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10/12/17

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) today filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD), the St. Louis County Police Department, the Richmond Heights Police Department, and the University City Police Department. The filings ask for information regarding police actions taken against people who have been present during the ongoing peaceful protests in the St. Louis area since the September 15th announcement of the ‘not guilty’ verdict in former SLMPD Officer Jason Stockley’s trial for killing Anthony Lamar Smith.

Our FOIA requests seek:

  • All departmental policies, memos, and emails relating to arrests, use-of-force practices, and demonstrations and crowd control policing tactics;
  • All documents related to the number of people present during the protests who were arrested, with the information broken down by date of arrest; location of arrest; race, gender, and age of persons arrested; charge; and municipal or state penal code violated; and
  • All documents related to the number of complaints filed against law enforcement officers, with the information broken down by date of complaint, date of incident, location of incident, name of the involved officer(s), type of complaint, disposition of complaint, and race, gender, and age of the complainants.

LDF remains deeply committed to ensuring all Americans can safely exercise their constitutional right to protest free from irresponsible and illegal police tactics. Lawful civil unrest should never be met with excessive force.

Submitted FOIAs can be viewed below: