Police officers arrest a demonstrator on Monday in Ferguson. (Joe Raedle/Getty)
St. Louis County Police have recorded 155 arrests for crimes linked to protests, demonstrations, and rioting in the 11 days since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed, according to records provided to The Washington Post on Wednesday.
The numbers are very likely an understatement of the total number of those taken into custody, as numerous residents and journalists have been detained and released without being charged. The list obtained by the Post only includes those held in St. Louis County facilities. It is likely that there are others who have been arrested and held in municipal jails.
Nightly arrest numbers have fluctuated widely from night-to-night, due at least in part to shifts in police tactics.
The overwhelming majority of those arrests came for “refusal to disperse,” with 123 people facing that charge. Another 20 people were arrested for burglary or possession of burglary tools, four for unlawful use of a weapon, three for assaulting a police officer, two for trespassing on private property, two for interfering with an officer and one for general disturbance of peace.
There were 30 people arrested during the first four nights of unrest, between Aug. 10 and Aug. 13, when the St. Louis County Police Department was overseeing crowd control in Ferguson.
That number dropped to just one arrest, a burglary offense, on Thursday, Aug. 14, when authority was given to Cpt. Ron Johnson of the Missouri State Police. Not a single arrest was recorded on Friday, Aug. 15 – a nightwhen four businesses were looted – and only one arrest was recorded on Saturday, Aug. 16 – when a curfew of midnight was imposed.
Arrests have spiked this week, with 17 on Sunday, 30 on Monday, 47 on Tuesday and 28 already as of 5 p.m. on Wednesday.
Several people have been arrested more than once during the ongoing unrest in Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb. The records show that the vast majority of the arrests (126) were of Missouri residents – primarily from the St. Louis area.
Nine of those arrested were of Illinois residents, six were from New York, five from California, three from Texas, two from Ohio, and one each from Georgia, Washington D.C., Alabama and Iowa.
The roster includes some journalists, including Ryan Deveraux of The Intercept. However, the list of arrests does not include the majority of journalists who have been detained or arrested, which numbers at least a dozen but could be higher.
Wesley Lowery covers Capitol Hill for The Fix and Post Politics.
