Members of the St. Louis Detention Facilities Oversight Board want Mayor Tishaura Jones and interim Public Safety Director Charles Coyle to ask Corrections Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah to resign by Friday.
In a letter to Jones and the city’s interim public safety director, board members claim Clemons-Abdullah has denied them access to the St. Louis City Justice Center and prevented them from investigating complaints of alleged misconduct by jail employees and excessive force complaints.
The oversight board cannot make recommendations for changes at the jail if its members are blocked from entering, board chair Janis Mensah said.
“We need data, things that can be written down on paper. We need our investigators to be allowed inside the facility,” Mensah said. “It has been one year and we have not been able to investigate a single complaint.”
The St. Louis Board of Aldermen approved an ordinance last year that established the nine-member advisory board to investigate complaints of misconduct within the city jail. Board members also can request to visit the jail, which some members said Clemons-Abdullah is consistently blocking them from doing.
Mensah said earlier this year they were forcibly removed from the Justice Center while touring the facility after a detainee began talking to them about the inhumane conditions he was enduring at the jail.
Board member Mike Milton, who also has been denied access to the jail, said the ability of the board members to do their jobs is in question because they cannot fulfill their duties.
“There's been an intentional push to block me and another member, Barbara Baker, from receiving jail access. It's been stated, because of our professional duties, that we provide some service to the jail, which is completely not true,” Milton said.
He said that officials told him they would not allow him inside the facility because the organization he works for provides services to the jail, but he said his organization provides pretrial release services once people leave jail.
Milton wants Clemons-Abdullah to release documents on the jail's conditions and any complaints of use of force, so investigators can provide answers to detainees and families about their complaints.
“We've been asking for information since November 2022,” he said. “We've been asking for the use of force reports. We've been asking for videos, etcetera and we haven’t received it.”
The board is particularly interested in documentation from the commissioner about updated plans, policies and procedures on ways to respond to and prevent deaths in the jail. The board said in a June 5 statement that it needs the updates to make recommendations that could prevent deaths at the jail. It noted that six detainees died in custody between April and September of last year.
“There needs to be collaboration with us on oversight, there needs to be collaboration and honesty about what the policies are, and are they being followed, are they being enforced, and are they being changed?,” Mensah said.
In a recent letter to the oversight board, the city’s Criminal Justice Coordinating council told its members that it plans to train them on jail procedures and will allow them to visit the jail while in training.
Every time board members try to schedule training with the city’s counselor’s office or the corrections commissioner, they do not schedule the training or do not respond to members' requests, Milton said.
Clemons-Abdullah could not be reached for comment. A spokesperson from the public safety department said Jones and Coyle will respond to the board's request that they urge Clemons-Abdullah to resign by Friday.
“We need to be able to actually start our work to investigate complaints and we need to know that the results of those investigations will be taken seriously,” said Mensah. “I have no faith that the results of our investigations, if they're allowed to happen, will be taken seriously. We need serious change.”
