Ferguson Business Owner: Police Prevented Me From Returning to My Store While It was being Looted and Did Nothing to Stop the Crime

Sonny Dayan, owner of St. Louis Cordless Communications, tells National Review Online police prevented him from returning to his business while it was being looted and the police did nothing to stop the crime.

Dayan says police would not let him walk down the street to his business, a cell-phone service and supply store, as they were letting looters run through the streets and into stores. “As far as I know my business is burning down, I’m getting calls from the alarm left and right, you got to get here, you got to get here,” he says. “They [the alarm company] called the police. The police said, ‘We cannot come help you because it’s not our job anymore. We got kicked out.’”

He says police told him they would call him when it was safe to return to his store, but never did. When he did make it back to his store a few hours later on Saturday morning, he found several Ferguson residents standing guard and waiting to help him clean up. He says police came into his store on Saturday to make sure he was okay, but offered no explanation as to why they would not protect his store. “My store or my business, it’s nothing that they worry about,” he says. “It’s the last thing they worry about.”

Missouri State Highway Patrol captain Ron Johnson told Fox News police backed away from protesters to ease the tension that started when rioters threw rocks at the cops early Saturday morning.

Dayan says he doesn’t anticipate more looting at his store, but will put away his inventory in safes just in case. “I only have one piece of window left, if they want to break that, fine,” he says. “It really affected our business, affected my cash flow, affected my ability to pay the bills on time.”

Police were stationed across the street at the Ferguson Market and Liquor store for much of the night, but left the store’s parking lot without informing the market, which had closed several hours earlier.

The market’s owners requested a police presence after local police released information tying Michael Brown to a robbery at the market, says Jay Kanzler, the attorney for the store’s owners. He says police left the parking lot, stood down, and watched as looters attacked the store. He says he eventually arrived at the store alongside the owners at about 3:30 a.m. on Saturday and stood alongside Ferguson residents to keep looters from coming back into the store. Kanzler says he doesn’t know when the business will be able to reopen and does not know if they will be attacked again.

“Everyone’s concerned and everyone’s on edge,” Kanzler says. “And given what happened last night, there’s a very low level of confidence that unless they [law enforcement officers] drastically change their approach to the late night activities, there’s a low level of confidence that they’ll be able to stop it from reoccurring.”

Kapeli Wiggins, a Ferguson resident, says he thinks the violence and looting will only continue, but says there is one way to make it stop. “This s*** [is] going to keep going on until they get on the TV and say that cop lost his badge or he’s in jail,” Wiggins says. “That’s like magic, like a [off] switch.”