Seven years ago today, Don Clark Sr. was asleep in his home in Dutchtown when 17 St. Louis police officers serving a no-knock warrant busted in and opened fire. Nine bullets struck the 63-year-old U.S. Army veteran, killing him.
"It feels like it just happened," says his son Don Clark Jr. "The day plays in our minds all the time."
Clark and others showed up with a coffin in front of St. Louis City Hall today. Clark, now 51, says he wants to keep his father's memory fresh in city leaders' minds. They handed out fliers encouraging people to call the City Counselor's office and "demand justice," which attorney Jerryl Christmas says means for that office, which represents the city on legal matters, to stop dragging out the suit and compensate the family what they’re owed.
"They got to keep reliving this because we got to keep reliving it in litigation," he says.
The night of Clark's killing, police were serving warrants at three houses on his block of California Avenue. A source had told police they had seen guns and drugs at the three locations. But Clark's family and the attorneys representing them say that the notion Clark was involved in the drug trade is ludicrous. After his military service, Clark founded his own security company. He was a diabetic who walked with a cane. He had poor eyesight and poor vision.
According to the lawsuit, the officers didn't announce that they were law enforcement before ramming down Clark's door and deploying a diversionary device in the home.
"You didn't have to do a no-knock warrant to search his house," Christmas says. "If you would have done any kind of observation and saw that he was a 60-year-old disabled man, you would know you could come and knock on his door and do a regular search in the daytime."
A spokesperson for the city said they can't comment on the pending litigation.
Clark legally owned a firearm, and police have said they opened fire after someone in the house shot first.
Christmas says that "doesn't make any sense." Clark's poor health would have made it impossible for him to retrieve a weapon and open fire in the short time between the police ramming down his door and shooting him.
In the years since Clark's death, public awareness has grown about no-knock warrants, particularly after the 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. A 26-year-old EMT, Taylor was killed by police when they raided her apartment, a raid that multiple witnesses have said was conducted without police announcing themselves. In June of that year, the city of Louisville banned no-knock warrants. Mayor Tishaura Jones followed suit two years later, banning the practice via executive order.
Jones met with several family members of people killed during no-knock raids prior to that executive order. A spokesman for City Hall says that no no-knocks have been executed in the city since.For Clark's family, however, seven years have gone by and they are still waiting for resolution on the lawsuit they filed against the city. Rather than settle the case, attorneys for the city have argued unsuccessfully that it should be dismissed from it.
The parties went to mediation, but Christmas says they could not make any progress.
Christmas says he can't discuss the details of mediation beyond saying, "I'd be too embarrassed to tell what they offered as a settlement to this family. It was an insult."
Furthermore, Christmas says, the City Counselor's Office was aware of an St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department internal audit that revealed problems with the Clark no-knock raid, but didn't disclose it. Details about it later became public via a different case.
"If they'd been honest at the mediation, we could have been done with this by now," Christmas says.
Christmas says that he wanted to casket at City Hall because the office of the City Counselor Sheena Hamilton is inside.
"When do you say that you know that the people that you are dealing with are not right, and say we need to compensate [the family] and close this case out," says Christmas. "When does the humanity come in?"
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