Three months after police officer Darren Wilson killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, setting off what became the Black Lives Matter movement, Wesley Bell — the current St. Louis prosecutor running to unseat Rep. Cori Bush — told a local news radio show that there wasn’t a strong racial divide in Ferguson.
Bell, who was serving as a municipal court judge and community college professor at the time, said he hoped Brown’s killing would “wake some people up” to get Black residents more engaged in their community and that the real “tragedy” of the situation was that the prosecutors hadn’t shared Wilson’s side of the story with the public, which was fomenting distrust in the process.
In Bell’s opinion, not releasing evidence that spoke to “the officer’s side of the story” was a mistake on the part of the prosecution. “To me that’s the tragedy of it — is that months later, I can’t even tell you whether I believe the officer should be indicted or not, because I don’t have the evidence,” Bell said.
Bell is now running with more than $8 million in backing from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee against Bush in the Democratic primary next week in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District. Bush rose to national prominence as a Black Lives Matter organizer in Ferguson. Bell was elected to Ferguson City Council in the first election following the surge of local protests, beating out a candidate supported by protester groups, and went on to unseat the St. Louis prosecutor, Bob McCulloch, whom he criticized in this interview for his handling of the Brown case.
Bell made the comments about Ferguson in November 2014 on the Nick Taliaferro Show, which went off the air in 2017. At the time, Bell was a municipal court judge in the small St. Louis suburb of Velda City, which was sued in 2015 in a federal civil rights case over running an unlawful bail system.
Brown’s killing wasn’t unique to Ferguson, Bell said during the radio segment. “These are issues that have been plaguing our country since the beginning of our country. So when I hear, ‘Well it’s just Ferguson, it’s just Ferguson,’ even in this area, it’s not just Ferguson. These issues have been happening all over our region, it’s just this particular one happened in Ferguson and that’s what’s been playing in the media.”
In the wake of Brown’s killing, there was a sense that the racial divide in Ferguson was comparable to that of Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s, Taliaferro said. “That’s just not the case,” Bell said. “In the United States, there is a racial divide. I think we agree with that. I’m saying, relatively speaking, Ferguson is not as bad.”
Ferguson’s racial divide was “less than normal,” Bell said, notwithstanding issues that still needed work, including diversity in the police force and government. But the need for accountability was “on both sides,” Bell said. “African Americans need to get more involved.” When he ran for a council seat, Black people weren’t involved in the political process, he said. “I’m hoping this wakes some people up.”
“That quote is pretty astonishing coming from not only a Black man in St. Louis but a Black man who lived in Ferguson and was a municipal court judge,” said Thomas Harvey, a civil rights lawyer who ran the nonprofit law firm in St. Louis that sued Velda City under Bell’s judgeship; Harvey is currently based in Los Angeles. “It’s also an indication of the deep racism in St. Louis that you could look at Ferguson and say, ‘It’s not that bad,’” Harvey said.
The Bell campaign commented on the 2014 interview in a statement. “Cori Bush and her allies are intentionally mischaracterizing Wesley’s comments,” wrote Anjan Mukherjee, a spokesperson for the Bell campaign. “In the interview, he was criticizing then-Prosecuting Attorney McCulloch for being secretive and not releasing the evidence on Wilson, a criticism he felt so strongly about, that he ultimately ran against McCulloch and beat him.”
Compared to other cities in Missouri at the time, it’s accurate to say that Ferguson was in the middle of the spectrum of unconstitutional practices and racist policing, according to Harvey. “It’s just that they were all so racist, it’s weird to hear someone say Ferguson wasn’t that bad. I think it’s actually indicative of how bad racism is in St. Louis overall and the whole region. What you’re doing is comparing it to the worst, most explicit forms of racism, and saying, that isn’t exactly happening in Ferguson.”
Arrest rates, police violence, stops, tickets, fines, and jailing were overwhelmingly disproportionately targeted against Black people living in Ferguson or passing through, Harvey said. “That is well known,” he added, and at the time, it was common knowledge.
Clients who lived in and near Ferguson would tell him that they wouldn’t travel to see friends and family around holidays because they didn’t want to get arrested and spend Thanksgiving or Christmas in jail, he said. Harvey said he used to work with pregnant women in St. Louis, many of whom didn’t want to drive to get prenatal care for the same reason. They arranged taxis instead.
“Wesley was a judge in a town where the exact same thing was happening,” Harvey said. The prevailing logic at the time was that it was better to have a Black judge who could empathize with the population even if the system was still operating in a racist way, Harvey said.
The statement suggests that Wesley’s political stance tolerates systemic racism, unjust incarceration, exploitation, and destruction of lives as long as a compassionate figure shows empathy in court. This viewpoint was particularly concerning given the context of the time, with the aftermath of Mike Brown’s tragic death in 2014. The revelation was shocking to many, especially those familiar with the realities faced by Black communities in and around North County. The implication that Ferguson may not be the worst city in the region adds another layer of complexity to the discussion.
Wesley Bell, the first Black head prosecutor in St. Louis County, was initially hailed as a champion of progressive reforms in the aftermath of Brown’s killing. However, his decision not to charge Darren Wilson in the case disappointed many of his supporters. Despite his initial promise of reform, reports indicate that the jail population has increased under his leadership, leading some to question his commitment to addressing systemic issues.
Critics, including civil rights groups and political opponents, have accused Bell of failing to deliver on his campaign promises and of being unaware of the deep-rooted issues within his own community. The backlash against Bell highlights the complexities of the justice system and the challenges of enacting meaningful change from within the system. Please rewrite this sentence.
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