St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell is slated to enter Congress in January. He will replace Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., after ousting her in a Democratic primary in August with help in the form of $17 million from the leading pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. As one of his final acts in office, Bell is charging at least eight protesters who demonstrated outside the Ferguson Police Department in August on the 10-year anniversary of the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown Jr. with felonies.
Bell’s office charged the eight protesters with trying to intervene in the arrests of other protesters, causing property damage to a gate outside the police department, and attempting to disarm an officer. One man was charged with assaulting a police officer who fell to the ground after they collided on the sidewalk, and the officer suffered a severe brain injury. The defendant was held on cash bail for $500,000. Two of the other defendants are still in custody. The cases are pending in the circuit court of St. Louis County.
A spokesperson for the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said the majority of people at the protest were not charged with a crime and that those who were charged were not targeted because they were protesting. “In these cases, we didn’t charge protesters; protesting is not a crime,” said public information officer Chris King.
“Almost all of the people who attended this protest were not charged with a crime because we were presented with no evidence that they had committed a crime,” King said. “All defendants are presumed innocent.”
The decision by Bell’s office to prosecute people arrested at the protests confirmed for some that little change has come to policing in Ferguson in the decade since Brown’s killing. Protests in 2014 after Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Brown jettisoned the Black Lives Matter movement to national prominence. In 2018, Bell campaigned for the prosecutor’s office as a reformer and criticized his predecessor for failing to indict Brown’s killer. Bell’s office later declined to prosecute Wilson after reviewing the case. In the lead-up to last month’s primary, Bell’s critics complained that he had not delivered the reforms he’d campaigned on. In a campaign video for Bush released in July, Brown’s family said Bell failed to reform the office and used the family for power.
The protesters were arrested just days after Bell won the Democratic primary election against Bush in August. Activists in Ferguson said they were frustrated that while they saw few changes to prosecution under Bell, he’s now moving on to a higher office after ousting Bush, a Ferguson protest leader, with help from AIPAC’s super PAC.
“Right now the police narrative around this is all we’re seeing,” said Sandra Tamari, a Palestinian organizer based in St. Louis who was active during the Ferguson protests in 2014. She is the executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization, but spoke to The Intercept in a personal capacity. “Obviously we are hoping that the officer fully recovers from his injuries and that Elijah [Gant] sees freedom soon,” Tamari said.
“Now the police department and Wesley Bell are trying to crucify a young Black man because of this. This was a really horrible accident that frankly was due to police aggression and police negligence,” she said. “They’re trying to scapegoat this young activist who, as you know, is now in jail with half a million dollars cash bail only, which is insane.”
Photo: Christian Gooden/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/AP
Two organizers who were present at the protest in August said police descended on people without warning, and then tried to push a narrative after the fact that protesters had turned violent. Both organizers spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from law enforcement.
One of the organizers said the police response to protests was emblematic of how little has changed in Ferguson over the last decade. “It was disheartening in the days following to see the mainstream narrative in St. Louis be overwhelmingly pro-cop, and unquestioning of the blatant lies cops directed towards protesters,” they said.
“It was disheartening in the days following to see the mainstream narrative in St. Louis be overwhelmingly pro-cop.”
“It is clear to many of us that police are not effective as a means of public safety, as cops continue to unnecessarily escalate and turn nonviolent environments into violent ones,” they said. “In this case, their escalation has led to harm to their own officer and to an entire community of activists who continue to be terrorized not only by police, but by a prosecutor who protects and upholds their deadly lies.”
The other organizer who was at the protests said they saw officers making violent arrests. “The flashlight on the neck really tightly, people being carried, dragged,” they said.
The organizers said that they were initially heartened when Bell ran for office on the platform of bringing change to the criminal legal system and ousting his predecessor, Bob McCulloch, who had failed to indict Wilson in Brown’s killing, they said. Now, he’s charging protesters and receiving money from AIPAC to take over Bush’s seat.
Before her election in 2020, Bush was a nurse and activist who helped lead protests against Brown’s killing in Ferguson and St. Louis. Her role as a protest leader helped propel her campaign against the backdrop of nationwide protests against police brutality in 2020 and led her to topple a two-decade incumbent.
Bush became the second Squad member to lose her seat this cycle after being targeted by AIPAC in a Democratic primary. The lobbying group has spent more than $100 million so far this election cycle and had planned to use the bulk of the money to oust progressive members of the Squad who have been vocal critics of U.S. military funding for Israel’s war on Gaza. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., another AIPAC target, lost his June primary to Westchester County Executive George Latimer.