St. Louis City has spent $6.8 million on police overtime since protests erupted in September following the acquittal on murder charges of former police officer Jason Stockley, a spokesman for Mayor Lyda Krewson said Friday in response to a question from McPherson.
Not all of the $6.8 million is related to the work city police did during the protests, spokesman Koran Addo said. Still, the figure has increased significantly since October, when the city reported it had spent $2.9 million on overtime just to handle the first 10 days of the protests.
Beginning on Sept. 15, the day a judge found Stockley not guilty of first-degree murder charges in the killing of Anthony Lamar Smith, protests against the verdict took place on an almost daily basis in the city and in certain locations around the metro area. The protests lasted for several weeks. Stockley is white; Smith was black.
One of the protesters’ stated goals was to disrupt the St. Louis region’s economy — a rallying cry at the time was “No justice, no profits” — but it’s not clear that they’ve succeeded in this regard. The city’s extra costs for police overtime are one of the few quantifiable ways to measure the direct economic impact of the protests.
