After St. Louis police officers make their weekend arrests, sheriff deputies on Mondays take the new inmates into a room at the City Justice Center where they video conference with judges.
One Monday, three deputies brought 35 men into the conference room. That ratio is asking for trouble, said St. Louis Sheriff Vernon Betts, who was elected in November.
“You had two Bloods over here and three Crips over there, eyeing each other,” Betts said.
In that situation especially, taking the inmates out of their handcuffs is dangerous, he said. But that’s what one judge requested the deputies do when the inmates rose to talk to the video screen. The minute the deputy released the cuffs of one man, the inmate attacked the deputy, sending him to the hospital with injuries. That was the second time that had happened during his time in office, Betts said.
With that many inmates, he said, there should have been at least 15 deputies. But there’s no way he could currently staff those numbers with his budget. And now having served more than 100 days in office, he said he is struggling to provide adequate security with his current resources and to come to an agreement with the judges on what appropriate safety measures require.
“It’s a ticking time bomb,” Betts said of the Sheriff’s Office. “We are hurting, and it’s just a matter of time before something happens.”
Throughout his campaign, Betts promised to clean up the department – which had been allegedly full of corruption and disparate pay between black and white deputies for the 28 years James Murphy held the office, according to Betts.
However, Betts didn’t expect one major hurdle – the judges of the 22nd Circuit Court.
Although city residents elect the sheriff, the 31 circuit court judges have final say on new hires and on the budget request that the sheriff submits to the city budget director every year.
When Betts arrived, five members of the executive leadership team under Murphy left the department. When Betts went to fill those positions, the judges said that those candidates had to pass the same physical fitness test that police candidates do.
It was a provision that was added in March 2015 to the Sheriff’s Handbook under Murphy – at the judges’ insistence. Only one of the five people Betts wanted to hire for his executive staff was able to pass the test, and that was Steve Roberts, his chief deputy.
“I guarantee that none of the former executive leadership could have passed that test,” Betts said.
Three days after he got in office, Betts changed the handbook provision to say that he could waive the test if the deputies would only be performing a clerical function. But that doesn’t make a difference to the judges who wanted the rule in place – and who have the final say on Betts’ hires.
“If you are going to carry a gun and perform functions as a sheriff deputy, then you need to pass a fairly limited physical fitness test,” said Judge Michael Mullen, presiding judge of the 22nd Circuit Court. “That was put in place before we knew who the new sheriff was going to be. It’s just a way to keep us safe. I feel very strongly about that, as do all the judges.”
However, Gregg Christian, Betts’ spokesman, said the physical fitness test has little to do with what’s actually going on between the judges and Betts.
“It’s not the test,” Christian said. “The judges want to control who he hires and cut him out of the process. Vernon is not willing to do that. He wants to run his department the way he was duly elected to run it. The judges keep saying it’s about the test, but it’s about them trying to wrestle control away from an elected official.”
This year – for the second time – the 22nd Circuit Court has pushed forward and rallied behind legislation to make the position of St. Louis sheriff an appointed post. On February 27, state Senator Andrew Koenig (R-Manchester) introduced Senate Bill 484, which states that a majority of the 22nd Judicial Circuit judges would appoint the next sheriff. Betts would finish out his term.
A similar bill was proposed in 2015 by then-state Senator Joe Keaveny (D-St. Louis), but failed.
The court’s spokesman Thom Gross said the sheriff’s office is not an independent law-enforcement agency. Basically, all of the functions of the Sheriff’s Office are directed by the court, he said, including transporting prisoners to court, ordering extra protection in a courtroom and sequestering and escorting jurors.
“Unlike rural sheriffs who also perform a law-enforcement function, the St. Louis sheriff has no duties beyond those at the direction of the court,” Gross said. “The judges believe that we need a professional in that office, as opposed to an elected political figure making patronage hires.”
The court also says that making the office an appointed position would save the city money.
The St. Louis City Democratic Central Committee opposes Koenig’s legislation.
Budget crunch
On January 4, Betts gave the judges a budget of $10,236,330, which included a request to increase the number of deputies from 154 to 175 and raise all salaries by three percent. The request was about $822,000 more than the office’s fiscal year 2017 budget, which was $9.41 million.
The court’s budget committee instead recommended to the city’s budget director a $9.65 million budget – which included cutting seven positions and rejecting the three percent across-the-board raise.
The judges instead proposed giving raises to only entry-level and low-level positions because it’s hard to attract people to do such an intense job, Mullen said.
“Obviously, we want it to be safe,” Mullen said. “It’s up to the sheriff to allocate the budget that the city ends up giving him.”
The city is currently anticipating a $17 million shortfall, so every department is facing cuts to balance the 2018 budget. The city’s budget division has currently suggested a $9.29 million budget for Betts’ office – about $120,000 less than last year. However, Betts said that they are already at a breaking point and can’t afford any cuts.
The starting pay for a deputy is $27,430, which is less than a corrections officer and starting positions at the juvenile detention center. There are people who have worked as a city deputy for 20 years and have never received a raise, he said.
“We want to change that,” Betts said.
Aside from this, Betts said that black deputies make substantially less than white deputies of the same rank and seniority. While he doesn’t intend to only give African-American employees raises, his three-tier plan for pay raises was an attempt to address this disparity.
“As long as I’m being cut, there’s no way to fulfill my promise to get these people a livable wage,” he said.
Cleaning it up
To become an employee, one must apply to the Sheriff’s Office, take a fitness test and undergo a background test. Starting in 2014, the court’s Personnel Committee of five judges started reviewing applications, Betts said, but personal interviews were unusual until this year. Now all candidates for employment must go before the committee for an interview.
This adds several weeks to the already long application process, Betts said, and it has made it difficult to make much-needed hires and fires. Mullen said that the court has gone along with every hiring recommendation Betts has presented – as long as the individuals have passed the fitness test. “Everyone he put in front of us, we’ve approved,” Mullen said.
Betts said he also remains saddled with the previous sheriff’s patronage hires – the kinds of hires the judges are trying to avoid in the future. “That needs to be cleaned up,” Betts said, “and I don’t have the ability to clean it up.”
Taking it to the legislature
Betts has gone to the state legislature to try and resolve the issue.
“I am working with legislators in Jefferson City on two state law changes that would allow me more control over who I employ and increase the level of training and professionalism of the department,” Betts said.
House Bill 878 would allow the sheriff to make hires without the court’s approval, and Senate Bill 451 would allow the department to become POST-certified, which would require a higher level of training for deputy sheriffs as well as allow the department to apply for federal grants. SB 451, sponsored by state Senator Jamilah Nasheed (D-St. Louis), now includes the same provisions of HB 878 and is currently up for debate on the House floor.
The bills have support from the Missouri Sheriffs Association, the NAACP and World Wide Technology.
Last week, Betts announced that one of his male deputies had been arrested and charged with the felony of “sexual conduct with a prisoner.” The incident occurred a couple weeks ago at the city jail with a female inmate. The deputy is currently suspended without pay, pending the trial.
Christian said, “This latest embarrassing incident for the department is one of many incidents over the years that led newly elected Sheriff Betts to call for higher standards and powers that would allow him to change an office badly in need of reform.”
