On Wednesday, Nov. 17, Brian K. Massey, a University of Missouri-St. Louis student, was arrested near The U radio station in the Millennium Student Center. According to UM-St. Louis Chief of Police Forest Van Ness, Massey, who is an employee of The U, was charged with felony assault of a police officer and three other misdemeanors including resisting arrest.
Bob Samples, associate vice chancellor of Advancement for Communications at UM-St. Louis, said that the incident began when three officers responded to “a call about a student in crisis at the radio station in the Millennium Student Center.”
According to Justin Collins, senior, studio art, who was with Massey when the incident occurred, the student in crisis was a young woman who volunteered for The U, with whom “Brian had had a falling out.”
“She had already worked her shift that day and came back up [to The U] to do something,” Collins said. “Her clothes were all messed up and she seemed drunk and was staggering.”
Collins said that 15 to 20 minutes after the woman entered The U, Massey came to the MSC and sat down outside the radio station. Then a man came out of The U and “asked to speak to Brian. He said to leave campus, that a lady said that she could see Brian through the radio station’s window and she’s still upset with him.” Massey refused to leave and the man, who Collins cannot identify, returned into The U and presumably called campus police.
“During the response, the lead officer observed an individual whose presence elevated the anxiety of the student in crisis. Building and radio station officials asked the individual to leave the area. When he refused, two officers were asked to intercede,” Samples said. “The individual was not cooperative. In the process of determining identification, the individual in question grabbed the arm of an officer. The officer advised the individual that he was under arrest for assault.”
Van Ness said the student complied when asked for identification, providing both a state ID as well as his UM-St. Louis student ID. “But as the officer walked him out he grabbed the officer’s wrist and tried to remove documents from officer’s possession,” Van Ness said. The student was then told he was being placed under arrest.
“There was resistance on part of the student to avoid full incarceration,” Van Ness said. “We used prudent professional techniques that are used to force compliance on part of the noncompliant party. In this instance because everyone was so close to everybody we couldn’t deploy pepper mace. We were forced to put hands on the student to control his behavior, to apply striking blows to soft tissue areas.”
Van Ness said that the officers first used knee strikes to the outer area of the student’s thighs. The knee strikes were deemed to be ineffective. “At that point we did strike student several times in the thigh area with closed fist,” Van Ness said. “As soon as the student stopped resisting, all our force stopped,” Van Ness said. He believes the officers acted appropriately and are still in the process of receiving statements.
Normandy police were contacted for backup and neither the Normandy nor UM-St. Louis Police used weapons or “instruments of any kind,” Samples said. He stressed that the arrest was not done arbitrarily and that UM-St. Louis Police became involved only after Massey refused to leave the premises after being asked to do so by both The U and Student Affairs.
Collins said that when Massey was asked by the police to leave, he demanded to know what was going on and was then placed under arrest. Massey had “one hand in the air and one behind his back,” Collins said. “When the cops said stop resisting, Brian said, ‘I’m not resisting I’m just trying to talk.’”
According to Collins, as Massey was being escorted away he locked his knees and an officer tried to throw him on the floor. That officer, Collins said, fell along with Massey and “started punching on his head and his body and kneeing him. Another cop gave him a few stomps and a few kicks, they said stop resisting the whole time and Brian was screaming for them to stop. It wasn’t like [Massey] was kicking or flailing, he was mostly trying to protect his head.”
“It was pretty chaotic,” Collins said. “They beat him for a long time. One cop punched Brian repeatedly, had to stop and catch his breath, and then punched some more.”
A Facebook group called, “UMSL Police Went Too Far!!” has been created by an individual using the alias Ann GreeStudent. According to the group’s Facebook page, Massey “was kicked out of his UMSL apartment and banned from returning to campus. Apparently the UMSL PD went to his apartment to make sure he left.”
