Bar owner is arrested after St. Louis police officer crashes into his business
Bar owner is arrested after St. Louis police officer crashes into his business
The owners of a gay bar in St. Louis were getting ready to relax Sunday night when a police vehicle crashed through the front of their business, Bar:PM.
Sorry folks, this didn't look paywalled for me when I posted it.
Links others have provided:
Non-paywalled article here:
Officers arrested one of the bar's owners because he refused to show them ID? The officers just crashed into his bar in the middle of the night, he gets out of bed to see what that loud noise was, and they arrest him because he won't show them ID? In Missouri police can only ask to see ID if there is a reasonable suspicion of some wrongdoing, and I can't see that a building owner is doing anything wrong when he checks on the probationary cops that just plowed into his building because they suck at driving or were driving too fast.
because they suck at driving or were driving too fast.
They ran a red light just before the crash, and other officers refused to use a breathalyzer on them. No blood samples were taken either.
ACAB
“I was in bed. I heard a loud bang. I felt the building shake. I ran down from upstairs. He actually apologized to me.," Pence told Fox 2. "He said ‘I literally swerved to miss a dog.’ He was very–he was actually extremely nice. He was the nicest officer out there.”
The cops keep changing their story. It's been at least a dog and a parked car that I know of. Then there's the bodycam footage they won't release. Then there's the security cam footage showing them run a redlight (dramatically) seconds before the collision. They also didn't breathalyze the office or otherwise test him for DWI.
Each of the above points is supported by one or more of the links below.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjvme3/st-louis-gay-bar-police-crash
My experience with Missouri police was not a good one. They lied and said my taillights (yes, both) were out and "that" was why they pulled me over apparently. So he took me to his car, where I could see my taillights functioning, and accused me of smuggling drugs from México. Apparently, because I had taken a road trip to New Mexico (which he interrogated out of me), that means that I had drugs from the country México. Tell me how a police officer doesn't know New Mexico is a state...
To top it all off, he told me to stop breaking the law and let me on my way without so much as a clue to what law I was breaking.
Don't talk to police officers.
- “Why did you pull me over?”
- (When they ask questions like where are you going? Where are you coming from? What is that smell?) “I’m not discussing my day.
- “Am I being detained or am I free to go?” (If you are being detained, invoke the 5th amendment.)
That's one count of parking your bar in the way of a police cruiser and one count of being gay in st. louis. Bake 'em away, toys.
This article is utterly devoid of details. I hope to hear more about this soon.
Edit: apparently I did not read the whole thing. I stopped when I got to this:
"To continue reading, log in or subscribe.”
Cop ran red light, swerved across two lane and hit the gay bar. Then they went after the owner and trumped up an assault charge when witnesses say there was no assault. Oh and first they tried to say they were swerving to miss a dog, then to miss a parked car.
I think that's about the jist of it.
I read another article with more detail, unfortunately it was a police statement, so you know for a fact it's mostly lies.
They claim he attacked the cops when they crashed through his business, which I don't buy for a second. More likely he got rightly pissed, bitched out the cops and they didn't like being yelled at and arrested him.
All of that is in the original article, I'm not sure what you guys are seeing.
Edit: Apparently it's paywalled for some people? No idea why it's not for me.
Article says video shows the owner didn't strike the officer.
There's a lot of detail there... Did you go all the way down? Anyway, that's messed up!
... Did you just stop at the title?
There's like 25 paragraphs detailing the whole situation. Only thing really missing is the footage NYT supposedly saw.
Cops who break the law should lose qualified community and have harsher penalties. Arrest these cops for assault, fabricating police reports, and making false witness statements.
Qualified Immunity already doesn't protect police from breaking the law. Police don't get in trouble for breaking the law because their buddies protect them, not because of Qualified Immunity. That's to protect officers from being sued for rights violations. As in, they can violate your rights to privacy, free speech, freedom of association, etc, and not get in trouble for it. You have to sue the city/state instead.
Archived link
Appreciated, thank you.
Among all the sites that do this, this is the only one that has remained undefeated. It has worked every time.
From the local NPR station; They have a legal round table with local attorneys on the Friday show and they discussed this case.
What does their being gay have anything to do with this except act as rage bait?