Anthony Jones remembers clearly the moment a St. Louis police officer arrested him at the 2017 Stockley protests in downtown St. Louis. Before the young officer put Jones in the back of a police van, Jones paused, and told him: “One day, you’re gonna look back and realize you’re on the wrong side of history.”
Multiple successful lawsuits filed on behalf of protestors like Jones would later prove him right – at least from a legal standpoint. In all, mass arrests and police brutality during one night of protests sparked by the acquittal of ex-cop Jason Stockley have cost the city of St. Louis more than $10 million.
The city previously paid $5 million to former Detective Luther Hall, a Black officer who said he was beaten by white officers while working undercover during the Stockley protests. And in January, the city agreed to pay $4.9 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by 84 plaintiffs who said officers’ heavy-handed response violated their civil rights.
Plaintiffs of the class-action suit were downtown on the night of September 17, 2017, to protest Stockley’s acquittal for the death of 24-year-old Anthony Lamar Smith. Protestors claimed they were dragged on the ground by officers, beaten, excessively maced, even if they were bystanders, and “kettled,” meaning officers surrounded them from all sides and arrested all those who were trapped.
Nearly six years later, the protestors are receiving their payouts. They lined up outside the office of law firm Khazaeli Wyrsch on Friday to receive their checks.
For Jones, the $28,000 he received will help him start his own business and take care of his grandmother. He says he never expected to receive so much money, and like most of those at the Khazaeli Wyrsch office, news of the settlement came as a surprise.
“The lawyers bailed us out [of jail],” Jones says of the night of his arrest. “And I remember signing something when I was leaving, but I didn’t expect anything to come of it,” Jones says.
Protestors will get paid based on the severity of their injuries or what they endured that night, according to attorney Javad Khazaeli. Payments will range from $28,000 to more than $150,000.
It’s one of the biggest payouts to protestors in U.S. history, Khazaeli says. In July, a historic settlement in New York brought $13 million to 1,380 protestors, who each received about $10,000 each — several thousand less than what the average Stockley protester will get.
“For a lot of these people, it was like winning the lottery,”Khazaeli tells the RFT. “They didn’t believe it at first.”
Khazaeli’s firm had to search as far as Spain for the protesters eligible for settlement checks. One man, who was unhoused when he lived in St. Louis, was found doing well in Florida. Another person was a roadie for U2.
For Nick Puleo, what he’ll receive as a result of the suit is a “life changing amount of money.” Puleo says he was arrested as a result of the police’s kettling. He recently finished graduate school, and student loans are looming.
“It’s come at the exact point in my life that I needed it to,” Puleo says. “I still can’t believe it.”
While his clients are happy with the result of the suit, Khazaeli says justice hasn’t quite yet been served.
“None of the officers that beat up our clients, pepper-sprayed our clients, falsely arrested our clients, have ever been held accountable,” Khazaeli says. “Some of them have been promoted since then. We’ve held the police as accountable as possible. Unfortunately, the city has more tools that they’ve chosen not to use.”
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