Civilian Oversight Board Overseeing St. Louis Police Fails to Meet

The former FBI agent hired to lead the effort blames City Counselor Sheena Hamilton for stalled progress

Jul 18, 2023 at 12:43 pm

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The board tasked with investigating police misconduct has not met in almost a year.

ROSALIND EARLY

The board tasked with investigating police misconduct in the city has not met in almost a year.

The group of St. Louisans tasked with investigating allegations of police misconduct has not met in almost a year.

The St. Louis Civilian Oversight Board last met on August 15, 2022, according to a member of the board. The member says they attempted to meet in September as well, but that meeting was canceled.

Created in 2015, the Civilian Oversight Board almost always agreed with the police in its first few years. But last August, Mayor Tishaura Jones signed a Board of Aldermen bill that supposedly reimagined and gave enhanced powers to the board, including the ability to subpoena the police department. The bill also created a new Division of Civilian Oversight, under which the board was placed. "Accountability is the first step of building trust," Jones said at the time.

However, Matthew Brummund, a former FBI agent who until May was in charge of the Division of Civilian Oversight, says that as far as he can tell, civilian oversight of the police is even less than it was prior to August, when Jones signed the new oversight powers into law.

And Brummund says it’s one of Jones' appointees, City Counselor Sheena Hamilton, preventing the board from doing its job.

"Any time I asked for information, it would be the City Counselor's Office saying, 'No, you can't have that report.' They were the ones that were really blocking it," says Brummund. "[They're] saying this will open us up to liability, this will open us up to — you know, ‘We're not going to give a roadmap to a lawsuit.’"

As soon as Jones announced the new accountability efforts, police unions sued to stop the oversight portion from taking effect. A judge issued an injunction, which prevented the board from meeting.

However, those legal issues were resolved in March, when a judge tossed out the unions' suit. But in the almost four months since then, nothing has moved. Three of the nine positions on the police oversight board are vacant. Two other members are serving beyond their intended term.

"It just became roadblock after roadblock," says Brummund, who resigned May 31. "That's part of the reason I left. I don't want the appearance that this is actually happening when it's not."

Yet Department of Public Safety Communication Director Monte Chambers says that the board's failure to meet from March and May is on Brummund. "Why the former commissioner did not convene any meetings in the months following the dissolution of the injunction remains unclear," Chambers says.

He adds, "The Public Safety Department will work in collaboration with the Civilian Oversight Board to begin meeting again as soon as possible, and there are several new applications being vetted currently. "

St. Louis Police led the nation in police shootings per capita from 2010 to 2016, and recent months have seen evidence that the trend continues, including a 16-year-old boy who was killed last September. In March, a city officer shot a 19-year-old pointing a weapon at police after leading them on a chase into Jennings. (The most recent civilian to be killed during a police interaction, however, died after being tased, not shot.)

This story has been updated with comments from a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety.