DOYLE MURPHY
Supporters of disgraced ex-cop Dustin Boone insist that, in spite of the glee shown in his text messages for beating and humiliating suspects in custody, he's actually a great guy.
Welcome back to the Big Mad, the RFT's weekly roundup of righteous rage! Because we know your time is short and your anger is hot:
Birdbrains of a Feather: We here at the RFT previously have given Mark McCloskey a hard time for showing up in places he's not needed (the recent mask-debating county council meetings for one, and of course there's the whole Senate race in general if you want a more evergreen example) but we'll admit: If there's one thing the man knows a thing or two about it's needlessly introducing a firearm into a protest setting. And so it makes sense that St. Louis' most gun-surrendering lawyer popped up with his equally infamous wife at Kyle Rittenhouse's trial this week to show his support for the concept of shooting people with whom you disagree politically. Rittenhouse is a victim of "cancel culture," alleges McCloskey, which really stretches that exhausting cliche to its fucking breaking point, considering the fact the young man killed two people. It's up to a jury now to decide whether Rittenhouse acted in self-defense, but if I were on the defense team, I’d be pretty stressed out to see these criminals coming to court to rally behind my guy. Remember how your own case played out, Mark?
Whatabummer: With the help of Kansas City Chiefs star quarterback Patrick Mahomes, the first Whataburger opened in Missouri this week — but the heavenly burgers are all the way on the other side of the state, in Lee’s Summit, a roughly eight-hour round trip from St. Louis. Even worse, while Mahomes and the company plan to open dozens more restaurants in the coming years, the future locations are all clustered around Kansas City. Which prompts us to raise the question: Patrick, buddy, could you shine a bit of that burger light on us? Without the Rams, you're the quarterback for the whole state, and that means you have to embrace both borders, like two perfect buns of equity containing all Missourians. Kansas City is so close, but still so far. It was hard enough with Whataburger stranded in Texas, and now, the proximity only makes our hearts grow hungrier.
Nine Lives: Listen, we don’t know what part of “get vaccinated, ya filthy animals” people don’t understand, but in Steve Irwin’s good name, if we lose any of the zoo animals because someone decided to show up sick with COVID, we will go crazy. Nebraska just lost three of its snow leopards to COVID-19, and now we have eight of our animals that are sick with the virus. Saint Louis Zoo officials expect the big cats to make a full recovery due to their vaccination status, but as St. Louisans, we should ask ourselves: Is this really something that we want to risk? The zoo is one of the finest things we can tell people to visit when they get to St. Louis. What will we do if we lose our big cats? Our chimpanzees? It’ll be anarchy. We’ll have to entertain our out-of-town guests with more expensive (nothing beats free), albeit still enjoyable attractions. The animals in the Saint Louis Zoo deserve the very best, and us humans getting them sick with COVID-19 is not that. The zoo doesn’t know who infected the cats — their staff is fully vaccinated and follows strict COVID-19 protocols — but we’re pleading with the general public to keep our zoo safe. The pandemic has taken so much from us; we can’t let it take our zoo animals, too.
Common Indecency: Putting the best spin they could on ex-cop Dustin Boone’s miserable career with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, his attorneys argued that he was far from the only police officer doing bad things. Their 29-page sentencing memorandum takes some acrobatic turns, as these things do, but the truly upsetting part of the argument is what they got right: Boone isn’t the only one. He texted racist, disturbing messages about racist, disturbing violence to fellow officers, who treated it as a joke. And it was only when he helped in a vicious beating of an undercover cop — one who they thought was a protester — that there were any consequences. Actual protesters who told strikingly similar stories of being assaulted at the same time as the detective aren’t seeing their assailants hauled in front of a judge. Boone and other officers regularly texted about beating people and humiliating people for sport. No charges have been filed in any of those cases. And without that, taking Boone off the force does little to change the momentum of the police department. Looking at the night Hall was beaten, Boone’s attorneys observed, “if Mr. Boone had called in sick that night, if he was nowhere around, the Luther Hall beating would look practically the same.” That may be intended as a defense of Boone, but it’s surely an indictment of somebody.
