St. Louis American: What’s being done to implement local control?
Police Chief Sam Dotson: Officers are very resistant to change. By nature, people are resistant to change. So they have a couple concerns.
The first one is about their pensions. They want to know there is some financial stability. During the voting process, it became evident that they didn’t understand that pensions weren’t part of the conversation. Before I was appointed to this position, I was the director of operations for the city. And I’ve assured them that in that role, I didn’t have one conversation with the mayor, his chief of staff, the budget director, the comptroller – not one person – about taking control of their pensions. So they need to take that off the table.
The other one is political interference. The way the ballot initiative was written, there would be no political interference.
I wanted to deal with the internal piece of it first. Then the external piece is – we are working on what that assimilation of the police department and the city government looks like now. For example, we have two purchasing systems. What can we combine?
We’ve had one chance in the last 150 years to reinvent the place, and that’s how we are approaching it now. I told all of our commanders that everything is on the table. If they’ve ever thought, “If I were in charge, I’d want to change this.” Well, now is your time.
In November, we had the senior staff from the police department sit down with their counterparts in city government, along with the mayor and Chief Isom, and start the dialogue. We have the follow-up to that within the next week to sit down and to hear the first blush at plans on how we are going to assimilate the two into each other. I suspect we’ll have some action steps within the next 30 to 60 days.
The American: What action steps?
Chief Dotson: We are mandated at the number of police districts we have: nine. That has been in place since before I was born. The police districts over the last 30 years have changed in demographics, in crime patterns, in population, so we are going to redraw the district boundaries, trying to keep neighborhoods intact, and then distribute officers as equally and equitably as we can to focus on crime.
Our method of hot-spot policing is paying dividends. We’re going to put officers into the areas that are the most challenged and have the biggest problems. Sometimes we’ll go block by block. And not only in the neighborhoods that are having the problems, but also the time of day that they are having the problems.
The American: Civilian review – what does that mean to you when you say you support it?
Chief Dotson: The citizens of St. Louis give the police department $173 million a year. They entrust us with their safety and their tax dollars. I believe they have the right to know that their police department is doing a good job. I looked around the country for a model of civilian review that I think is fair to the community and fair to the officers. There is a model I really like.
Once internal affairs is notified of a complaint, they conduct an investigation to find out: Are there facts to back up the complaint? Then once the investigation is done, that investigation is then handed to a civilian review board to see if the investigation was thorough.
Then the civilian review board has two options. They can either say “yes” it is a thorough investigation, and then it goes back to the chief for the handling of discipline. Or if they have additional questions, it goes back to the Internal Affairs office.
It’s much like what we do with the Circuit Attorney’s Office now. If we present a case to the Circuit Attorney’s Office and they have additional questions, they give us a supplemental work request and we give them a supplemental report.
One of the concerns the officers have is that civilian review will be used to try them in the court of public opinion. We ask our police officers to do dangerous jobs and make split-second life decisions all the time. I think we have to have a process that is fair to them as well and doesn’t try them in the court of public opinion.
The American: Mayor Francis Slay wrote a letter to the Board of Aldermen after he vetoed a bill to establish a civilian review board (BB 69) in 2006. He stated, “BB #69 authorizes the CRB to hold hearings, issue subpoenas, compel testimony, compel the production of documents, review confidential records, review police policies, and compile data – none of which is authorized.” Will you include any of these authorities in civilian review?
Chief Dotson: The officers are most concerned about being compelled to testify in the court of public opinion in front of a civilian review board, which would be subject to open record laws. The process we talked about would be one that protects those officers’ rights.
The other thing we have to be cognizant of is: how do you compel a police officer to make a statement? Internally, we have the ability to do that as a condition of their employment. Does that condition of employment extend to a civilian review board?
I have been on the record since day one saying I support civilian review. I just came from a meeting with the Black Caucus and Aldermen Terry Kennedy to talk about what we can to do institute a civilian review as well as instill confidence in the community and the officers that it is a fair process.
Part two of the interview, touching on the mayoral race’s impact on his position and the extent of Dotson’s knowledge of the towing scam (that sent a police officer and police department vendor to prison) will be continued next week.
