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.
  • fpslem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    117·
    11 months ago

    Non-paywalled article here:

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/12/20/gay-bar-pm-st-louis-police-crash-owner-arrest/71986781007/

    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.

  • owatnext@lemmy.worldEnglish
    74·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • CosmicTurtle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      68·
      11 months ago

      Don’t talk to police officers.

      Memorize this script:

      • “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.)
  • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.worldEnglish
    38·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • tacosanonymous@lemm.eeEnglish
    34·
    11 months ago

    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.”

    • TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.worldEnglish
      34·
      11 months ago

      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.

    • beerclue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      11 months ago

      There’s a lot of detail there… Did you go all the way down? Anyway, that’s messed up!

    • Darkassassin07@lemmy.caEnglish
      7·
      11 months ago

      … 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.

  • DarkGamer@kbin.social
    25·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • XtallllEnglish
      20·
      11 months ago

      Abuses of a position of public trust should be a capital crime.

      • flipht@kbin.social
        4·
        11 months ago

        There shouldn’t be capital crimes at all, because the people deciding who committed a capital crime and should die are the ones who shoot people in the wrong house or speed drunk through red lights and blame the victims.

        • XtallllEnglish
          3·
          11 months ago

          Capital punishment should be limited to police officers, elected/appointed government officials, and select white collar crime. People that are given positions of public trust and power should be held to a higher standard of discipline to ensure they don’t abuse their power.

          • flipht@kbin.social
            2·
            11 months ago

            I guess my point is that I don’t trust half of our establishment to use such an ability at all, even if it would be valid/legal/morally correct to do so, and the other half will use it to punish their opponents regardless of reality.

    • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      11 months ago

      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.