St. Louis Mayor Gives Out Names and Addresses of Protesters Who Want to Defund Police

St. Louis' mayor gave out the names and addresses Friday of protesters who want to defund the police department.

During the question-and-answer portion of a Facebook Live appearance, Mayor Lyda Krewson was asked about a meeting she had with protesters at City Hall earlier that day.

Krewson then gathered a stack of papers she was given by those demonstrators and began reading their requests, which included their ideas for how the city should spend their budget. Among them was defunding the police department.

"They presented some papers to me about how they wanted the budget to be spent. Here is one that wanted $50 million to go to CureViolence, $75 million to go to affordable housing, $60 million to go to health and human services, and have $0 go to the police," Krewson said in the now-deleted Facebook Live video.

She followed up the proposals by then reading the person's name and address, which was bleeped out in the video available on Twitter.

In a statement released Friday, the St. Louis mayor apologized for reading out the contact information and said she did not mean "harm" on the demonstrators.

"In an effort to be transparent and accessible to the public during the Covid-19 pandemic, for more than three months now I have been doing tri-weekly community updates on Facebook. Tonight, I would like to apologize for identifying individuals who presented letters to me at City Hall as I was answering a routine question during one of my updates earlier today. While this is public information, I did not intend to cause distress or harm to anyone. The post has been removed," Krewson said in her statement.

Newsweek reached out to the mayor's office for further comment, but did not receive a response back in time for publication.

Two St. Louis officials took to Twitter to voice their disapproval of the mayor's comments. Megan Ellyia Green, an alderwoman on the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, said: "Hey Lyda Krewson. So not cool to doxx my constituents who support #DefundThePolice on your FB live today. It's a move designed to silence dissent, and it's dangerous. #DoBetter."

Alderwoman Cara Spencer posted a tweet that read: "No leader should resort to intimidation of the residents they were elected to represent."

After Krewson removed the video and issued an apology on Twitter, stating she did not intend to harm demonstrators, Green again criticized the mayor's action and called for Krewson's to step down.

"It's not about intent. It's about impact. The apology takes no responsibility for actions and no commitment to do differently in the future. Lyda Krewson put our residents at risk and needs to resign," Green said.