GILBERT BAILON EDITOR •

TOD ROBBERSON EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

Law enforcement smackdown Police receive a court’s stiff rebuke for overreach during protests.

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.S. District Judge Catherine Perry issued an overdue, comprehensive list of parameters Wednesday restricting future St. Louis Police Department tactics when confronting protesters. The ruling makes clear that police overstepped their boundaries in multiple ways during protests following the Sept. 15 Jason Stockley verdict.

Police repeatedly violated the constitutional rights of protesters and bystanders and used chemical agents not for crowd control but as a form of impromptu punishment, Perry said. This is a serious wake-up call for the city to clarify procedures and get rid of officers who confuse their badge as a license to do as they please.

Mayor Lyda Krewson and retired Judge Jimmie Edwards, the newly appointed head of the Public Safety Department, now have a mandate to institute commandlevel changes within the department.

These abuses occurred under Interim Chief Lawrence O’Toole’s watch, though he is mentioned nowhere in Perry’s 49-page memorandum. For someone who infamously claimed that “police owned the night” early in the protests, he clearly did not own control of his forces.

Perry’s review of testimony and video evidence makes clear that protesters’ First Amendment rights were violated and that bystanders were subjected to retaliatory punishment simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

One name that comes up repeatedly in Perry’s narrative is Sgt. Brian Rossomanno. Rossomanno was identified in testimony as the ever-present authority who was quick to declare protests as

unlawful gatherings, whether they were in the Central West End, outside Krewson’s house or downtown.

Rossomanno’s declarations consistently were followed by officers charging at protesters and using pepper spray — not to subdue resisters but to punish whomever they deemed worthy of punishment.

One target was 15th Ward Alderman Megan Green, who was pepper sprayed for no apparent reason after a Sept. 15 protest outside Krewson’s house. At that moment, Perry wrote, Green “was not engaged in any criminal activity and was complying with the dispersal order.”

Rossomanno’s name also came up in descriptions of abuse against restaurant owner Chris Sommers in the Central West End and against William Patrick Mobley downtown. In both cases, they were merely video recording police-protester confrontations. In Mobley’s case, officers seized his phone and, without permission, deleted his recording without legal justification.

Police also arrested and pepper sprayed a credentialed Post-Dispatch reporter whose only “crime” was to be doing his job.

More cynical observers might conclude that police were doing their best to punish anyone caught documenting their unconstitutional and abusive actions, lest officers have to answer for it later in court.

Perry now says in no uncertain terms those actions must cease.

This is a rebuke of the first order against police overreach. For officers sworn to uphold the law, it’s now time for them to get right with the law.

YOUR VIEWS • LETTERS FROM OUR READERS More important stories for front page than dead deer Regarding “Deer testing seeks clues to neurological disease” (Nov. 13): Has the Post-Dispatch really sunk to the level of a local grocery store paper?

Both above and below the fold on the front page, in glorious color, we lucky readers were greeted with a photo of a dead deer, head hanging upside-down over a pickup bed getting its throat slashed.

Other than the shock value perhaps appealing to a teenage boy (“Yeah! Gross!”) is this really a story deserving almost half of the front page? Chronic wasting disease has been found in the grand total of just more than 40 deer, according to the article. Also in the article, there is no science showing any risk to humans.

Is there other, more pressing news for a Monday morning? Let’s see: A U.S. Senate candidate is accused of sexually abusing a minor, and calls are growing from his own party for him to withdraw; the president is cozying up to a murderous dictator in the Philippines; a major earthquake on the Iran-Iraq border has killed hundreds of people; and the president says he believes Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who says he didn’t meddle in our election process.

But, the gross picture of the poor deer getting its throat slashed and accompanying story is bigger news to the PostDispatch these days. The other stories are buried in between ads.

Another of our finest institutions and a proud marker of St. Louis, down the drain.

John Wallach • Richmond Heights

ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Wanda Brandon cries out as St. Louis Police Sgt. Brian Rossomanno moves people out of the way as a meeting of a proposed civilian oversight review board got out of control at City Hall on Jan. 28, 2015.

The Sessions dilemma Attorney general must search his memory and remember the oath he took.

