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St. Louis Wants $300K Back from Police Sergeant Who Won Discrimination Suit | St. Louis Metro News | St. Louis

Published

2 years ago

June 21, 2023

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click to enlarge DOYLE MURPHY Heather Taylor, deputy director of the city’s Department of Public Safety

In March, a jury awarded former St. Louis police Sergeant Heather Taylor $300,000 after finding that police department leaders retaliated against her for speaking to the media.

Now the city is trying to get that money back.

The City Counselor’s Office filed a motion for a new trial not long after the verdict, and last month, the city introduced a new gambit. They say that Taylor is in possession of 400 audio recordings, some of which would have been relevant to the trial but that Taylor didn’t disclose. They say Taylor wrongly concealed the audio files — leading to “serious violations” of its “discovery rights.”

The motion is the latest example of the hardball tactics being deployed by City Counselor Sheena Hamilton, who was appointed by Mayor Tishaura Jones but has been willing to take tough positions that don’t always jive with Jones’ public image.

Taylor gained a high profile with local journalists and activists for speaking out about racism in the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department as head of the union representing Black officers. In 2020, she retired and said she was moving to Florida — only to be brought back by Jones as deputy director of the city’s Department of Public Safety. Now another Jones appointee is seeking to claw back the money she was awarded.

In its filing, the city states that the jury reached the $300,000 award after hearing testimony from Taylor in which she gave her “impressions of conversations and interactions” she had with supervisors, but that the jury would have benefited from hearing recordings of the conversations themselves, which Taylor possesses.

Taylor brought the original suit in 2017, saying that she’d spoken to St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger a year prior in her capacity as the president for the Ethical Society of Police. Messenger’s article described how the police had turned off its Shot Spotter gunfire-detection technology because, as Taylor said, “the bill hadn’t been paid.”

Taylor alleged that department leaders retaliated against her for speaking to Messenger, even though many white officers had spoken to the press in a similar manner without reprimand. Taylor said that she was ostracized within the department and generally demeaned by supervisors, talked over, interrupted and forced to raise her hand to speak at meetings.

Attorneys for the city say that one recording is of a meeting that Taylor had with a St. Louis police lieutenant colonel during which park rangers aired grievances to their supervisors. During the trial, Taylor testified she was treated like a child by the lieutenant colonel. But the city says the recordings show the lieutenant colonel acted appropriately. (In their own court filings, Taylor’s attorneys say the tape of the meeting actually bolsters Taylor’s account, rather than contradicting it.)

The recordings came to the city’s attention earlier this year when Taylor made them available to attorneys representing Milton Green, a Black former St. Louis City police officer who was shot by a colleague. His attorneys then disclosed them to the city.

In Green’s case, the city argued that the white officer who shot Green has qualified immunity, protecting him from repercussions of the shooting. Green’s civil suit, which a judge dismissed in March, is on appeal.

Now the tapes Taylor provided are part of the city’s argument that her case was wrongly decided. But Green’s attorney believes it was the city who erred in not obtaining them sooner.

“They should have asked her for these things years ago,” says Javad Khazaeli of Khazaeli Wyrsch, who is representing Green in the suit filed more than four years ago.

“These are documents the city had an obligation to ask their employees about in the Milton Green case,” Khazaeli says. “They failed to do that. When the employee [Taylor] decided to do the right thing and produce them, they punished her for it.”

Court filings made by the city accuse Taylor of concealing the recordings during discovery, though they make no mention of explicitly asking for such materials during that phase of the suit.

Taylor’s attorneys call the city’s arguments about the tapes disingenuous. The city, for example, makes a point of noting that the recordings capture Taylor saying positive things about Chief Sam Dotson to a reporter upon Dotson’s retirement, suggesting it undercuts her current criticisms of him. But Taylor’s attorneys point out in their filings that it would have been “grossly inappropriate” for her to do otherwise. Her “bland statements of well-wishes” don’t disprove the discrimination she faced, they say.

The court filings only describe in detail a handful of the 400 recordings. The contents of the others are not publicly known, though one court filing made by attorneys for the city says that the “vast majority of them appear to be conversations between her and other officers or citizens.”

“None of the recordings produced to [the city] include any indication that any of the other individuals were aware they were being recorded or consented to being recorded,” the city wrote in their filing, adding that some of the recorded conversations appear to be ones in which Taylor was not one of the speakers.

The city itself has frequently been under fire for not making disclosures of its own. Most recently, the Detention Facility Oversight Board, which is supposed to oversee jail operations, said that the city’s head of corrections should resign in part for withholding records.

“The city does not routinely produce documents they are required to,” Khazaeli says. “This is a pattern and practice.”

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Fenton Man Charged in Sword Attack on Roommate

Published

1 year ago

May 22, 2024

Natural Bridge

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A warrant is out for a Fenton man’s arrest after he allegedly attacked his roommate with a sword.

Police say that on Sunday, Angelus Scott spoke openly about “slicing his roommate’s head” before he grabbed a sword, raised it up and then swung it down at the roommate.

The roommate grabbed Scott’s hand in time to prevent injury. When police arrived at the scene, they found the weapon used in the assault.

