The EYE wonders if Stephanie Karr is starting to feel like the last member standing of a gang that has been decimated by law enforcement, when the law starts closing in on her at last. For some of Karr’s actions as city prosecutor in Ferguson look pretty suspect in the Department of Justice’s scathing report on Ferguson’s cops and courts, but unlike many other city officials singled out by name in that report – now former Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson, Municipal Court Judge Ronald Brockmeyer, City Manager John Shaw and Court Clerk Mary Ann Twitty – Karr still works for the taxpayers of Ferguson.
But, now, the Huffington Post has come for her.
Mariah Stewart, a reporter HuffPost shares with The American, dropped in recently on Ferguson Municipal Court, now presided over by an interim hire, Judge Donald McCullin, a venerable jurist nearing retirement age. He took the seat previously warmed by Brockmeyer, who was busted by the DOJ for colluding with Jackson and Shaw to raise money for the city through the police and courts. Brockmeyer also “owed tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes even as he was jailing people who couldn’t afford Ferguson’s stiff fines,” as HuffPost noted.
But Karr still struts around the Ferguson muni court as prosecutor, and she was in fine form this evening, facing three defendants charged with noise ordinance violations and failure to comply at a Ferguson protest in August. “Did the protestors use the term ‘[Expletive] the police’?” Karr asked Ferguson Police Officer Sean Gibbons, the witness against the defendants. Judge McCullin sustained the objection raised by counsel John Ammann of SLU Law Legal Clinics (good for him), “finding that Karr’s question was improper,” HuffPost reported.
The DOJ found much else about Karr’s conduct in Ferguson that was improper, as HuffPost reminded us.
The DOJ reported that Karr and her assistants “officially prosecute all actions before the court,” but that most cases are in fact resolved “without trial or a prosecutor’s involvement.” It notes that in 2013, Karr – who also worked as a prosecuting attorney in Hazelwood – had a red-light camera ticket dismissed there for Judge Brockmeyer, her Ferguson crony. Also in 2013, Karr had a prosecutor from another municipality dismiss a speeding ticket for the relative of a Ferguson Police Department patrol supervisor. Pulling a hat trick of petty municipal improprieties, Karr also had a parking ticket dismissed for someone at the request of Ferguson Mayor James Knowles in 2013.
The DOJ report also revealed Karr, or an assistant under her supervision, engaging in the routine, suspect, bullying legal behavior that has made St. Louis County municipal courts a national disgrace.
In 2014, the last year of Michael Brown Jr.’s short life, Ferguson prosecuted a case on Karr’s watch that started when black parents allowed their small children playing in a park “to urinate in the bushes next to their parked car,” according to the DOJ report. An officer stopped them and checked the father for warrants, driven by Jackson to produce as many arrests and citations as possible to keep the revenue flowing.
When the mother asked if the officer needed to detain the father in front of the children, the DOJ reported, the officer told the father, “You’re going to jail because your wife keeps running her mouth.” The mother then began recording the incident on her cell phone. The officer became irate, declaring, “You don’t videotape me!” As the officer drove away with the father in custody for “parental neglect,” the mother drove after them, continuing to videotape. The officer then pulled over and arrested her for traffic violations. When the father asked the officer to show mercy, he said, “No more mercy, since she wanted to videotape. Nobody videotapes me.” The officer took the phone. After posting bond, the couple found that the video had been deleted.
Karr isn’t responsible for the actions of this officer, but she can be faulted for continuing to rely upon him as a witness, knowing what she knew. The officer had previously been “found untruthful” during an official Ferguson Police Department investigation, according to the DOJ. Yet the “prosecuting attorney” – Karr or an assistant under her supervision – “presented his testimony without informing [the father arrested in front of his children] of that fact,” according to the DOJ report.
“According to his own police department, the officer was a liar,” HuffPost noted. “But the defendants were never told.” What is Karr not telling defendants in Ferguson Municipal Court that they ought to know now?
Karr did not respond to multiple requests from Huffington Post before they ran their article. A request for comment from The American also was ignored.
In a sense, Karr must feel like the last member of a gang holed up in the Ferguson hideout after the other desperadoes have been picked off, but in fact she is anything but alone in her work. She is a principal of Curtis, Heinz, Garret and O’Keefe, the Clayton law firm that represents more municipalities than any other law firm in the St. Louis area. Some call the firm the “Robert McCulloch for the smaller municipalities,” and in fact the firm’s office is a stone’s throw from the county prosecutor’s office.
“Attorneys at the firm serve as city attorney or village attorney for over 20 municipalities in the area. Our attorneys have also served as special counsel to many other municipalities,” according to the firm’s site. “Additionally, several of our attorneys serve as prosecutors in municipal court for the cities we represent.” No conflict of interest?
Bob stays
Speaking of Bob McCulloch, he also gets to keep his job for now.
Judge Joseph Walsh dismissed an action filed by four North County activists asking the judge to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the way McCulloch handled the Darren Wilson grand jury proceedings. In a 10-page opinion accompanying the order, St. Louis Public Radio reported, Walsh wrote that the activists had failed to prove that McCulloch “willfully or fraudulently violated or neglected his official duty, or knowingly or willfully failed or refused to perform any official act or duty to execute or enforce the criminal laws of the state.”
An attorney for the activists, Jerryl Christmas, said he will appeal the ruling.
Knowles still could go
Ferguson Mayor James Knowles still has his part-time job as well, though an activist group that fell just short in a signature-gathering effort to force a recall has filed suit, claiming they had valid signatures rejected for illegitimate and spurious reasons. The nation’s most notorious part-time councilman at large – that’s all a mayor is in Ferguson – may yet face a recall vote if this suit succeeds.
Mountain Dew in prison
Out of his job and into the clink, however, goes Sylvester Caldwell, who was sentenced to 33 months in prison for extortion while serving as mayor of Pine Lawn.
In addition to the prison sentence, he was ordered to pay $5,500 restitution, which seems to be feds’ estimate of the value of all the free chips and soda pop the then-mayor pinched from the convenience store whose owners he extorted. “The owner of the store also allowed him to take goods from the store out of fear that his business could suffer economic harm if he refused,” the feds noted.
The EYE understands Caldwell’s favorite flavor is Mountain Dew, as he used the Dew as coded language when requesting cash payments from a towing company he also extorted. “For example, he commanded the tow company owner to place ‘green Mountain Dew in a cup,’ which was code for directing that the cash be placed in a disposable cup,” the feds noted.
Caldwell’s case is a reminder that it’s not the smartest criminals who get caught. There is a more lucrative way to cash in from a towing vendor. Just ask the City of St. Louis. But, as we all know, the federal investigation of the city towing scam pulled up short before putting any top cops behind bars. A former major metropolitan police chief used to visit his towing vendor buddies every month for “coffee” while his buddies were running a retitle-and-flip scam with cars they towed. Yet he remains a free man with a city pension driving a pearl-colored, late-model BMW to the opera, while little fish Caldwell gets the next 33 months in prison to remember that sweet Mountain Dew.