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ttorney General Jeff Sessions is caught between several rocks and hard places. Does he side with the independent professionals in the Justice Department, or does he bow to political pressure? Does he pull the plug, go home to Alabama, run for Senate and bail his party out of a scandal? Or does that open the door to further politicization of the rule of law?

And whatever he decides to do, will he remember it in a few months?

In a grueling session before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Sessions had trouble explaining previous contradictory statements about contacts he had to set up meetings with Russian officials last year when he was a key adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

“I have always told the truth,” Sessions said of previous testimony that he knew of no contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. He said the presidential campaign had been difficult and he had forgotten about attending a meeting in which an aide suggested arranging a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I had no recollection of this meeting until I saw these news reports,” Sessions said.”

This wasn’t the only Russia-related contradiction Sessions was fuzzy on.

But strangely, the biggest problem with Sessions’ testimony Tuesday wasn’t possible perjury. It was his refusal to rule out appointing a special counsel to look into a 2010 uranium deal and other matters that

Republicans are trying to link to Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.

Trump and right-wing media have been clamoring for such an investigation.

Allegations about the uranium deal have been repeatedly and thoroughly debunked, most recently by Shepard Smith of Fox News on Tuesday. Despite much hyperventilation on the subject by other Fox presenters, Smith merely followed the facts.

Sessions said he would listen to recommendations from his senior prosecutors before deciding on a special counsel. They are likely to tell him to forget it; this is the sort of thing they do in banana republics or Putin’s Russia. The professionals in the Justice Department take a great deal of pride in their jobs.

“To have the winning side exploring the possibility of prosecuting the losing side in an election — it’s un-American, and it’s grotesque,” former Republican Sen. John Danforth of St. Louis told The Washington Post. As special counsel, Danforth investigated the FBI’s 1993 assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. He added, “The proliferation of special counsels in a political setting is very, very bad.”

In a radio interview Nov. 2, Trump lamented, “The saddest thing is that because I’m the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I am not supposed to be involved with the FBI.” The rule of law is glorious, not sad. Jeff Sessions should remember that.

DAVID CARSON • P-D

Jessi Tapp (left) and John Powell, with the Missouri Department of Conservation, harvest the lymph nodes from a deer as hunter Frank Tarpeo looks on.

Lymph node for breakfast? No thanks Please, the last thing I want to see on a Monday morning while eating breakfast is a big photo of a dead deer on the front page of the Post-Dispatch, accompanied by a photo of a lymph node being extracted (“Deer testing seeks clues to neurological disease,” Nov. 13). I know many people enjoy hunting; that’s fine.

There are just as many of us who would rather not be exposed to it so blatantly.

I appreciate the Missouri Department of Conservation’s effort to track chronic wasting disease. I don’t need to see exactly how they do it. A written explanation is sufficient.

Pam McGrath • St. Louis

Get more groups to join gun-control movement I agree with Gene Dalton’s letter in the Post-Dispatch that Black Lives Matter and anti-abortion groups should present a strong focus on gun control (“Protest groups should demand changes in gun laws,” Nov. 12).

I would broaden his suggestion to ask all pro-justice, pro-peace and pro-health care groups to remember the great good they would demonstrate by specifying

gun control as a demonstrable part of their missions. They should be demanding that politicians look at the facts. No one wants to take guns from legitimate owners, but illegitimate owners should never have them. We must protect the innocent.

The gun manufacturers lobby can be defeated if the above mentioned groups join the movement.

Bill Griffith • Shrewsbury

Aldermen stifle community planning process Regarding the editorial “Not easy being Green” (Nov. 12): There should be a debate in this city on the proper use of tax incentives and abatements. Principled people can reasonably differ on the public financing of private development. Unfortunately, we did not get that debate at last week’s Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee meeting.

A majority of aldermen in the city supported giving millions to the Rams on the mere hope — refuted by study after study — that stadiums spur economic growth.

Many aldermen supported the agreement negotiated by the city, where the SC STL soccer team ownership group pledged $5 million to fund youth soccer programs through a local nonprofit in exchange for $60 million in public financing to build a new stadium.

