No, no no. This isn’t some symbolic deal where we say Mayor Slay found the beaten body of a nearly dead spirit of St. Louis on the sidewalk that told him he should probably do a little more about the crime. Mayor Slay actually found the beaten body of a nearly dead guy on the sidewalks of South City.

Mayor Slay said he was traveling along South Grand Boulevard near the intersection of Utah Street in south St. Louis when he came upon a man who had been assaulted. The man was lying in a pool of his own blood on the side of the street and was unconscious.

His Mayorness waited with the man and kept repeatedly coaching the guy up with “So you ran in to a door right? …or maybe fell down some stairs? Lets go with the door one, ok? You really gotta watch out for those doors buddy! Such a klutz!”  while the emergency crews sped to the scene.

So who did this? The Mr. Mayor see the perps?

According to Mayor Slay, he noticed a group of youths walking away from the scene.

The Mayor didn’t get a great look, but he’s pretty sure he saw these two youths commit the near murder and then escape in a metallic mint green 1963 Pontiac Tempest.

Now lets bring in the professionals to tell us the motive behind the brutal beating, but keep in mind they have no one in custody and have maybe one witness.

Officials say the violent act was part of what is known as the “knockout” game. It is an ongoing problem that left a 72-year-old man dead in south St. Louis last April.

Again with the “Knockout Game”! We’re starting to think that “Knockout Game” is St. Louis code for “We have no clue why this random horrible crime happened, so lets tie them together somehow.” If we don’t know, or think it has anything to do with young people, just assume it will be eventually labeled as “Knockout”.

As for the man himself, he’s had to go through facial reconstructive surgery, but is recovering and should be fine after lots and lots of time and he finally manages to get the mayor to stop sending him “I’m Sorry” flowers with “Vote Slay!” buttons on them.

via KMOV

The off duty police officer featured in the infamous YouTube video recorded on New Year’s Eve and released a few days later was cleared of all charges, while the drunk who got to taste the business end of a nightstick was charged with misdemeanor assault for lunging at the officer’s ankles.

The two-minute, 13-second video showed Officer Dustin Ries, 38, pulling a man away from a car, beating him with a police baton and spraying him with pepper spray. Ries, who was off-duty working security at the gas station, handcuffed the man and walked him toward a police substation there.

Ries was put on administrative duty when the video went online. He remains on desk duty and under internal affairs review, notwithstanding the developments in the criminal case Friday.

Ok, the video still looks pretty bad to us, but whatever. Who knows what happened, and we’ll trust the process…and we’ll also trust that someone will come out of nowhere and say something stupid and claim they knew this would all go down just like this…

Jeff Roorda, business manager for the St. Louis Police Officer’s Association, slammed internal affairs for how it handled the gas station incident and others.

“There’s a trend of persecuting our officers instead of prosecuting criminals,” he said. “The second-guessing of our officers and the rush to judgment in cases like this serves no purpose for our community.”

You’re a retard Jeff Roorda. We aren’t implying that Ries didn’t do the right thing here, the man was cleared. Fair enough. But get quoted saying that the STLPD Internal Affairs shouldn’t have investigated this, and you’re going to sound like a retard. Look at that video! Maybe below the knee line was a lion eating him, who knows, but you still have to take a look, ask a few questions…damn man, how can you can say something that stupid? Rush to judgement?! This is a rush to judgement: Tyler Perry has done lots of horrible movies, but this next one will probably be really good and be gear towards white people.

Good luck on the rest of your unlawful beating people investigations Officer Ries!

via Officer.com and our tipster, who’s dad can definitely beat up your dad.

A man and his girlfriend are telling police of one really really bad day where the man was being confined to a North City basement and beaten with 2×4′s. Wow, that sounds pretty ba…oh and then he was moved to another vacant North City home a block over and beaten more there. Yikes.

According to Lieutenant Dan Zarrick, a girlfriend received a call from her boyfriend that he’s being held against his will and assaulted in the basement of a house in the 5400 block of Partridge.

The victim told police three suspects beat him with 2x4s. They also had weapons.

The SWAT stormed the house thinking the suspects may have come back, but no one was there.

Damn those pesky North City beatings and all that available vacant houses! Was the the crime that drove the people away or was it the people leaving that left all the great space to do crime in? Chicken and the egg man…assuming the chicken is poverty and the egg is a complete lack of police presence…and the chicken is on crack along with being the proud owner of the full hepatitis alphabet…and the egg is already robbing people.

The victim seems to be fine after the ordeal and when asked about the ordeal said it was horrible, but pretty average for North City.

via KMOV

We broke down the now infamous police beat-down video yesterday morning on the site but since then a little more information has leaked out that we just had to pass on.

It turns out ole Officer Dustin “Let go of my feet!” Ries has a pretty short beat you with his club and mace you fuse.

We’ve all seen his latest beating/macing in its beautiful YouTube glory, but STLToday learned that Ries has had at least two other run-ins that ended with him beating someone with his baton and macing them. The first happened in 2004:

A 2005 civil suit in St. Louis alleged that Ries struck a man on the head with his baton and sprayed him with pepper spray in an on-duty traffic stop on North Grand Boulevard in September 2004. Records show that case was dismissed; it was unclear Tuesday whether a settlement was reached.

