Wednesday night was supposed to be a celebration. A group of St. Louis teenagers had just been sworn into the St. Louis City Youth Council — a program where young people meet monthly to brainstorm solutions to city problems, then pass their ideas on to lawmakers. Minutes after the ceremony, the kids got a hands-on lesson in one of the city’s problems nobody had scheduled.
Criminal defense attorney Talmage Newton IV was there because his daughter is on the council. After the event, he noticed some of the teens — his daughter included — walking to their cars alone, so he hurried to catch up. That’s when he spotted a man he describes as looking addled and possibly on drugs making a “beeline” for the group. “Oh boy,” Newton thought. “Whatever he’s on is some good shit.”
Newton raised his briefcase as a buffer. The man grabbed it, sat down on the sidewalk, and started screaming what Newton calls “wild nonsense.” As Newton tried to keep the situation from escalating, he waved over a security guard who had stepped out of City Hall. Her response: shout “Call 911!” and go back inside.
Meanwhile Newton was doing the math in his head. If the man was on PCP or something similar, things could get very bad, very fast — with his daughter and a bunch of other kids standing right there. Eventually the man’s grip loosened, Newton got his briefcase back, and the man wandered off toward Tucker Boulevard, where he started banging on parked cars. Everyone else retreated toward the building.
Police arrived, talked the man down, and EMS took him to a hospital. No arrest was made.
Newton later tracked down the guard to ask what happened. She told him, “I’m an inside guard.” When he asked whether she’d even called 911, she didn’t answer — just said, “This isn’t my job.”
That explanation didn’t satisfy anyone. Aldermanic President Megan Green’s office, which runs the youth council program, sent an apology email to the families and started asking questions about what City Hall security is actually responsible for. A spokesperson confirmed the guard was a city marshal and said she fell short by refusing to act because the incident happened on the sidewalk outside the building rather than inside it. The office says it’s brought the reports to the SLMPD sergeant who oversees the marshals, expects “appropriate action,” and is working to clarify safety measures for future meetings. Both staffers involved in the event were inside cleaning up when it happened.
Newton says his daughter was “unnerved but not panicked” — these kids all live in the city, after all. But he’s got a name for the attitude the night displayed. “The not-my-problemism of the city,” he calls it. On a night meant to teach young people how government works, it may have been the most honest lesson of all.
