St. Louis Jail Oversight Board Vice Chair Resigns With Blistering Letter

“Mayor Tishaura Jones should be ashamed,” writes Janis Mensah

Dec 13, 2023 at 11:34 am

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Courtesy Janis Mensah

Janis Mensah took this photo at hospital shortly after being forcibly removed from the City Justice Center.

The vice chair of the civilian board tasked with overseeing operations at the St. Louis city jail has resigned.

Janis Mensah penned a brief resignation letter addressed to Detention Facility Oversight Board Chair Darryl Gray as well as Ruby Bonner, the deputy commissioner of the Division of Civilian Oversight.

The letter reads in full: "Warden Jennifer Clemons-Abudllah should be fired. The City Justice Center should be closed. Mayor Tishaura Jones should be ashamed. I resign."

Among those copied on the letter are Clemons-Abudllah and Jones, as well as Director of Public Safety Charles Coyle.

The jail has had a rocky past few months, with three detainees dying in a six-week period in the fall. In August, a corrections officer was taken hostage in what people familiar with the situation have described as a riot. Earlier this month, a detainee died by suicide at the facility.

In August, Mensah was arrested at the jail while seeking information about one of those deaths, that of 32-year-old Carlton Bernard.

Bernard was locked up in the jail on third-degree assault charges, filed as the lowest degree of felony. He had allegedly walked up to a woman in Midtown and said, "Are you calling someone on me?" according to the police probable cause statement. He pulled an Airpod out of the woman's ear and struck her on the side of her face.

Bernard, a diabetic, spent the next five months in the City Justice Center before dying from a lack of insulin and dehydration.

The entire oversight board called for Clemons-Adbullah to resign earlier this year, but a rift subsequently formed in which some oversight board members continued to call for her ouster while others were resigned to the situation and sought to work with her as best they could.