Police in riot gear, helicopters circling overhead, TV cameras and hundreds of people marching. This was downtown St. Louis in September as protesters filled the streets to criticize a judge’s acquittal on murder charges of a white former St. Louis City police officer, Jason Stockley, in the killing of black crime suspect Anthony Lamar Smith. The protests continued for several weeks on an almost-daily basis, targeting other locations including the Central West End and the Galleria in Richmond Heights.
For a time the protesters – chanting slogans like “No justice, no peace” and “If you kill our kids, we kill your economy” – dominated local news coverage.
Now, barely six months later, it’s not easy to find anyone who wants to talk about the Stockley protests at all. This is unfortunate, because it’s possible that the reputational damage from them – coupled with the lingering effects of the larger and more widely covered Ferguson protests in 2014 – could affect the region’s economy for years to come.
Over the past few weeks I’ve checked with a number of government, civic and business organizations to ask whether they’re aware of any specific business effects – either quantitative or anecdotal – linked to Stockley. For example: What are the costs for police overtime? Has any convention business bypassed St. Louis? Did a company pass up a chance to establish or expand a presence here, due to concerns over the region’s ongoing race issues? I also asked whether they expect St. Louis to suffer lasting economic harm from the events of 2014 and 2017.
A few organizations came back with specific responses. St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson’s office and the St. Louis County Police Department provided costs for police overtime specifically linked to the Stockley verdict; their updated estimates put it, conservatively, at about $2.8 million combined. (Krewson also mentioned the impact of the Stockley protests in a progress report on the city’s website marking her first year in office.)
A spokeswoman for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis said via e-mail that the Fed can’t speak to the issue without hard data to go on.
The response elsewhere amounts to a regional game of pass-the-buck. A spokeswoman for the St. Louis Regional Chamber said the organization doesn’t track such issues and referred questions to the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership. The Partnership suggested I check with another booster group, Downtown STL, Inc. The people at Downtown STL have been friendly but noncommittal, saying I need to speak with the organization’s CEO (who has not replied to e-mails and phone messages). Staff members at Explore St. Louis, which lures conventions and tourists, were still deciding whether to grant an interview when I last checked with them. The branches of the NAACP representing St. Louis City and County, and the Heartland Black Chamber of Commerce didn’t respond to multiple requests. Neither did a spokesman for St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger. And so on.
It’s understandable why people want to avoid this subject. The specific economic impact of the protests is hard to measure. And recalling them dredges up painful images. They remind us of people being pepper-sprayed, cops being subjected to verbal and sometimes physical abuse, and worst of all a family’s grief as they bury a son, husband or father who was killed in a confrontation with police.
Redditt Hudson, vice president of civil rights & advocacy at the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, tells me St. Louis “took a hit” after the Stockley verdict and that it’s likely the region has lost some convention business as a result. The greatest adverse impact, Hudson said, “is our reputation as a racially regressive city that in many respects appears to be working backwards, rather than forward.”
Hudson says some people in the area are trying to turn things around. That’s no doubt true – look at groups like Forward Through Ferguson, which is working to make St. Louis a more racially equitable region.
Getting a firm idea of the extra business and economic headwinds the region faces due to events like Stockley is a different matter, however. Six months after the protests, it’s not clear whether St. Louis has a business or civic group willing to step up and actually own this aspect of the dialogue about the region’s future. Let’s hope this doesn’t signal the next missed opportunity.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this commentary in the print version of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch mischaracterized the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s position. This was an error by McPherson, not by the Post-Dispatch. McPherson regrets the error.
A note as well on police overtime costs: This commentary contains updated figures for overtime in St. Louis City and County directly related to the Stockley protests. The city says it spent about $1.7 million on higher-than-normal police overtime in the first few weeks after the Stockley verdict was announced. The county spent about $1.1 million, indicating a combined total of about $2.8 million, using the most conservative figures. (This is a new figure; earlier stories on McPherson referenced police overtime for city officers that covered all police overtime costs, not just those related to the Stockley protests.) The figures do not include overtime for firefighters.