But, when a community group seeks to negotiate an agreement with a developer to fund needed affordable housing in the neighborhood, it is possibly illegal? Community benefit agreements are widely used in cities like Pittsburgh and Denver, which St. Louis seeks to emulate. CBAs open the planning process to local stakeholders — homeowners, small businesses and advocacy groups — to ensure that development benefits accrue to existing communities.

Perhaps that is what some members of the aldermanic committee fear: an open process where the community, and not the alderman alone, shapes the outcome.

Chris Grant • St. Louis

Protect U.S. foreign aid funding Reading “Talking tough in Asia, Trump touts ‘America first’” (Nov. 11), I was reminded of how this current administration’s foreign policy is not in America’s best interest.

This year during the holidays, I’ll be reaching out to my senators and representative to tell them one important message: Honor this season of giving by supporting a robust U.S. foreign assistance budget. U.S. foreign assistance accounts for roughly 1 percent of the entire federal budget. It’s an investment that benefits every citizen on earth.

Both the Trump administration and some in Congress have proposed steep cuts to foreign assistance in the fiscal year 2018 budget, which would cripple U.S. humanitarian and development work, create massive job losses and more. Cuts would mean that lives will be lost and global conflicts will intensify, along with threats to our national security, economic stability and global health.

I’m urging Congress to protect and sustain current foreign assistance funding for fiscal year 2018 and urging Congress to conduct strong oversight over any government reorganization or proposed cuts to USAID personnel. Congress must approve a budget that protects lives, supports global security and maintains our nation’s standing in the world.

Amy Morros • St. Louis Read more letters online at STLtoday.com/letters

TOD ROBBERSON Editorial Page Editor • trobberson@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8382 KEVIN HORRIGAN Deputy Editorial Page Editor • khorrigan@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8135

I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty • JOSEPH PULITZER • APRIL 10, 1907 PLATFORM •

STLtoday.com/ThePlatform Find us at facebook/PDPlatform • Follow us on twitter @PDEditorial E-MAIL MAIL Letters to the editor St. Louis Post-Dispatch, letters@post-dispatch.com 900 N. Tucker Blvd. St. Louis, MO 63101 Letters should be 250 words or fewer. Please include your name, address and phone number.

All letters are subject to editing. Writers usually will not be published more than once every 60 days.

LOCAL

11.17.2017 • Friday • M 2

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH • A3

Police issue order on journalists’ rights Post-Dispatch reporter was caught in ‘kettle’ sweep while covering protest downtown

BY CELESTE BOTT St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ST. LOUIS • St. Louis police officers will be required each month to read and acknowledge a special order reiterating the rights of journalists, according to Interim Police Chief Lawrence O’Toole.

It states that members of media must be provided, at a minimum, the same access that others are given, but that scene commanders can use their discretion to grant journalists select privileges, so long as the officers’ duties and the safety of other members of the public won’t be compromised.

Officers are expected to read such orders and acknowledge they’ve read and understand them on a monthly basis, O’Toole said. Also, the department will send all officers an advisory asking them to allow journalists to do their jobs and

increase officer training in dealing with journalists.

“News media will be given every consideration by Department members so that they may perform their news-gathering function; however, they are not entitled to interfere with an officer’s performance of duty or the safety of citizens,” the new order reads.

The move stems from an Oct. 26 meeting between Post-Dispatch editors, Mayor Lyda Krewson and O’Toole to discuss the way police officers have interacted with reporters covering unrest over the acquittal of former city officer Jason Stockley.

Post-Dispatch reporter Mike Faulk was arrested in September while on assignment at a protest downtown.

“The Post-Dispatch is encouraged that St. Louis city leaders have listened to our concerns about journalists being able to

do their jobs amid an environment that protects them from unwarranted arrests and physical abuse,” Post-Dispatch Editor Gilbert Bailon said. “We are hopeful this new approach will lead to a safe environment for all journalists to provide essential news coverage for the public.”

On Sept. 17, Faulk was among roughly 100 people swept up when police used a tactic called “kettling” to box them in and arrest them on suspicion of failing to disperse.

Lewis Rice attorney Joseph Martineau, who represents the paper, said the changes in protocol “serve as recognition that mistakes were made in arresting the journalists.”

But as of Thursday afternoon, “no decision has been made” whether to charge Faulk, said City Counselor Julian Bush.

