The STL PD thinks that a display of solidarity with the community by a group of football players is incitement? It’s free speech, and it’s enshrined in the 1st Amendment.

It further goes to the mindset of the police departments in the STL area. They still don’t get it - they are the problem. It isn’t just excessive force issues. It isn’t just officer involved shootings.

It’s the entire way that they’ve conducted themselves and the scrutiny received shows all their shortcomings.

They want to pass off the problems as being the community or incitement by rabble rousers all while their own officers continue to behave inappropriately.

The NYPD has plenty of problems of its own, facing a series of officer-involved shootings and deaths involving excessive force, but the police is trying to mitigate and reduce tensions by holding meetings with community leaders before the grand jury releases their results. They are at least trying to improve community policing and working with the community, instead of the stand-offish way that they are doing things in STL.

It’s a far better approach, and while it doesn’t eliminate the tensions or the underlying problems, it does help to have the community working with police to improve matters. The NYPD has been letting protests continue without heavy handed riot gear cops going nuts. Sure, there have been arrests, but they’ve been the civil disobedience type of crimes - resisting arrest and disorderly conduct for lying/sitting in streets blocking traffic. They aren’t for assault or property damage. They’re arrests for a cause, not for doing damage to person or property.