Lamar Johnson’s 1994 murder conviction was allegedly steeped in corruption from both police and prosecutors, and new evidence proves that the African-American man is innocent, said St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner in a July 19 court motion to get Johnson a new trial.
Missouri Republicans elected to statewide positions have been moving on up, and now Missouri’s only statewide elected Democrat – state Auditor Nicole Galloway (D-Columbia) – is trying to make her own move up to governor. She surprised no one conversant with Missouri politics when she announc…
State Rep. Bruce Franks Jr. submitted his letter of resignation from his 78th District seat on July 31, and has publicly explained that he needed to address some issues of anxiety and depression. Two young, talented black men have put their names into the hat to be Franks’ successor – Rashee…
When Redditt Hudson was working as an undercover St. Louis cop trying to bust drug dealers in North City, he had a conversation with a father that he’ll never forget.
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On the outside, it seems like a win for the black community and anyone else who would like to see the old boys’ club in St. Louis disrupted and held accountable.
Before Jimmie Edwards became St. Louis’ public safety director, he was a circuit judge and a lawyer. Now he commands the police and fire departments, the jails and various others divisions.
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After hearing the heartbreaking stories of children in inhumane and unsanitary detention centers — that experts are now deeming concentration camps – many St. Louisans have been asking what they can do.
St. Louis County Executive Sam Page has recommended to the St. Louis County Council an impressive list of nominees for a new Justice Services Advisory Board to advise the director of the Department of Justice Services regarding the policies and operations at the County jail in Clayton.
On June 18, Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner sent a letter to the Director of Public Safety Jimmie Edwards and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief John Hayden to inform them of the actions she has taken regarding the racially charged social media posts of current and retired city pol…
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The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department needs to cut out its “cancer,” city residents testified at the aldermanic Public Safety Committee meeting on Monday, June 10. And the cancer is the police officers whose bias is so overwhelming that they’ve shown they can’t be in a position to tak…
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The Political EYE often has found Post-Dispatch reporters, editors and columnists in contempt of the black community and the standards of evidence-based journalism – especially in the paper’s dangerous addiction to huffing swirling rumors of alleged federal investigations into black public o…
Those who think crooked cops run St. Louis must be following the current attack on St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner with interest.
This is a story about names and initials in a federal indictment.
Forgive Political EYE for taking one more bite out of the poison apple of the Steve Stenger federal indictment and guilty plea to corruption while in office as St. Louis County Executive, but there is just so much to say in its 44 pages.
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April 24 marks six years that 25-year-old Cary Terrell Ball Jr. was shot 25 times by St. Louis city police in the neighborhood just north of downtown -- while families and children watched.
The St. Louis Board of Aldermen made history on a few fronts this week. And the EYE agrees with Alderwoman Sharon Tyus, D-1st Ward, that the good news should be told first: for the first time, there are 14 alderwomen and 14 aldermen on the St. Louis Board of Aldermen.
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The Post-Dispatch’s continued reporting on the real, actual, unquestionable and verified federal investigation into St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger and his administration’s awarding of county contracts makes a number of things unmistakably clear.
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Rev. Starsky D. Wilson, president and CEO of Deaconess Foundation and former co-chair of the Ferguson Commission, contributes this week’s guest Political EYE.
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In the earliest hours of Sunday, March 24, as far as the public knew, St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger was a made man. An organization funded and driven by a billionaire was pushing for a statewide ballot initiative that would make him (in effect) mayor for life of a newly merged and…
If you are talking about “debtor jails” in the City of St. Louis, then you are talking about the Medium Security Institution, commonly known as the Workhouse, community organizers said at a panel discussion on Thursday, March 7.
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St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner says a search warrant demanding thousands of records from her office is the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department’s latest attack against her – and one that puts countless people’s privacy at risk.
Some things are so obvious they go without saying. Others, despite their obviousness, need to be said clearly and loudly. Judging by the sheer number of conversations carried out in hushed tones over the past few months, this piece falls into the latter category.
The St. Louis American has endorsed Jamilah Nasheed over incumbent Lewis Reed and Megan Ellyia Green in the Democratic primary for president of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen on Tuesday, March 5. The American asked Nasheed about Mayor Krewson’s endorsement of Lewis Reed, legislation that th…
Board of Alderman President Lewis Reed is facing the challenge of his political career, fighting a two-front battle in the March 5 municipal Democratic primary against state Senator Jamilah Nasheed and Alderwoman Megan Ellyia Green. (Alternate take: Reed is facing a serious challenge from Na…
Forget fentanyl, oxy, and crack. The most powerful drugs damaging St. Louis and America are selfishness and stupidity. And the cut-taxes-at-any-cost movement is a CDC-worthy epidemic of both.