O’Toole says that decision rests with Bush’s office. Bush

said his office doesn’t have all the information yet from the police department to make a determination.

Following Faulk’s arrest, an attorney for the Post-Dispatch demanded the city implement protocols to prevent “any recurrence of arrests of journalists who are covering these important events and who are engaged in no criminal activity whatsoever.”

In addition to the special order, all officers will receive an advisory emphasizing that while reporters aren’t immune from arrest should they break the law, officers should otherwise do nothing to interfere with journalist’s ability to gather information and report it to the public.

The rights of journalists also will be emphasized as part of training cadets receive at the police academy, and will be in-

Debris smoldering day after massive blaze

cluded in continued training given to officers already on the force, O’Toole said.

“If you look at the larger picture, we deal with the media on a daily basis. We have crime scenes every day and have for years. Our interactions are constant. I think this will help,” O’Toole said. “If there’s a way we can improve, we want to improve.”

On Wednesday, a federal judge issued wide-ranging restrictions on the ability of St. Louis police to declare protests “unlawful” and use chemical agents against protesters.

U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry said the “kettle” in which Faulk was arrested “cannot meet constitutional standards,” as it was conducted without evidence of “force or violence to officers or property” in the area.

Celeste Bott • 314-340-8119 @celestebott on Twitter cbott@post-dispatch.com

Publisher will begin again after losing 200,000 books in fire

BY JANE HENDERSON St. Louis Post-Dispatch

CHRISTIAN GOODEN • cgooden@post-dispatch.com

St. Louis firefighters tamp down a smoldering blaze at a large warehouse on Thursday. A day earlier, massive flames and plumes of smoke roiled out of the building, and walls collapsed. Nearby hospitals were warned of respiratory problems.

FIRE • FROM A1

smoldering debris at Park Warehouse Service.

The department also was monitoring the air quality. While the fire’s plume of thick, black smoke on Wednesday was hazardous to those with respiratory conditions, testing hasn’t shown any particular lingering concern, Mosby said.

Mosby said firefighters were still trying to determine the extent of the contents that had been stored at the warehouse, which was divided into leased spaces. All kinds of goods were stored in the building, from a local publisher’s stock of thousands of books to toys and blankets meant for patients and families at Shriners Hospitals for Children-St. Louis.

The Environmental Protection Agency responded to the scene and didn’t find anything concerning beyond the hazard of the quantity of smoke for those with respiratory problems, Mosby said.

One patient was treated at BarnesJewish Hospital and two patients were treated at St. Louis University Hospital for breathing problems from the smoke.

Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medi-

cal Center and St. Louis University Hospital are near the scene of the fire, and on Wednesday, officials had been notified of the smoke headed their way. They were advised to shut down their heating and air conditioning systems so that they would not pull the smoke inward, Mosby said. SSM Health gave patients, employees and visitors at the hospitals face masks “out of an abundance of caution.”

When serious concerns exist about air quality or toxicity, the fire department can call on the St. Louis Department of Health to investigate further.

Health department spokesman Harold Bailey said the department had not been called in.

The fire, at 3937 Park Avenue, drew more than 100 firefighters Wednesday while crews from surrounding communities helped cover the rest of the city.

Mosby said there was nothing suspicious about the fire, but the cause may never be known.

“Due to the damage to the building we can’t determine the seed of the fire,” he said. “What we need to determine is what is at the bottom of the debris.

“It’s not safe to put an investigator inside.”

MINUTES FROM CATASTROPHE The firefighters in the building aren’t the only ones who had a close call.

Shortly before the collapse, Mosby had been briefing reporters near the south end of the building. Inside, right behind him, the situation was rapidly deteriorating, but no one on the sidewalk knew that.

In a Facebook Live video posted

by KSDK (Channel 5) reporter Abby Llorico, Mosby explains that vehicles moving and ladders coming down signify that the firefighters are repositioning to go into a defensive attack.

“So we’re going to relocate your staging area to a safer place, because currently we are in what we call the collapse zone,” Mosby told the reporters.

But the discussion of the move is not urgent, and TV reporters continue to ask questions, which Mosby answers. He tells a Post-Dispatch photographer he will talk to him next, and the briefing breaks up, with Mosby steering the journalists to an area farther from the building.

