St. Louis County Is Putting a Reporter on Trial

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

11 August 15

Wesley Lowery was doing his job. Some people are not OK with that.

y old boss Marty Baron – now the editor of The Washington Post and soon to be portrayed by Liev Schreiber at a theater near you – isn't having the greatest month. First, the religious authoritarians in Iran put one of his reporters on trial. And now the secular authoritarians in St. Louis County have put another one of his reporters on trial.

A court summons dated Aug. 6 — just under a year after Lowery's arrest — was sent to Lowery, 25, ordering him to appear in a St. Louis County municipal court on Aug. 24. The summons notes that he could be arrested if he does not appear. "Charging a reporter with trespassing and interfering with a police officer when he was just doing his job is outrageous," Martin Baron, executive editor of The Post, said in a statement Monday. "You'd have thought law enforcement authorities would have come to their senses about this incident. Wes Lowery should never have been arrested in the first place. That was an abuse of police authority."

As if it weren't obvious from the video, Lowery is being inexcusably railroaded by a police culture and a judicial system that remains a stench in the nostrils of the world. Filing this just before the statute of limitations runs out? Really? It's past time for the Department of Justice to step in and bust up this racket, especially now that the police culture and the judicial system seem to be up to their old tricks again. And, this time, they've brought in the pros from Crazytown.

The Oath Keepers organization says its members — all former military, police and first responders — pledge to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic." However, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar described their presence as "both unnecessary and inflammatory." Protesters and police confirmed that a handful of Oath Keepers with assault rifles, bulletproof vest and camouflage gear were seen early Tuesday on the streets of Ferguson, which was under a state of emergency following demonstrations pegged to the anniversary of Michael Brown's death.

In other words, Wesley Lowery is going to court for sitting around with intent to report something, while a platoon of armed vigilante yahoos walk the streets as though they're in Anbar Province and nobody can do anything about it except wring their hands and mumble about freedom. (Chief Belmar sounds like a pillar of Jell-O.) The market for kangaroo suits in St. Louis County must be booming.