Wednesday, November 26, 2014

What Little I Saw

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There was a second day of protests in St. Louis on Tuesday. As I write this late that evening there has not been more violence. Two thousand National Guard troops are on the streets. People are demanding to know where they were last night, when many businesses in Ferguson were burned or looted. Paranoid theories are in the air. Some of them may be right.

We knew that there would be a march or rally downtown. Our office building is off in a corner of the district and we didn't expect trouble. However, about 2 in the afternoon we saw a crowd of people coming up 4th Street. A few hundred people marched up an exit ramp from Interstate 70, strung themselves across it and blocked the busy highway for about twenty minutes. These pictures were taken from our office windows. I didn't have a very long lens with me and they are greatly cropped. As you can see in the pictures below, a group of police in full riot gear pushed the protesters off the road. We saw no violence but I read later that the police used pepper spray.

This is a very hard time for us. There was conflicting eye-witness testimony about what happened on the day of the shooting. St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCullough's conduct has been sharply criticized. Most people don't know that McCullough's father was a St. Louis policeman who was shot to death by a black man.

People have fierce opinions, which may or may not be based on the ambiguous evidence. It's a good time to leave The Lou for a while. More soon from another location.                    

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5 comments:

Norma said...

Getting out of Dodge for a while is a very good idea!

Birdman said...

Turbulent times for sure.

William Kendall said...

"The Law Has To Be The Same For Everyone." I agree with him.

Luis Gomez said...

Good shots Bob. It all is still very sad.

PerthDailyPhoto said...

There's always more than meets the eye to. these situations Bob, the media often doesn't help either, they can be so sensationalist. I think leaving town for a few days is a good idea.