In Llorico’s video, she is 40 or 50 yards away when the wall collapses on the firetruck, just 90 seconds after the briefing wrapped up.

Business leaders get lesson in teen homelessness

BY ASHLEY LISENBY St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Several St. Louis business leaders slept outside Thursday night to raise awareness about teen homelessness.

About 37 of them spent the night in the parking lot of Covenant House Missouri at 2727 Kingshighway. They had only coats and sleeping bags to fend off temperatures that dipped in the 30s.

This is the sixth year that Covenant House Missouri has held its Sleep Out event and the second time around for Colleen Raley, a partner at Edward Jones and a co-chair of the event.

She said she was forever changed by her first experiences at Covenant House.

“I had some preconceived notions blown up,” she told a group of volunteer sleepers and staff at the nonprofit.

Those preconceptions included where instances of youth homelessness are located, the causes of homelessness and the racial and socioeconomic groups affected. Up to half of those the agency serves come from St. Louis County, leaders said.

More than 3,000 youth are homeless in St. Louis and neighboring counties, officials say. Covenant House in St. Louis is part of a network by the same name in other cities that focuses on helping homeless, runaway and trafficked youth ages 16 to 21.

Sue King, Covenant House Missouri executive director, said the agency helped more than 6,100 youth in its last fiscal year. Most of its budget comes from federal grants, but the rest comes from corporate funding and money raised through special events.

For the Sleep Out, each business leader promises to raise at least $5,000. The organization set a goal of $450,000 and had raised more than half as of Thursday.

King said most of the youths who come to the agency for help have dealt with family dysfunction. Many have endured violence, unemployment and substance abuse issues. In addition to providing longer-term housing, the agency offers short-term stays for youth facing immediate crises.

“We are making a choice, but the youth don’t have that choice, so thank you,” King told the sleepover crowd.

Julian Mason, 18, was spending a second day at Covenant House on Thursday. “I got a roof over my head,” Mason said. “I’m happy with that.

There are rules but everywhere you go there are gonna be rules.”

He stood outside Covenant House helping paint one of the agency’s vans with graffiti artist Peat “EYEZ” Wollaeger, who is known for using illustrations of eyes in his artwork.

“The eyes kind of bring us together because we all have eyes,” Wollaeger said.

The artist is spearheading a program to distribute care packages of feminine hygiene products, snacks and travel-sized toiletries at Covenant House. Items will be collected at Wollaeger’s studio at 2222 South Jefferson Avenue from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday.

As he helped transform the van, Mason had an idea about what to call it. It was a play on the artwork and Covenant House mission.

“What about the ‘I care about you’ truck?” he suggested.

Ashley Lisenby • 314-340-8344 @aadlisenby on Twitter alisenby@post-dispatch.com

Freelance writer Amanda Doyle still has a few books in her hatchback available to sell before Christmas.

Like several other local authors, she lost titles — which include a popular local guidebook — in the massive warehouse fire that devoured about 200,000 books Wednesday.

“I guess I feel comparatively lucky,” Doyle said Thursday. “It’s not my whole business, which it is for Josh and his family.”

Josh and Mary Beth Stevens watched the fivealarm fire burn up all of the stock for Reedy Press, their publishing company, which has produced hundreds of titles over its 14 years.

“We still have revenue from recent sales, but obviously that will dry up,” Josh Stevens, 45, said Thursday. Holiday sales are “shot,” he said.

“The authors are very upset. We’re going to get back on our feet so we can get their books back in circulation.”

The day after the fire, he was on the phone to his insurance company and starting to consider which books would be the first to be republished.

Recent sports books about Blues hockey and the old St. Louis Browns baseball team have been Reedy Press’ biggest sellers this fall.

Except for “When the Blues Go Marching In,” which was already on order, the only books available for sale this holiday season are what have already been picked up by stores, wholesalers and Amazon. Amazon recently had placed an order for 400 copies of the Blues book, by former Post-Dispatch sports writer Dan O’Neill.

Left Bank Books has contacted Stevens to see if there is a way to do a special sales event, said coowner Kris Kleindienst.

“This loss extends to bookstores like ours that have celebrated and supported their list and to readers who will be deprived of their great books on St. Louis history and culture, especially as we go into the holiday season,” she said by email.

