St. Louis Police Chant ‘Whose Streets? Our Streets’ While Making Arrests During Continuing Protests Sunday

The fallout resulted in the arrest of more than 80 people on what marked the third day of unrest since Stockley’s acquittal Friday.

However, protesters complained about the aggression that officers displayed, according to the Post. To make matters worse, a photographer from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, David Carson, said that officers chanted “Whose streets? Our streets,” after making some arrests.

Carson posted on Twitter that the phrase, commonly used by protesters like Black Lives Matter, was chanted twice and that journalists from the Associated Press heard it, too. He also posted that he confirmed what he had heard with five civilians and two officers who were also on the scene. The commander on the scene, Carson also noted, said he did not hear the chant, but said that “he would deal with it.”

Carson posted on Twitter that the phrase, commonly used by protesters like Black Lives Matter, was chanted twice and that journalists from the Associated Press heard it, too. He also posted that he confirmed what he had heard with five civilians and two officers who were also on the scene. The commander on the scene, Carson also noted, said he did not hear the chant, but said that “he would deal with it.”

Mike Faulk, another St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who was on the ground, tweeted that protesters and some members of the media were blocked in on “all four sides.”

Faulk was among those arrested.

In the end, at the news conference early Monday, interim Police Chief Lawerence O’Toole insisted that law enforcement would do its job to “protect” the city, insistently calling those who had been arrested “criminals,” the Post reports.

“I’m proud to tell you the city of St. Louis is safe and the police owned tonight,” he said. “Once again, a group of criminals set out to break windows and destroy property. Tonight, those criminals are in jail.”

The unrest in St. Louis comes bubbling up after years of waiting for any form of justice in Smith’s case, as it took up until last year for Stockley to be hit with charges.

Later, prosecutors attempted to argue that Stockley had planted a gun in Smith’s vehicle to make the shooting look like self-defense. The weapon recovered from Smith’s car mysteriously had none of Smith’s DNA on it, but was covered with Stockley’s.

Despite all of this, on Friday, St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson ruled that Stockley was not guilty.