The sword in question was a katana, which is a Japanese sword recognizable for its curved blade.

This isn’t the first time a samurai-style sword has been used to violent effect in St. Louis. In 2018, a man hearing voices slaughtered his ex-boyfriend with a samurai sword. His mother said he suffered from schizoaffective disorder.

As for Scott, 35, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office was charged yesterday with two felonies, assault first degree and armed criminal action. The warrant for his arrest says he is to be held on $200,000 bond.

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Caught on Video, Sheriff Says He’s Ready to ‘Turn It All Over’ to Deputy

Published

1 year ago

May 22, 2024

Natural Bridge

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Video of St. Louis Sheriff Vernon Betts taken by a former deputy suggests that the sheriff has a successor in mind to hand the reins of the department over to, even as Betts is in an increasingly heated campaign for reelection.

“I ain’t here for all this rigmarole,” Betts says in the video while seated behind his desk at the Carnahan Courthouse. “The Lord sent me here to turn this department around and I’m doing the best I can and I think I’ve done a good job. I’ve got about eight months and I’m going to qualify for my fourth pension.”

He goes on, “Right now I can walk up out of here and live happily ever after and forget about all this…and live like a king.”

The sheriff then says his wife has been in Atlanta looking at houses and that the other deputy in the room, Donald Hawkins, is someone Betts has been training “to turn it all over to him.”

Asked about the video, Betts tells the RFT, “My future plans are to win reelection on August 6th by a wide margin and to continue my mission as the top elected law enforcement official to make St. Louis safer and stronger. Serving the people of St. Louis with integrity, honor and professional law enforcement qualifications is a sacred responsibility, and I intend to complete that mission.”

The video of Betts was taken by Barbara Chavers, who retired from the sheriff’s office in 2016 after 24 years of service. Chavers now works security at Schnucks at Grand and Gravois. Betts’ brother Howard works security there, too.

Chavers tells the RFT that she was summoned to Betts’ office last week after Betts’ brother made the sheriff aware that she was supporting Montgomery. It was no secret: Chavers had filmed a Facebook live video in which she said she was supporting Betts’ opponent Alfred Montgomery in the election this fall. “Make the judges safe,” she says in the video, standing in front of a large Montgomery sign on Gravois Avenue. “They need a sheriff who is going to make their courtrooms safe.”

In his office, even as Chavers made clear she was filming him, Betts told Chavers he was “flabbergasted” and “stunned” she was supporting Montgomery.

“I don’t know what I did that would make you go against the preacher man,” he says, referring to himself. He then refers to Montgomery as “ungodly.”

Betts goes on to say that not long ago, he was walking in his neighborhood on St. Louis Avenue near 20th Street when suddenly Montgomery pulled up in his car and, according to Betts, shouted, “You motherfucker, you this, you that. You’re taking my signs down.”

Montgomery tells the RFT that he’s never interacted with Betts outside of candidate forums and neighborhood meetings.

“I don’t think anyone with good sense would do something like that to a sitting sheriff,” Montgomery says.

Montgomery has had campaign signs missing and on at least two occasions has obtained video of people tearing them down. (Chavers notes that the sign that she filmed her original Facebook video in front of is itself now missing.)

One man who lives near Columbus Square says that he recently put out two Montgomery signs, which later went missing. “If they keep taking them, I’ll keep putting them up,” he said.

Betts says he has nothing to do with the missing signs. In the video Chavers filmed in Betts’ office, Betts says that his campaign isn’t in a spot where it needs to resort to tearing down opponents’ signs.

“If you sit here long enough, a man is getting ready to come across the street from City Hall bringing me $500, today,” Betts says. “I’m getting that kind of support. I don’t need to tear down signs.”

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St. Louis to Develop First Citywide Transportation Plan in Decades

Published

1 year ago

May 21, 2024

Natural Bridge

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The City of St. Louis is working to develop its first citywide mobility plan in decades, Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office announced Tuesday. This plan seeks to make it easier for everyone — drivers, pedestrians, bikers and public transit users — to safely commute within the city.

The plan will bring together other city projects like the Brickline Greenway, Future64, the MetroLink Green Line, and more, “while establishing new priorities for a safer, more efficient and better-maintained transportation network across the City,” according to the release.

The key elements in the plan will be public engagement, the development of a safety action plan, future infrastructure priorities and transportation network mapping, according to Jones’ office.

The overarching goals are to create a vision for citywide mobility, plan a mixture of short and long-term mobility projects and to develop improved communication tools with the public to receive transportation updates. In recent years, both people who use public transit and cyclists have been outspoken about the difficulties — and dangers — of navigating St. Louis streets, citing both cuts to public transit and traffic violence.

To garner public input and participation for the plan, Jones’ office said there will be community meetings, focus groups and a survey for residents to share their concerns. The city will also be establishing a Community Advisory Committee. Those interested in learning more should check out at tmp-stl.com/

“Everyone deserves to feel safe when getting around St. Louis, whether they’re driving, biking, walking or taking public transit,” Jones said in a news release. “Creating a comprehensive transportation and mobility plan allows us to make intentional and strategic investments so that moving around St. Louis for jobs, education, and entertainment becomes easier, safer and more enjoyable.”

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