Through the years, Reedy Press has published 74 books about St. Louis and/or Missouri. Its name pays homage to William Marion Reedy, editor of literary journal The Mirror at the turn of the 20th century.

Mary Beth Stevens and two other Reedy employees were working at the warehouse Wednesday when the fire started. She grabbed computers but forgot her car keys. Her nearby van melted in the fire’s heat.

The publisher rented about 9,000 square feet in the warehouse at 3937 Park Avenue, which is just west of Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center in the Botanical Heights neighborhood. The Stevens family, which includes four children, lives in the Lindenwood Park neighborhood.

Josh Stevens was determined Thursday to continue publishing, although not every title would be reprinted right away, he said. The publisher uses primarily printers in the United States for its books; one is in Illinois and the other in Texas.

Reedy finances 99 percent of the books; only a few are financed privately, usually for commemorative books.

“The St. Louis German Catholics” by William Barnaby Faherty S.J. was the press’ first book. It’s one Stevens hopes to reprint, if only for sentimental reasons.

Next year, he also plans to go ahead with about 40 new books.

“We’re staying around,” he said.

Jane Henderson • 314-340-8107 Book editor @STLbooks on Twitter jhenderson@post-dispatch.com

DIGEST ‌ ST. CHARLES COUNTY > Parks director named • Ryan Graham, who has headed the county Parks and Recreation Department’s historic programs since 2007, has been named department director by County Executive Steve Ehlmann.

Graham, whose appointment was confirmed this week by the County Council, succeeds Bettie YahnKramer, who retired. Yahn-Kramer had been in charge of the department since 2001 and overseen its expansion over the years.

Graham previously worked as a researcher for historic preservation projects around Colorado and as a cultural resource coordinator for the National Parks Conservation Association, which deals with national parks.

From staff reports

A L E E E N T E R P R I S E S N E W S PA P E R • F O U N D E D BY J O S E P H P U L I T Z E R D E C . 1 2 , 1 8 7 8

Sunday • 11.19.2017 • A20 RAY FARRIS PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER •

GILBERT BAILON EDITOR •

Time for financial scrutiny

Reporting is not a crime During protests, police must allow journalists to do their jobs.

St. Louis is overdue for a comprehensive state audit.

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TOD ROBBERSON EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

and accounting procedures. petition drive is underway, led by The office remains largely opaque and Treasurer Tishaura Jones and Alunaccountable because Jones, who is elected derman Megan Green, to force a state audit of St. Louis government. independently, reports to no oversight body.

Aldermen who have questioned her on finanThe audit would be required by law if 6,527 cial matters have come away flummoxed by signatures are obtained; about 3,000 have her sometimes hard-to-decipher explanabeen gathered so far. tions of her operations.

The Board of Aldermen should save the One good example was a back-and-forth petitioners the trouble by formally requestJones had with members ing that state Auditor of the Board of AlderNicole Galloway conduct men in mid-2016 when the audit. A nonbinding she requested $260,000 resolution calling for such from the city budget to an audit was on the Board fund Treasury operaof Aldermen’s agenda Nicole tions — the irony being Friday. The audit wouldn’t Galloway that her office is flush with be cheap, but it’s worth the millions of dollars from estimated $1.25 million to the city’s parking opera$1.75 million price tag to tions, only a fraction of ensure they city is operatwhich she shares with the ing at maximum financial cash-strapped city. She efficiency. made the request around Whether prompted by the time she authorized board request or petition, spending $2 million to fund Galloway’s office says a design study for a northshe is ready to respond. south MetroLink line.

It will take months to Aldermen are taking complete, and it is guarrenewed interest in Jones’ anteed to make a lot of much-touted program to people uncomfortable, promote financial literacy possibly including Jones. and boost St. Louis kinGalloway’s spokesperson, dergartners’ prospects for Steph Deidrick, says all attending college with a government entities $50 “seed deposit” from under the city’s authority her office. Jones insists would be audited, includthe program meets legal ing the treasurer’s office. requirements, but the state Also in line for serious Constitution specifically financial scrutiny are the bars local governments police and firefighters’ from providing financial pension systems along Tishaura Jones gifts to private individuals. with the various tax This is a worthy cause, but abatement, tax increment an audit would assure it conforms to the law. financing, and special tax district schemes Glenn Burleigh, who speaks for the orgathat have proliferated throughout the city, nization leading the petition drive, says the depriving the city of desperately needed revexpense would be covered by savings from the enue. elimination of wasteful programs exposed in An audit would expose abuses and lax the audit. monitoring that would ensure such programs “The cost of the audit will be a drop in the are living up to their promise. There’s much bucket, compared to the massive amounts of reason to believe many are not and never foregone revenue that our city government should have been granted.

