The Cynic Express(ed) 2.19: Family Seeks Particular Answer

     "Family seeks answers on son's injury during Mardi Gras clash in Soulard!" the headline of the Saturday, February 20, 1999, St. Louis Post-Dispatch shrieks. Apparently an eighteen year old roofer got caught in the fracas in Soulard on Fat Tuesday night. Somehow, the guy ended up on the ground with a skull fracture, and his family, to quote the article from the Post-Dispatch, "wants to know how his injury occurred and who is to blame."

     For those of you outside the immediate St. Louis area and outside the range of a high-pitched headline from the Post, Soulard is a neighborhood on the south side of the city and home to a set of bars, a farmer’s market, and an annual dramatization of the New Orleans Mardi Gras, which is a re-creation of Carnival. On Tuesday night, Fat Tuesday, Soulard had a parade to commemorate the event. During the festivities, some of the numerous attendees grew a little rowdy. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police, known lovingly by cynics occasionally rousted for fencing in public as "Metro Tins," moved into disperse the crowd. Some of the more drunken, foolish, or criminal attendees threw bottles and rocks at police enarmored in riot gear. The resulting dispersal came as close to a real riot as we have in the Midwest, which means a couple of people got hurt and a lot of people compared the police to thugs, pigs, fascists, ad absurdum.

     How did the Post put it? "Friends and family said they are unsure how he was injured, but it was sometime during police efforts to disperse a near-riotous crowd after the Fat Tuesday parade."

     It was when the police came that the roofer got hurt. It was not when the parade growers grew rowdy and violent, but when the police came. Of course, no one is sure how it happened. The roofer’s doctor explains that the injury matches those received when fighting, or when one is knocked to the ground and trampled. Not necessarily when one is clubbed by a police baton, although a cynic might postulate that the paper hopes this is the case. The roofer’s friends who were with him that fateful and potentially lucrative Tuesday evening have said that they did not see what happened to the guy. Just that they turned and he was down.

     Of course, the Near Riot Experience has everyone’s hackles raised. One young mother, also quoted by the Post another day, claims that she took her four year old daughter to see the parade and was shocked at the shenanigans and resultant police crackdown. She took her "sweet little" girl to Mardi Gras? Excuse me, but Carnival, from "Farewell to the Flesh/Meat," occupies the weeks before Lent, wherein Catholics try to squeeze enough of the Seven Deadly Sins (Lust, Gluttony, Greed, et al.) and Thirty-Four Minor Bad Things (Drinking, NHL Hockey, and Candy Bars) to last them through several weeks of eating fish on Friday. Broad minded non-Catholics, embracing the rituals of another culture, celebrate by squeezing in other forms of debauchery and lax morality while it’s even more acceptable than it normally is in 1999. What kind of person takes a "sweet little" toddler?

     About fifteen other people complained of police tactics when dispersing an unruly crowd that came from the suburbs to drink, be loud, be obnoxious, and generally behave in a manner they would not in warm confines of Town and Country or Chesterfield, the moneyed suburbs to the west. After all, Soulard and its residents, most of whom were there before the surging popularity of Mardi Gras in St. Louis, wanted it and deserved it. There are bars on every corner, and she was wearing such a short skirt and so much makeup.

     Now the roofer has checked himself out of the hospital but has been told to stay off of roofs for six weeks. As his father says: "Right now, my main concern is my son. But we're going to do something about this. We want to find out what happened. "

     Somehow, something cynical nudges me below the rib cage. I have a feeling that the family is not looking for answers, but one particular answer. That the St. Louis Metropolitan Police, for love of their own jackboots, Kinged the roofer on the back of the head as he was minding his own business. Regardless of if the roofer’s family finds out what really happened, I bet they and their lawyers do something about it. And the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department will have to defend itself for defending itself while upholding the law.