The group’s Facebook page gives a different account of the incident, saying that “[The UM-St. Louis police] cuffed him, threw him to the ground and proceeded to punch and kick him on his body and head. A crowd of about 100 students and UMSL employees rushed to Brian’s aid, but the officers refused to let up. One officer actually jumped on his back and then stood on him while he begged for mercy.”
At the time of publication there is still no official report from the UM-St. Louis Police. Massey was released from custody on $10,000 bond. In addition to felony assault of an officer and resisting arrest, Massey is facing charges of trespassing in the first degree and two misdemeanor counts of assaulting a police officer.
This should have been the story published in The Current’s hard-copy for the week of Nov. 29. I commented on another story that the staff should double-check its content and add a layer of polish instead of focusing so much on less-newsworthy pursuits, and this is a prime example why. The published version takes great pains to avoid naming the suspect until the man’s last name is dropped in the latter part of the article, thereby invalidating the entire purpose. Lines are unwieldy, placement could be better, and the article raises more questions than it answers.
However, that isn’t the primary reason as to why I’m commenting today. I’m curious, confused, and concerned (yes, all at once) as to why The Current’s staff has not pursued this story further given it has had nearly two weeks since the incident to do so. The published account does leave some to the imagination, yes, but there could have been much more done with this piece.
For example, why has there been no published research done on a student’s rights on campus? This story shows that campus staff (of which the alleged perpetrator is ostensibly a member) seemingly has a veto power over the student body at large – that is, they can direct anyone to not only leave the building, but campus itself. Is this true? Can the director of Student Services (whom I’m sure is terribly nice, but only an example) walk up to me and say “Shove off, you’re ruining the scenery”? Where has the precedent been set? Why can an employee of the University deny me access to the facilities and services for which I have paid (debatably) good money? How long will such a restriction last? What statute gives a police officer the right to confiscate my identification? For that matter, when will I get it back?
Has The Current attempted to interview the other party in this matter – that is, the woman whose complaint set this whole chain of events into motion? Why wasn’t more done with the witness that was interviewed? Why throw the poor lad away after what amounts to a two-second sound byte when it was clear he could have shed much more light on the background of this situation?
These are but blessedly few questions. Many more can be raised, and a wealth of information can be discovered from them – certainly enough to keep the staff busy until the end of the semester. Why not ask some of them yourselves, and enlighten the student body with what you find?
Justin, I have to jump to the Current’s defense here.
if you go to the facebook group “UMSL Police Went Too Far!!” you’d see that one of the staffmember’s left a comment there yesterday saying that they are working on a full-out expose of this incident, so there will be more to come. Your suggestions are terrific too so maybe someone reading it will take it into consideration.
A couple of things that non-Current staff are unaware of: the maximum word count per article and rules regarding blogging.
Every article has to fit within a word-count range, so it’s likely that Justin Collins said so much more than what could fit into the article. Writer’s have no choice but to leave out a lot of things that would give the reader more information. If SABC funding allows for more pages to be printed every Monday then certainly the stories will have “room to grow.”
And just as an FYI, Current staff members are not allowed to respond to blogs, so if you’d like answers to your questions, shoot them an email or give them a call.
Finally, don’t forget that students were off campus last week, many of whom may have left St. Louis to spend the holiday with their families. I personally contacted a Current staff member to see if they were aware that the incident had occurred (I work in the building and I didn’t know about it until two days later). I was told they were working on something and within a few hours there was a story on this site and an announcement about it on their Facebook page. I was personally impressed that they went so far as to write up something so quickly (I’ve never seen a “breaking news story” from them before). So in actuality, they did work on it, but since this is a student newspaper and not one that employees a full-time staff and doesn’t run 24/7, it’s understandable that they took off a few days as planned.
Thank you for the clarification; however, this still does not explain the poor grammar. Plurals do not require an apostrophe, and subject-verb agreement in the article is substandard.
Try not to nit pick yourself to death, namewithheld. I read through this thing twice and don’t know what in god’s name you’re talking about. Nice semicolon usage, by the way.