Woman Arrested Outside St. Paul Church on Easter Sunday Has Charges Dismissed

Emily Phillips, 33, spent Easter Sunday behind bars after being arrested across the street from St. Paul’s Cities Church, only to have Judge Maria Mitchell dismiss all charges the next morning after finding no probable cause.

Phillips was charged with committing offensive, noisy or obscene behavior and interrupting a religious service. Phillips would yell slogans like “Love thy neighbor require paperwork for Jesus.”

The first protest at Cities Church on Jan. 18 netted almost 40 arrests after activists got wind that St. Paul ICE Field Director David Easterwood served as a pastor. DOJ prosecutors under President Donald Trump have charged the protesters, dubbed “The Righteous 39,” led by Black Lives Matter co-founders and ordained ministers Nekima Levy Armstrong and Monique Cullars Doty, under the FACE Act.

Phillips stood outside the Ramsey County Courthouse taking a drag off her vape when she described the escalating verbal standoff she had with St. Paul cops.

“There’s an officer who just really was unhappy about the protest, and he was kind of the officer in charge,” said Phillips. “At one point he told me, ‘I would have already arrested you if it was up to me.'”

St. Paul Police Department spokesperson Alyssa Arcand told MSR that police were responding to a noise complaint at 8:35 a.m.

“The protesters were using a bullhorn and yelling loudly, disrupting the church services,” said Arcand. “The protesters were given numerous announcements by officers to stop, or they would be cited and possibly arrested.”

Phillips said the officer was texting back and forth with his sergeant over questions of noise levels, ultimately telling protesters they would be arrested if they could be heard from either 50 feet away or from inside Cities Church.

“And I was like, well, what’s the decibel level? And he was like, well, there is no decibel level. It’s just what is reasonable,” said Phillips. Someone in the protest group then looked up the city’s actual standard. “They’re 65 by the way, by a city board,” Phillips said.

Rather than push back, Phillips said she tried to comply with every directive St. Paul issued. Phillips walked across the street to a grassy median to turn off her megaphone, using only her natural voice.

“I brought the speaker with me off, and he was like, ‘You brought the speaker?'” Phillips said. “I was like, ‘it’s not on. It’s my property.’ But he was really upset about that, and he was texting about how I had brought my speaker to the side, even though it was off, and telling me how he already had cause to arrest me.”

“The majority of the group complied,” said Arcand. “One person, an adult female, did not comply and was arrested by officers for interference with religious observance.”

Phillips had plenty of run-ins with federal agents, sheriffs and local cops. DHS knows Phillips on a first-name basis inside and outside the Whipple. Three months ago, TYT posted Phillips’ video of her berating an ICE agent leaving the Target on E. Lake Street. “Smile Nazi. Smile Nazi,” Phillips said as the agent kicked away the five red Target carts used to block his car. “Do you like torturing people because you can’t please them? Do you make people cry because you can’t make them moan, little bitch.”

An ICE agent pulled a gun on her after forcing her to drive backwards down a one-way alley in Richfield last January. And when an HSI agent ran out to retrieve his car after Jason Chavez called to have it towed, Phillips was there to give him a piece of her mind. “Your mother should have swallowed. Go fuck yourself,” said Phillips. “Stop kidnapping our neighbors.”

Despite turning off her megaphone, an arrest came when she was momentarily quiet.

“Eventually they came over and they were just like, ‘All right, we’re arresting you.’ And I was like, wait — I wasn’t even yelling at that point. It was ridiculous. Yeah, it was a very confusing arrest,” said Phillips.

The confusion apparently extended to the cops who did her intake inside Ramsey County Jail.

“The officers that received me at the county looked at the charges, and they were like, ‘I’ve never seen any of these before,'” said Phillips. “And even when they were searching them, because I was listening to them search my charges, they weren’t coming up as anything. So they had to choose what to put them as, because they weren’t coming up in the database as anything. So the people literally don’t get brought in on these charges. This guy just wanted to do a resume.”

Activist William Kelly, who was charged in connection with the Jan. 18 protests, said that her arrest was more about a power trip than enforcing city laws.

“What we have is a case of an officer being butt hurt. She did not commit a crime. She was practicing her First Amendment right to peacefully assemble on a public Minnesota street,” said Kelly. “The officer was mad that she questioned his authority, so he knew there would be no charges. He knew that there would be no case, but he arrested her anyways, because the process is the punishment.”

Civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong took issue with Police Chief Axel Henry and city leadership after the arrest.

“I saw the videos of them lined up, not trying to be aggressive, trying to act like an extension of the Trump administration,” said Armstrong. “Shame on St. Paul Police and Mayor Her. We need an apology.”

Phillips’ attorney Trisha Pohland said that her firm would represent other protesters at no cost should they be arrested going forward.

“We are representing not only Emily, but any of the protesters that get arrested, we are representing them for free,” said Pohland.

Phillips said she has no regrets for doing what she has always done, albeit sometimes in a vulgar manner: telling cops or agents exactly how she feels about them.

“When David Easterwood is still the pastor there, they don’t just get to scare people away by putting charges on people. That’s not how free speech and a free society is supposed to work,” said Phillips. “If they are truly Christians who love thy neighbor, they should demand that he no longer be a pastor there. And as far as I’m concerned, all of the administration of that church is complicit.”

Cities Church Lead Pastor Jonathan Parnell expressed disappointment at Judge Mitchell’s decision, telling the Star Tribune that protesters held signs with obscenities and yelled harassing comments at families and individual worshippers.

“I did all of the things that they told me to because I did not want to get arrested,” Phillips said. “It is unsurprising that I was arrested at Cities Church. I knew going into this that no matter how minimal I thought my actions were, they were going to make a big deal of it — because they’re already pressing charges against 39 people for peacefully protesting beforehand.”