Sound familiar? Ok, don’t go all guessing how the next one goes. You’ll spoil it for the rest of us:

A 2008 federal suit alleged that Ries assaulted two men with his police baton and pepper spray while he was working off-duty at the Big Bang piano bar on Laclede’s Landing in April 2006. Al Johnson, a Clayton attorney for the plaintiffs, said his clients were initially charged with assault but the charges were later dropped.

The lesson in all of this? Maybe the St. Louis Police Department should do us all a solid and replace Ries’ baton with some sort of Nerf version. That way, he can use it all the time, to point at or hit things he wants for instance, and we’ll all think it’s cute rather than dangerously excessive.

via STLToday, who, to their credit, has done some really nice work on this story.

So last weekend a St. Louis cop got caught whipping a guy’s ass. Maybe you’ve heard about it.

Here’s the video on YouTube.

Oh like you thought we weren’t going to make an animated gif out of this?!

First off, I think we were all pretty surprised that it wasn’t a black guy getting beat up here. No no no, it’s ok. When you clicked on a link that says “Police Officer Caught Beating a Guy” you totally expected to see a black guy getting his ass whooped. I bet if the camera did a 180, you’d see a black guy coming out of the gas station with a hotdog, jumbo soda and his jaw laying on the ground in front of him. The world works in mysterious was to keep itself in balance though. Just as this St. Louis cop was beating the booze out of this white guy, somewhere in Mississippi, a black guy finally got decent service at a Cracker Barrel.

Moving on…

If we take a moment to break down the video of a police incident that occurred New Year’s Eve at the gas station at Arsenal and Highway 55 (right across from Gus’ Pretzels). First thing you hear is the woman passenger saying “Oh my god! That guy told the cop to shut up! Oh my god!” with the suspect already on his knees and hands cuffed behind him. At that point the officer, who, according to the gas station attendant was off-duty ans working “security” at the station, grabs the man by his shoulders, throwing him to the ground. The officer then take out ole Mr. Billy Club, give himself a little ass tap with it (seriously, watch it again) and proceeds to beat the hell out of a detained helpless man with his face on the gas station concrete. Gross. Gas station concrete has to smell like mixture of gas, nacho cheese and ass. That had to be the worst part of all of this…or maybe it was getting beaten with a stick while handcuffed and then maced.

“The guy was plainly drunk,” [gas station owner Joel] Platke said. “Inebriated.”

STLToday has identified the officer as Dustin Ries, an officer who has moonlighted as security at the gas station for some time, and received a second-hand report from the gas station owner that…

“The officer grabbed him and tried to get him to come out of the car. The guy fell onto his chest and locked his arms around this officer’s ankles and would not let go,” Platke said. “(The officer) was there with his feet locked together, screaming at this guy to let go. He used his baton to try to hit him to get him to let go. He finally had to use (pepper spray) and the guy finally let go.”

The problem with that report is that it isn’t quite what the video shows.

As we said earlier, it’s clear the suspect didn’t fall to his chest, but was clearly grabbed by the collar and pushed down by Officer Ries. It’s not clear from the video if his hands were cuffed at this point, since they appear to be behind his back initially, but then fall forward as he goes towards the ground. So, if unrestrained, he could be holding the officer’s feet as reported, and it does look like the officer’s posture supports that claim somewhat. Now could you argue that hitting a drunk guy seven times with your club is a bit excessive he just has a hold of your ankles is a bit much. In fact the incident doesn’t end until the officer maces the suspect. Why not just do that in the beginning? There was no reason to hit a guy, full force, with a baton seven times.

In other YouTube news, did you see the video of the homeless guy with the amazing radio voice? YouTube is awesome! Officer Ries probably isn’t a big fan right now though.

[Editor's Note: Updated title to better reflect our article content.]

A roving group of thugs went around south St. Louis Friday and eventually kicked the crap out of two men, giving the south side of St. Louis a little taste of what life is like on the north side of town.

St. Louis Metropolitan Police said the group assaulted their first victim in the 7400 block of Virginia. Witnesses told police a 42-year- old man was collecting cans when the teenagers approached him and without provocation began to punch and kick him. The man was not injured and refused medical attention.

The group of teens then fled to the 7100 block of Michigan where they attacked an 82-year old man in the same manner; punching and kicking him. The 82-year old man suffered a broken jaw. He was taken to an area hospital.

We followed up with STL PD and asked: “Doesn’t this kinda thing happen all the time in north St. Louis?”

Well yeah, of course.

So why the sudden response and news coverage?

We responded quickly to this incident and notified the press because this happened actually near where we live, not in some far away place like Beirut or North City where people lay around with flies on their faces and crazy crap like that.  I mean this could have happened to anyone of us coming out of the Qdoba on Grand and Arsenal. I mean, sure that place sucks, but it would suck a lot more if you got jumped on your way out the door.

via Globe Democrat