Bar owner is arrested after a St. Louis police officer breaks into his business

The owners of a St. Louis gay bar got ready Sunday night to finally relax after a long day of listening to loud karaoke and serving colorful cocktails. Then the owners, who are married and live above the bar, heard a loud bang outside around 12.30pm on Monday.

They looked out the window and saw that a St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department vehicle had crashed through the front of their business, Bar:PM, shattering the glass and causing extensive damage.

The couple, Chad Morris and James Pence, approached the group of officers gathered outside the building, in the Carondelet neighborhood in southeast St. Louis, and asked what had happened. But the police did not respond, and according to a bystander’s video of the episode seen by The New York Times, officers later handcuffed Mr. Pence and arrested Mr. Morris, claiming they were “causing a disturbance.”

An officer identified in police records as John Pierce accused Mr. Morris of hitting him “in the chest with an open hand,” causing him to lose his balance, according to police documents. And a complaint states that Mr. Morris tried to hit Mr. Pierce “with a fence while fleeing from officers.”

But Mr. Morris’s lawyer, Javad M. Khazaelisaid the opposite happened: Mr. Morris did not hit any officers, but an officer wearing a beanie hit him.

Mr. Morris was charged with one count of third-degree assault and one count of resisting and interfering with an arrest. On Tuesday, he was released from jail and the assault charge was downgraded from a misdemeanor to a misdemeanor, according to Mr. Khazaeli, who said they planned to fight the charge and evaluate possible civil actions against the police.

A roughly 25-minute video clip of the couple’s encounter with police that evening does not show Mr. Morris pushing or hitting an officer. Mr. Pierce, who did not respond to calls for comment, wrote in his report that Mr. Morris tried to flee from police in an alley, an accusation that Mr. Khazaeli said was false.

St. Louis police did not respond to emails or calls seeking comment.

“I feel like the situation has been handled horribly from all sides,” Mr. Pence said in an interview. He added: “All they had to do was take responsibility, admit they had an accident and deal with it differently.”

The police encounter, which sparked outrage in St. Louis, especially among the LGBTQ community, is the latest example of a police department facing intense scrutiny and criticism for escalating a situation.

St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones — whose 2021 mayoral campaign focused on solving what she described as a “inefficient and ineffective”police system — said on social media that the police interaction at Bar:PM “could break the already fragile trust with law enforcement.”

She added that “this incident is currently under investigation and the officers involved will be held accountable for any misconduct committed while on duty.”

Joe Steiger, the business manager of the St. Louis Police Officers Association, a union for officers, declined to comment Wednesday.

Mr. Pence said he was upstairs at the bar at home on Sunday evening while his husband and the bar manager downstairs finished cleaning up and preparing to leave.

Then he heard a loud bang that shook the building.

“Then I came down and I thought, ‘What the heck?’” Mr. Pence said.

Mr. Pence said he asked the officer in the crashed vehicle what happened, and the officer, who has not been named by the department, replied: “I swerved to miss a dog.”

A video which captures the moment the police vehicle crashed into Bar: PM shows it swerving to the left towards the bar while passing a parallel parked vehicle on the right.

The bystander video shared by Mr. Khazaeli shows an officer asking Mr. Pence if he has ID on him. Mr. Pence says in disbelief that the agents should not ask him to provide that.

After an officer handcuffs Mr. Pence, the bystander recording the interaction asks the officers what crime Mr. Pence is committing.

“He’s clearly causing trouble,” the officer says.

The bystander then tells the officer not to come any closer. The officer responds, “How about you don’t tell me what to do,” and then calls the bystander a “clown.”

As Mr. Morris approaches the scene, he asks why his man is in handcuffs, the video shows.

Mr. Morris eventually walks down an alley to cool off, his lawyer said, and several officers follow him.

The bystander’s video does not show what happened in the alley.

After a few minutes, Mr. Pence can be heard saying in the video that the officers hit his man in the alley.

The video then shows Mr. Morris emerging from the alley in handcuffs, with his shirt in tatters and with two officers behind him.

Mr. Morris says in the video that an officer hit the “left side of my eye.” A photo taken of him on Tuesday shows his left eye bruised and swollen.

Before the video ends, Mr. Morris is shown being placed in the back of a police van in handcuffs.

“The way this escalated after a traffic incident is crazy,” Mr Khazaeli said.

Mr. Pence said that after the experience he felt that the police had tried to “turn the victim into a criminal.”