There isn’t much point to holding a protest in your basement, as there’s no one there to appreciate your passion or point. This is why people take protests to the streets, where they are entitled to express their grievances. Yes, there are limits imposed, of dubious constitutional merit, but that aside, the message of protest is conveyed.

But then, if the purpose is to let people know of your grievance, then why not the mall? After all, that’s where the people are, plus it’s indoors, climate controlled and has a food court. So, to the Galleria they went.

Like many mass arrests in St. Louis County, the events leading up to a police roundup at the Galleria Mall last Saturday began with a peaceful protest.

Demonstrators gathered and marched at the mall, located just outside the city with the highest rate of police killings in the U.S, in response to the not-guilty verdict of former police officer Jason Stockley. They were there to call out law enforcement’s ubiquitous use of violence against Black bodies without consequence — to disrupt business as usual. But the nonviolent act ended with a militarized police response, the overnight detention of 22 people, and numerous criminal charges.

“Nonviolent” is a relative word, unfortunately. No matter how worthy your cause, how sincere your grievance, how peaceful your protest when left to your own devices, malls raise issues that aren’t easily ignored. They are private property. They are not yours to use for protest, no matter how worthy the cause.

Officers say they were asked to intervene by the mall’s management because protesters were impeding shoppers. They allege most people followed orders to leave while some remained. At that point, they started to make arrests.

That’s going to happen. Did you not anticipate that a protest on someone else’s property might present obstacles? Does the word “trespass” cease to apply if you’re sufficiently righteous? While the streets may belong to the people, the mall does not.

But Karla Frye wasn’t merely arrested as a trespasser, a rioter, an arrest-resistor.

According to a charging document submitted to a grand jury by St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch on Sunday, Frye committed a assault in the third degree by jumping onto the back of officer John Blake. The document lists Blake as a “special victim,” a designation in Missouri’s criminal statute that is reserved for specific groups of vulnerable people and increases the penalties for anyone who assaults or commits a hate crime against them.

When cries for the creation of “hate crimes” to enhance otherwise illegal conduct rang out, who could have possibly seen police included as a vulnerable class? Of course it should apply to those whom you see as vulnerable and marginalized, but could it possibly creep beyond the scope of your feelings?

Missing from the charging document, however, is any mention of Blake’s chokehold on Frye’s 13-year-old grandson, and that Frye was reportedly trying to save him. One photo of the scene appears to show Frye on the officer’s back, but a photo taken at another angle shows something else entirely. In it, Blake’s arm is gripped tightly around the young boy’s neck. A distressed Frye has one arm — not her entire body — slung around Blake’s shoulders. She appears to be pleading with the officer to let her grandson go.

There are things that no cop will tolerate. Not in St. Louis. Not anywhere. Touching them, uninvited, is one such thing. Characterizing it as “one arm — not her entire body — slung around Blake’s shoulders,” as if to trivialize the fact that Frye physically touched the officer, interfered with his arrest of her grandson, doesn’t change what happened.

It’s completely understandable that a grandmother would put herself physically on the line for her grandson. There may be some who question what a 13-year-old was doing there in the first place, but there is no reason why a young person shouldn’t be as concerned, and involved, in the protestation of grievances as anyone else. Then again, it carries with it the potential that if a protest goes south, it will impact a 13-year-old as it would anyone else. Weighing the risks is part of the calculus. Much as civic involvement for a young man is laudable, putting him at risk may be something a grandmother should ponder at great length.

Yet, Frye’s totally understandable reaction to seeing her grandson with a cop’s arm around his neck doesn’t change the cop-rule that you do not touch a cop, and that if you do, there will be consequences. Indeed, the fact that she wasn’t beaten is remarkable. That could very easily have happened, and it may well have been the fairly likely first consequence, followed up by the enhanced charges.

Now that the pressure of the moment is over, however, McCulloch has an opportunity to calm down, assess his actions and give some greater thought to whether his prosecution of Karla Frye is a wise choice. This is not to suggest that touching a cop, even a grandmother in defense of her grandson, should be ignored or wiped away in adjectives and emotion.

In the same vein, enhancing the prosecution of a women engaged in the understandable protection of her grandson, who caused no harm to the officer, is precisely the overkill that gives rise to the grievances against your office, your cops. To pursue these charges against Karla Frye is to demonstrate the need for these protests, to confirm that you are as bad as everyone believes you to be.

Like all local prosecutors responsible for charging decisions, McCulloch is tasked with interpreting and applying state law in the pursuit of public safety.

By charging Frye with assault, he used that authority to define what Frye did as a form of violence, as opposed to classifying the violence displayed by officers as such.

By challenging the relative violence of the police in enforcing their order to disperse with Frye’s defense of her grandson, the issue is conflated and clouded. They are not quite comparable things. Yet, McCulloch has the charging authority to allow for sober mercy, to recognize that in the heat of a protest, an understandable if not quite sound choice was made by a woman to protect her grandson.

In St. Louis County, it is abundantly clear whose side the law is on. But if Frye is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, it will be a turning point for protesters in a place where they are already treated as enemies of the police.

What will it be, McCulloch? Pursue this prosecution and you prove them right. Again.