The civilian board tasked with overseeing operations at St. Louis’ City Justice Center has split into two divergent groups following Tuesday's 50-minute meeting between three board members and Corrections Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah.
The meeting that took place on the fifth floor of the jail itself, access that members of the board have sought for months. Some members see the meeting as a leap in the right direction. Others say it was just another broken promise from a jail administration they see as stringing the oversight board along.
For months, the Detention Facilities Oversight Board accused Clemons-Abdullah and other city officials of stonewalling their access to jail, which they said they needed in order to investigate detainee deaths and complaints about the conditions there. City ordinance mandates that oversight board members couldn't enter the jail until they completed 40 hours of training, which board members said was an onerous requirement that jail administrators could slow-walk because some of the training needed to be scheduled with them. Nonetheless, board members the Rev. Darryl Gray, Pamela Walker and Ornetha Lewis-Walls did complete the required 40 hours and were approved for what was initially described as a walk-through on Tuesday.
But even though the board members requested two hours in the facility as well as access to five specific sites in the jail, including the medical unit, they were instead escorted to the fifth floor where they spoke with Clemons-Abdullah for 50 minutes.
"I'm gonna be very clear and very candid," Gray says. "The commissioner showed us what she wanted to show us."
Gray adds, "I told her that is unacceptable."
Still, despite all that, Gray says Tuesday represented a major step forward for jail oversight as Clemons-Abdullah said that she would help investigators get what they need to look into complaints about the jail made by detainees and their families.
"I told the commissioner, ‘We don't have to be adversaries. We can work in a collaborative way,’" Gray says.
Pamela Walker is the former acting health director for the city as well as one of the board members who met with Clemons-Abdullah in the jail. She's in agreement with Gray. "We demonstrated we have a right to enter the facility," she says. "It's a small victory, but a victory."
But not every member of the oversight board views Tuesday's events that way. Vice-chair Janis Mensah told the RFT in a text message that Tuesday was "just broken promises and more 'first steps.'"
Board member Mike Milton felt similarly, saying that what was supposed to be a tour of the jail turned into just a conversation with the commissioner, which he says could have been an email.
"After more than a year and a half of fighting for access and information to the jail and its plethora of issues, some [oversight board] members conceded to the city’s illegitimate and unethical demands for additional training," Milton says. "For that they received a salutation from the jail’s commissioner, who subsequently sent them right back outside the jail doors with absolutely nothing. They didn’t talk to staff. They didn’t talk to inmates. They didn’t even see the living conditions."
Milton has been outspoken in saying that jail administration has turned the training requirements into obstacles, pointing specifically to a 16-hour training that needs to be completed at the jail and has proven particularly difficult to schedule. He says that nonetheless he is making his best effort to complete the requirements, but feels he and other members highly critical of Clemons-Abdullah are being iced out.
Both Milton and Mensah were among the first board members to call on Clemons-Abdullah to resign. Gray and Walker subsequently voted along with the rest of the board to call for her resignation as well.
However, Gray and Walker have both conceded that the corrections commissioner is likely there to stay.
"She has stated emphatically she is not going to resign," Walker says, adding that Mayor Tishaura Jones and Director of Public Safety Charles Coyle are "clearly pleased" with both the conditions in the jail and the Clemons-Abudllah's overall performance. "To obsess about her not resigning is a waste of time."
Gray puts it this way: "To simply call for her resignation and to do nothing else does not solve the problem."
Milton and Mensah, on the other hand, remain steadfast that the commissioner needs to resign.
"#FireTheWarden," Milton tweeted Tuesday night.
There are currently 781 detainees in the jail, up from 557 this time last year.
In the past few months the jail has experienced numerous alarming incidents, including three deaths in one six-week period and a corrections officer taken hostage amid what appears to have been a riot. In September, Mensah, the oversight board's vice-chair, was arrested in the jail's lobby after being denied access to the facility, where Mensah was attempting to investigate the death of detainee Carlton Bernard.
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