ST. LOUIS – More than a dozen people who were corralled by police and arrested during demonstrations following the 2017 acquittal of St. Louis Police Officer Jason Stockley in the 2011 death of Anthony Lamar Smith are now suing the city.
Those filing the suits were corralled by police in a tactic known as a "kettle" that took place in the third night of protests over the acquittal of Stockley, who was considered innocent of murder charges.
One of the law firms that filed suits was Khazaeli Wyrsch LLC.
Javad Khazaeli
| Khazaeli Wyrsch LLC website photo
The firm was responsible for 12 individual lawsuits, in conjunction with ArchCity Defenders, another civil rights law office.
Javad Khazaeli, one of the firm's attorneys, recently told the St. Louis Record there was "a total of 15 lawsuits regarding the Stockley cases" that are defended by the firm, covering 17 individuals.
Among the issues presented in the lawsuit, Khazaeli said some of the victims were members of the military "who had issues with their security clearances, having to report they were arrested."
He added that there were people who were having "flashbacks of anxiety" when they were in large groups, as well as people who "lost work," and one person "who lost his house."
In regards to the lawsuits, Khazaeli said that "we're looking for financial damages to compensate these people for what happened to them." He also stated the city of St. Louis "has been sued tons of times for injunctive relief, and has signed documents promising not to do this again, promising to start acting better. And they just ignore it, and they do it over and over again."
Khazaeli said that in an injunction issued last November, a federal judge found "tons of ways that police in St. Louis violated the Constitution, and the judge ordered the city to go into negotiations to address it, and 10 months later, the city has done nothing different."
The attorney believes financial compensation may start a change.
"If it means they are going to have to start cutting checks, and that might make them listen, then fine," Khazaeli said, adding that "we want to change the way St. Louis police deal with peaceful demonstrators exercising their constitutional rights."