Although Jones’ office has internal auditors, approves via tax abatement and TIF incentive packages every year,” Burleigh says. He agrees no state audit has occurred since Jones was that the audit should be comprehensive and elected in 2012. The last one occurred in 2008 include the treasurer’s office. under then-Treasurer Larry Williams, and it It’s a worthy cause. The Board of Aldermen uncovered evidence of nepotism, contracting should vote quickly and save the petitioners irregularities, unreconciled bank accounts, the trouble. and repeated examples of lax documentation

T

corral, aggressively pepper-spraying he St. Louis Police Departrestrained detainees and refusing to ment has agreed to abide accept explanations from nonprotestby tighter procedures to ers. protect journalists from Neither her rebuke nor O’Toole’s arrest while performing their jobs at directives should have been necesscenes of protests. The procedures sary, especially in the wake of negative are better than the subjective and national attention following the 2014 haphazard approach that led to the police-involved shooting death of arrest of a Post-Dispatch reporter, Michael Brown in Ferguson. among others, after the Sept. 15 verAt the same time, we’re not blind dict acquitting former Officer Jason to the difficult job police have disStockley of murder. tinguishing violent protesters from A special order from Interim Police nonviolent ones during protests when Chief Lawrence O’Toole states that rock-throwing and vandalism are police officers “will be reminded occurring. of the important role served by the A big challenge ahead for police is press” and that officers should “do nothing that would interfere with any journalist’s ability to gather information and report it to the public, where a journalist has done nothing to violate the law.” Each officer will receive a monthly reminder about this order and will be required to acknowledge it.

That’s a big, positive step toward ensuring the public stays informed and journalists are not penalized simply AP for doing their jobs. Post-Dispatch reporter Mike Faulk being arrested.

The order was prompted by misdistinguishing who, within shifting treatment of working journalists during recent protests, particularly down- crowds of onlookers and protesters, are journalists covering events as neutown on the night of Sept. 17 when tral observers and who might be proofficers executed a technique called test sympathizers posing as reporters. “kettling” to corral protesters and Just because someone has a video facilitate their arrest. Caught inside camera or smartphone in video mode the kettle were residents, bystandin the middle of a protest doesn’t ers and Post-Dispatch reporter Mike automatically make him a journalist.

Faulk, whose credentials were in clear At the same time, people attemptview of arresting officers. ing to document what’s happening O’Toole issued his order shortly tend not to be the ones engaged in after U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry ruled Wednesday that the police violence. We hope officers will err on the side of caution in the interest of had violated the constitutional rights keeping the public informed. of protesters and bystanders. Perry If police abide by O’Toole’s and Perissued a set of procedures and restricry’s orders, they should not fear media tions that St. Louis police must abide coverage. They’ll be abiding by the law by going forward. Her ruling made clear that some officers had attempted and honoring the Constitution instead of punishing people for exercising to deliver punishment on the streets their First Amendment rights. against anyone caught in their

YOUR VIEWS • LETTERS FROM OUR READERS Ranking of schools’ performance is a charade Regarding “How are Missouri schools doing?” (Nov. 15): When will this report finally acknowledge that it’s not a measure of the performance of schools, which it pretends to be?

A quick scan of the ranking of our region’s schools makes it obvious that this is not a ranking of school district performance but rather a ranking of the impact of poverty on student performance.

Presenting this as a ranking of school district performance is equivalent to ranking emergency rooms on the basis of the number of patients who die in them with no reference to the issues faced by people coming to the ER. The only way the ranking of school districts will be meaningful will be for each district’s yearly performance to be measured against its scores for the previous years. Ranking schools on the basis of the percent of students passing state tests is not a measure of the excellence of their teaching. It’s a measure of the degree to which the environment in which students live supports learning.

