Somehow, all of the lessons from 1960s Alabama to 2020 Minneapolis about race-based law enforcement were lost on three white Woodson Terrace police officers as they tried to make an unarmed Black man submit to their will on Monday. Video by a passerby showed the officers releasing an attack dog to rip repeatedly into the suspect’s leg, just like Birmingham’s infamous public safety chief, Bull Connor, did in the 1960s to deter Blacks from marching for equal rights.
Officers were dispatched Monday morning after a caller reported a man trespassing at a business near St. Louis Lambert International Airport. Police, posting their version of events on Facebook, said they believed the man was drug-addled.
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The video shows the suspect in mid-arrest, with legs splayed far apart while leaning over the hood of a car — showing no apparent threat to the two officers standing behind the man and holding his left arm. At that point, the worst that can be said is that he was not cooperating with their attempt to handcuff him.
Then another officer appeared with a snarling dog on a leash. The officer allowed the dog to lunge as if to attack the suspect, prompting the suspect to start screaming and recoiling in obvious fear.
The suspect's reflexive recoiling gave officers the apparent pretext they needed to assert that he was resisting arrest — justifying letting the dog loose to attack the man. The more the dog bit into the man’s leg, the more he recoiled. The dog’s handler pulled the dog off, then released the animal to attack again when the man continued to struggle and scream. It was an appalling display that merits more than the “thorough review” that St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell has pledged.
This incident bears all the hallmarks of cops deciding to issue their personal form of street justice — inflicting pain and punishment on the spot instead of waiting for the courts to do their job. We’ve seen it before, such as during the October 2017 protests in St. Louis city, when officers mercilessly beat a detainee who turned out to be an undercover cop.
There's an ongoing, national pattern of using attack dogs to terrorize Blacks suspected of petty crimes, as underscored in a 2020 investigation by the Marshall Project, AL.com, the IndyStar and Invisible Institute. In one Alabama court deposition, a police sergeant testified that his boss: “Basically … wanted a dog that would bite a Black person.”
There was nothing so urgent in the Woodson Terrace arrest that prevented officers from trying alternative techniques so cooler heads could prevail. The sole message seemed to be: If you as a Black person show the slightest resistance, here’s what we can do to you.
Bull Connor would sure be proud to see that his legacy lives on.