The St. Louis American sat down with St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief Daniel Isom following the recent release of state Auditor Susan Montee’s report on her office’s audit of the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners.
The audit revealed an appalling number of financial irregularities and failures of oversight in the year audited. During that year, Joe Mokwa was chief of police and Chris Goodson was president of a police board that also included Mayor Francis G. Slay, Vincent Bommarito Jr., Julius K. Hunter and Todd Epsten.
Our conversation with Chief Isom covered both the audit and media reports on it. This report was released as an audit of the police board, which has ultimate oversight over the department and also manages its finances. However, media reports focused very little on the police board whose many failures in management and oversight are detailed in the report.
Instead, a renewal of the call for local oversight of the police department dominated news coverage.
The current governance of the police board, which dates back to the Civil War, consists of four gubernatorial appointees and one elected ex-officio member, the mayor. For the past eight years, including the entire period audited, that sole elected member was Mayor Francis G. Slay.
This is part two of a multi-part series devoted to our conversation with Chief Isom about governance of the City police department.
St. Louis American: For the police board to have both operation and oversight over the financial aspects of the department, that could be the weakness and the flaw that allowed these horrendous financial irregularities to occur. Is that fair to say?
Chief Daniel Isom: That would be my assessment. I think that it’s a flaw in the way the organization is structured internally to lead to that.
American: So there wasn’t really, in a sense, anyone minding the store – the person running the store was minding the store, to use that metaphor.
Isom: To use that metaphor.
American: Let’s look at the current structure of the police board, keeping in mind the local control bill, which changes a bit from session to session. Now on the board we have five residents of the city of St. Louis, one of whom is elected (the mayor), the other four residents of the city, appointed by the governor, and subject to all sorts of public record laws as public officials. Correct?
Isom: Correct.
American: It’s up to the state Legislature to pass local control. They’ve failed for decades. It’s a rational expectation that they’ll fail again. We’ve argued for local control, year after year. However, let’s assume we’re going to stay with what we have now. We already have a police board of five people who live in the city, one of whom was elected by city taxpayers, the other four subject as a body to all sorts of public records laws. So the public already has some scrutiny over the five individuals in power now who are collectively responsible for the oversight of the police department. Correct?
Isom: Correct.
American: And the thing that would change, depending on what form the local control legislation took, would be the appointing authority over them. As it is right now, I don’t hear a lot of people going after Jay Nixon for this police board audit. Do you?
Isom: No.
American: They are going after you. There’s a passing of the political football going on here. People are trying to make it the governor’s problem for not yielding to local control, when no one is blaming the governor for the lack of oversight from the presently constituted police board, which he appointed.
Isom: Right, right.
American: So, as the person who’s the figurehead for this organization, what do you see when you see the political football being passed around and you are trying to do your job?
Isom: Well, I think it’s interesting. You’re right, there’s a lot of responsibility to go around in terms of the findings of this audit. Certainly, they were related to a lot of different areas. I think it was related to the oversight of the board, and they have certainly apologized for that. I think it’s internal structural flaws, and one could argue that it might be the overall structure of State control.
But I think at the end of the day, no matter what structure you have, someone’s in charge. So at the time, certainly, the board had oversight, and the chief had operational control. When it comes down to it, those are the two entities that have the overall responsibility for what happened.
American: And they’re the people we’ve heard the least about in the news reports on this audit! I haven’t heard very much on Joe Mokwa, other than a wink and nudge. As for the police commissioners, I’ve heard nothing. Their names are often not even reported in the news accounts.
Isom: Right. And I do think, when you’re talking about local control or State control, that’s really an issue of providing more legitimacy in terms of the public’s view of what’s going on. And that’s a separate issue from actual operational control and oversight of the police department.
I would agree, the issues related to this audit are related to the oversight efforts of this board and the operational efforts of the chief of police at the time. Those are really, quite frankly, where the responsibility lies – and I will say for myself, in the future, that is where the responsibility lies. If in fact the state auditor comes back two years later and reviews these and similar problems related to Chief Isom’s administration, then once again it would be Chief Isom who is responsible, along with the board and their oversight efforts.
American: Do you think Mokwa should have been in the room when Montee read that report? Now I’m asking you to speak for another man, but … I looked around and thought, “Why isn’t this man here?”
Isom: It’s difficult to say, because he has retired, and you know what role he would play at this point in time would be difficult to say. But certainly, as I said, the audit was related to both command of the police department and oversight.