Let’s stop this charade. It serves no purpose.

George Friesen • St. Louis County

Focus on improving public schools for all children Gov. Eric Greitens is doing a great disservice to public education by undermining the concept of free public schools for all children.

They are the backbone of democracy.

The governor’s desire to hire an Atlanta charter school expert as Missouri’s commissioner for Elementary and Secondary Education is not in line with Missouri’s goal of public education for all.

Charter schools are independent schools with little oversight by the Department of Education.

Charter schools are not available to all children. Many charter schools are excellent, but there are not enough of them to educate all children in our state.

Our country was founded on access to free public education for all students. While charter schools are important as a good alternative for some students, our primary emphasis must be on improving public schools available for all children. That’s America’s best hope for the future.

I fear the governor’s selection will lead us down the wrong path of education for all.

Susan Uchitelle • Clayton

Rep. Dogan should review labor history Regarding state Rep. Shamed Dogan’s commentary “Unions ignore long history of excluding minorities from jobs” (Nov. 14): It never ceases to amaze me that so many of the far-right people who are elected to represent the public either missed their K-12 lessons on labor history or have selective memory with regard to all the facts.

So allow me to provide a refresher: The sponsors of the Davis-Bacon Act, James J. Davis and Robert L. Bacon, were Republicans. Interestingly enough, U.S.

Sen. Davis once served as U.S. secretary of labor. More importantly, these two gentlemen are the “fathers” of prevailing wage laws at the national level dating to 1931. It seems a bit odd that a member from the same party is not aware of what his beloved forefathers enacted.

For Rep. Dogan to suggest that labor unions are excluding minorities or women in 2017 is not only an insult but a bald-faced lie. I highly recommend that he take the time to properly research his subject matter prior to penning another article.

I wrote a commentary for this newspaper about the White House’s recognition of the Building Union Diversity program in 2015. Since 2014, BUD has graduated more than 90 percent of its enrollees and placed more than 80 percent of its graduates in registered apprenticeship programs.

Rather than falsely attack labor unions, Rep. Dogan should be encouraging groups like Better

Family Life and the Urban League to focus a greater share of their work toward preparing and sending qualified candidates to the BUD program. To date, neither of these organizations has played a significant role in BUD’s recruiting efforts.

Finally, I send this message as a warning to Rep. Dogan and the rest of his group-thinkers: Stop the dog whistle politics. Terms like “union bosses” and “forced dues” are akin to hate speech.

Once again, Rep. Dogan should do his homework: The Beck decision addressed the latter decades ago.

John S. Gaal • Ballwin Director of training and workforce development, STL-KC Carpenters Regional Council

Human suffering, turmoil for breakfast instead?

To those who find dead deer and lymph nodes not appropriate for breakfast time or appropriate for

the front page (letters, Nov. 16), I ask: Is human suffering and political turmoil and worldwide chaos better for breakfast and the front page?

Given that it is deer season, and that we are lucky in the state of Missouri to have a conservation department that works hard to protect the natural resources with which we have been greatly blessed, I think it was a very appropriate story for breakfast and for the front page.

I will say, it would be nice to see a larger percent of stories on the front page about human kindness, compassion and success; however, that does not sell newspapers. Instead, we see stories about sexual abuse, riots in the streets, murder, etc. Is that really what you want?

Rick Erschen • St. Louis County

Baer was a great statesman for St. Louis I was sad to read that Robert Baer had died (“Civic leader also ran UniGroup,” Nov. 14).

I knew Bob for many years because I raised funds for St. Louis municipal candidates. Bob wrote good government checks to candidates. He wasn’t looking to get anything back from his donations, just honest government.

Bob was a man who respected women. Getting to know Bob was a course in candid and frank conversation. I miss him.

St. Louis lost a great statesman.

Pam Ross • St. Louis Read more letters online at STLtoday.com/letters

TOD ROBBERSON Editorial Page Editor • trobberson@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8382 KEVIN HORRIGAN Deputy Editorial Page Editor • khorrigan@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8135

I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty • JOSEPH PULITZER • APRIL 10, 1907 PLATFORM •

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