St. Louis Police Hit a Church Sign —- And Then Covered Their Tracks

When the Rev. Mark Miller discovered that the century-old welcome sign in front of his church had been destroyed last August, he initially assumed it was vandalism.

It wouldn't have been the first time Westminster Presbyterian Church was targeted. Just a year before, in fact, more than a dozen windows and a door on the church building in St. Louis' Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood had been broken. And that the Pride flag in front of the church disappeared this time didn't seem like a coincidence.

In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch soon after the sign's destruction, Miller noted the circumstances: Tire tracks were visible heading towards the sign, and no swerve marks suggested the crash was unintentional. But if someone crashed into the brick edifice with a vehicle, they'd also taken surprising care to clean up. "The crazy thing is there's no debris from a car," he told the daily.

It wasn't until a friendly neighbor got in touch that Miller learned something even crazier.

The vehicle that hit the sign had been a St. Louis police SUV.  But rather than reach out to explain what had happened, much less apologize for it, police cleared the scene — and then, Miller says, failed to communicate anything.

The proof came from Francisco Gonzales, who's lived across the street from the church for six years. Living on a third-floor unit at the corner of Union and Delmar, Gonzales has gotten used to car crashes on the streets below. "It happens so often, we don't jump out of our bed to look out the window," he says.

But that night, August 15, 2023, was different. After initially hearing a loud boom around 7:30 p.m., Gonzales says he heard a significant police presence responding to the scene, to the point that he took a look — and saw a police SUV had crashed into the neighboring church's sign. His photos, which he shared with both Miller and, recently, the RFT, capture the aftermath.

Gonzales shared his photos with Miller a few days after the crash. "He was very surprised," Gonzales recalls.

Miller says, at that point, he'd been trying for days to get a police officer to come out and take a report, to no avail. He waited one night for hours. Yet never once had anyone suggested the police might be the source of the damage.

Now, what might surprise someone not accustomed to dealing with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department is that even after Miller had photographic evidence that a police vehicle was to blame, the city continued to give him the runaround.

A full week after the accident, when police still hadn't shown up to take a report or explain what had happened, Miller went to the police substation in person. This time, when they said they couldn't take a report, confronted them with the photos. They sent him away — but he got a call in 30 minutes.

An officer told him a brake line on the police SUV had broken, and rather than hit another car, the officer steered onto the church lawn. Even so, the officer still didn't take a report, but said he needed to file a complaint with the Citizens' Service Bureau — and after that, the city counselor's office would supposedly be in touch in a few weeks.

He did as told, but no one was. Months passed. No one reached out.

In January, after a police SUV crashed into Bar:PM, Miller reached out to Mayor Tishaura Jones. "As of this email - we still cannot get a police report - a CSSB report - or a word from the city counselors office," he wrote. "I have attached pictures and a report of what happened. This report was sent to Chief Tracy on October 8th as well. After seeing the apology to the bar owners - I decided to reach out to you directly and see if we can settle this matter." Someone in Jones' office responded saying they'd look into the situation — but two more weeks passed without word.


In fact, it wasn't until the RFT reached out yesterday that an investigator with the city's law department finally reached out to Miller to help the church with a claims process. "We regret that you have experienced an unpleasant incident," the email stated.

Reached for comment, a spokesman for the public safety department replied with one sentence: "The Police Department remains in contact with Rev. Miller to resolve this matter."

Miller is frustrated. "I love being in St. Louis," he says. "I've been here 21 years." He also knows the stress police are under, and says he worries about their mental health. "We don't do enough about that," he says.

Still, he believes police attempted to cover up the damage they caused. He's also frustrated that six months have passed since their vehicle caused what he estimates is $20,000 in damage.

"This has gone on long enough," he says.

It is certainly a footnote in a bigger story, one about police who can't seem to stop running into things, and a city that doesn't know how to handle it when they do. But when Miller first reached out to the Post-Dispatch, back when he thought the knocked-down sign was a case of vandalism, perhaps from someone who also took the church's Pride flag, they quickly published a story.

Miller followed up days later to explain that it was actually a police vehicle that had hit the church's sign, and that a neighbor had photos.

He never got a response.

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