The latest controversy out of St. 亚洲无码鈥 downtown jail follows a distressingly familiar pattern regarding city law enforcement:
An incident is reported that demands an explanation to the public. But city officials, instead of offering such an explanation, reflexively clamp down on the release of information.
And a mayor who was elected on a bold platform of bringing accountability and transparency to the city鈥檚 jail and police systems stands by in silence.
In this case, jail officials appear to have responded to the embarrassing exposure of an alleged lack of medical treatment to an ailing inmate by cracking down on public defenders who call attention to such lapses.
And then they grossly misled the media and the public about what they were doing.
Jail detainee Kevin O鈥橲haughnessy, 31, is awaiting trial on charges stemming from an armed showdown with police in which he was shot.
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His public defender, seeking O鈥橲haughnessy鈥檚 release from the jail on grounds of medical neglect, obtained a cellphone picture of a cantaloupe-sized bulge on O鈥橲haughnessy鈥檚 side, apparently taken through the glass partition of a jail visiting area.
The Post-Dispatch and the Riverfront Times both published the picture earlier this month as part of coverage detailing his family鈥檚 allegation that O鈥橲haughnessy was being denied necessary medical treatment.
As the Post-Dispatch鈥檚 Katie Kull reported, at least three public defenders were told one day later that they would no longer be allowed to bring their phones with them while consulting in the jail with their clients.
As if the picture was the problem, rather than the apparent medical neglect it documented.
In a brazen bit of official misdirection, a jail spokesman told Kull that the policy wasn鈥檛 created in response to the picture鈥檚 release: 鈥淭he Department of Corrections has a strict, long-standing policy for all visitors to adhere to regarding the usage of cellular phones and recording devices,鈥 the spokesman said. 鈥淭his is not a new policy; it is an existing policy.鈥
No, it isn鈥檛. The actual long-standing policy has been to allow lawyers to bring their phones into the jail if they signed authorization not to take photos or record.
Contrary to the jail spokesman鈥檚 assertion, the blanket prohibition against phones was in fact new, according to a notice posted at the jail one day after the publication of the photo of O鈥橲haughnessy.
That written notice announced that, beginning Jan. 15, 鈥渘o cellular devices or any type of recording/photography devices will be allowed inside the facility. All previous authorizations for cellular devices are no longer being authorized.鈥 The new policy was publicly revealed only because another attorney took a cellphone picture of the sign.
The same jail spokesman who had earlier denied a policy change then acknowledged to the Post-Dispatch that the policy had in fact been 鈥渁dapted.鈥
But even then, the official line was that this was in response to contraband phones being discovered at the jail in recent weeks 鈥 and not聽in response to the embarrassing evidence of medical neglect that had been exposed by a cellphone photo just one day before the notice went up.
Readers can decide for themselves whether that鈥檚 remotely believable or whether St. 亚洲无码鈥 citizens are once again being lied to by their own city.
The written notice announcing the (yes) new jail policy of increased secrecy was signed by Commissioner of Corrections Jennifer Clemmons-Abdullah, whom Mayor Tishaura O. Jones tapped for the post in 2021, early in her term.
Medical neglect has been a frequent allegation at the overcrowded facility under Clemmons-Abdullah鈥檚 tenure, which has also come under scrutiny for other instances of mistreatment of inmates as well as security lapses including doors that don鈥檛 properly lock.
All those issues have been exacerbated by an overarching aversion to transparency by the jail鈥檚 administration 鈥 though, in fairness, the mayor herself set that tone from the time she took office in 2019.
One of Jones鈥 first major acts as mayor was to shutter the city鈥檚 longtime medium-security jail, known as the City Workhouse, which was long notorious for its deteriorating physical state. She made the case for that closure in part with a 2021 tour of the facility that included other elected officials and activists 鈥 but not media.
Consolidating all the city鈥檚 detainees at the newer downtown jail has undoubtedly contributed to the problems there, including riots, inmate deaths and, last fall, a hostage situation involving a jail guard.
The jail鈥檚 refusal to divulge basic information about those issues has prompted anger even from members of the civilian oversight board that Jones appointed as part of her reform agenda. Board members have resigned, and one was arrested in the jail鈥檚 lobby, in protest of the facility鈥檚 stubborn secrecy.
Meanwhile, city police Chief Robert Tracy, another Jones appointee, has also been drawing the curtains at his department.
When a St. 亚洲无码 resident last year pressed for details about Tracy鈥檚 unusual and inherently problematic compensation arrangement (almost half his salary is provided by private sources rather than the city), he got a cease-and-desist letter from the St. 亚洲无码 Police Foundation. This citizen was told to quit asking questions, essentially.
And police still haven鈥檛 released body-camera footage of the bizarre December incident in which a police cruiser crashed into the front of a St. 亚洲无码 gay bar and then officers arrested the owner for confronting them about it.
Jones has generally treated all of this as if it has nothing to do with her. It does; Tracy and Clemmons-Abdullah both serve at the pleasure of the mayor. Her silence is acquiescence (at the very least) to this unwarranted secrecy, and it must stop.