The NAACP proved prophetic in issuing a Missouri travel advisory as aspiring social justice warriors continue to block Missouri highways. On Tuesday evening St. Louis police arrested 143 of them for shutting down I-64 in St. Louis. The warriors were protesting the shooting death of 24-year-old Anthony Lamar Smith, a man few of them likely heard of before last month’s protests began.
In 2011 former St. Louis officer Jason Stockley shot and killed 24-year-old Smith following a high-speed chase. Inspired by events in Ferguson, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce brought the case against Stockley five years later, in 2016. “If I had to point to one singular event that will always stand out in my mind: it will always be Ferguson,” said Joyce upon her retirement that same year. She did not stick around for the bench trial presided over by Judge Timothy Wilson.
The New York Times described Stockley as “a police officer who shot and killed a black driver.” Judge Wilson described the “black driver,” Anthony Smith, more usefully as a “heroin dealer.” The “driver” was speeding at more than 80 miles per hour through the streets of St. Louis with the police on his tail. The driver had reason to drive so fast. He had just tried to run over Stockley and his partner. Prosecutors charged Stockley with planting a gun on Smith after he shot him. Wilson doubted the charge. “An urban heroin dealer not in possession of a firearm would be an anomaly,” he wrote, a generalization that disturbed the more sensitive among the protestors.
In any case, the acquittal provided a pretext for the SJWs to signal their higher morality. This they expect to exhibit without any consequence to themselves. The ACLU has filed a lawsuit on their behalf after earlier protests, accusing the police of “kettling,” a tactic in which lines of officers move protesters into a limited area. The nerve! Police have defended their actions, accusing the warriors of throwing rocks and other objects at officers, spraying some with unknown substances, and breaking store windows.
A challenge for the Garmin people will be to create an app too alert drivers to SJW protests. The Sentinel will keep you posted on their progress.