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A debate for Board of Aldermen president on Saturday, January 26 turned into a showdown between the two African-American candidates – incumbent Lewis Reed and challenger Jamilah Nasheed.
One of the big selling points of the city-county merger plan from the Better Together group is that it would eliminate dozens of often-tiny police departments in the county, along with the county and city police departments, and replace them with one, unified metro-city cop shop.
Donna Rogers helps get the crops planted and keeps the money flowing in rural Missouri. The 51-year-old North County single mother of two processes loans from the federal government to farmers, loans used to buy everything from seed for spring planting to new tractors to irrigation systems. …
Maybe because he was born, raised, and still lives in Canada, former Wall Street Journal editorial writer and George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum never bought into the GOP’s inevitable drift into white nationalism.
Christians have been disguising one thing as another at least since 336 AD, when the Roman Emperor Constantine decided to co-opt the Roman solstice celebration of Saturnalia and the “barbarian” Celtic Yule festivities by officially declaring December 25 Jesus’ birthday. That way, Christians …
The St. Louis Police Officers Association (SLPOA) is a “labor union” in the same way the Ku Klux Klan is a “fraternal organization.” The description is technically correct as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go nearly far enough.
In a country that needs to laugh to keep from crying, a Saturday Night Live sketch this last weekend hit our national funny bone with a ballpeen hammer. Called “Them Trumps,” it asked “What if Trump was black?’ and presented President Darius Trump with wife Malika and their children Darius J…
Luther Hall became one of the few black detectives in St. Louis’s racially divided police department despite having cost the city $865,000 in damages in 2010 when a federal jury found that he had beaten a handcuffed suspect in 2008. Since the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners had ruled…
If stupidity were oil, America would be Saudi Arabia. We elected Trump. We believe idiot fake stories on Facebook. We mainline conspiracy theories like a back alley oxy fiend. We think vaccines cause diseases. We love guns, believe climate change is a hoax, and use motorized scooters at the …
The bug-eyed MAGA red hats who pack Donald Trump rallies aren’t attending political events so much as a worship services, with Trump as the angry white tribe’s messiah. And while Trump may be a blovating racist, a narcissistic despot, a cowardly liar, an unfit sociopath, and a gelatinous gr…
In deep-red rural and exurban Missouri, the Democrats’ progressive economic and political policies are pretty popular, while the Democrats themselves are toxic. Democrats can change that if they would go back to being 1938 Democrats and abandon 2018 support for minority rights, abortion righ…
A St. Charles voter sued Rich Chrismer, the director of the St. Charles Election Authority, on Election Day after poll workers said she couldn’t vote without photo ID in the November 6 midterm election – and she won.
Grant Doty, a civil rights attorney in St. Louis, offers a guest Political EYE this week.
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The stakes are so high in Missouri’s U.S. Senate race on November 6 that money is pouring in from everywhere, much of it dark, in an effort to sway the election, which could well determine whether Republicans maintain control of Congress’ most impactful body. Most alarming, to many African A…
It’s a given that U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill is no Kamala Harris or Cory Booker or even Dick Durbin. That’s because Missouri is no California or New Jersey or Illinois. Those states have huge economies driven by dynamic multi-ethnic urban areas. Missouri is a withering state shrinking in imp…
Last week was rough.
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Activist Pastor Cori Bush has fought off two violent attempted rapes in her life – both started off as dates. Alderwoman Megan Ellyia Green was molested at age 3, but no one believed her after she came forward, Green said.
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Charles Jaco – journalist, author, and activist (on Twitter at @charlesjaco1) – who took down U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill’s Republican challenger Todd Akin six years ago in a bruising broadcast interview, has come out of retirement to write for The American before the November 6 general el…
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In Rwanda and Serbia, ethnic cleansing required guns and rivers of blood. In Missouri, all it required was a few strokes of a computer mouse and, poof, thousands of black people disappeared. Which is why most people reading this will probably end up voting for U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay for Congress.
Recently on a work trip, I drove through miles of Arkansas highway. After several minutes, I noticed how even in the biggest city, Little Rock, there were wide swaths of, well, nothing. "I'm amazed that a guy from here imagined himself as the president,” I said.
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“Victims of sexual abuse of any kind deserve to have their voices heard, and Missourians deserve to know if this misconduct has occurred in their communities,” Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley stated on August 23, when announcing an independent review of the Archdiocese of St. Louis reg…
The League of Women Voters is famous for educating the voting public without taking sides. But, look out – this highly motivated, non-partisan group of women voters is taking a side. The League of Women Voters of Missouri held a series of press conferences around Missouri last week endorsing…
Organizer Kayla Reed of WokeVoterSTL and ActionSTL submitted a guest Political EYE column on the successful grassroots effort to defeat incumbent St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch on August 7.
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