ESOP calls meeting, supports civilian review board
By Bill Beene
Of the St. Louis American
When African American police officer Eddie Simmons eyed a recent all-white police academy class it sickened him with a familiar empty feeling that overcame him in the early 1970s.
Simmons was a freshman at Alton High School. He couldn’t wait to eat at a popular sandwich shop across the street from the school though he was told that blacks weren’t allowed inside.
Simmons decided to go anyway. Once inside a female employee told him to take seat at a table. There he waited and waited and waited for more than an hour without service. The next day, he faced the same scenario, missing his a chance to eat lunch on his lunch break.
On the third day Simmons didn’t take the direction to sit at a table. Willing to miss school, he waited at the counter ensuring that he ordered and got that popular sandwich.
Simmons was served a sandwich on that third day, but he said he will never forget the sick and empty feeling he got in that all-white shop.
“It was because of the color of my skin that they didn’t want me in there and didn’t want to wait on me, and I got that same sick feeling that blacks weren’t in that all-white academy class for the same reason,” said Simmons, president of the Ethical Society of Police Officers, an African American organization.
Like the 1970s incident that Simmons stood up and challenged, his did the same about the recent all-white police academy class.
On Wednesday Simmons and the Ethical Society of Police Officers called for a meeting with Chief of Police Joe Mokwa to discuss their disappointment of the all white class. The meeting was going to be held behind closed doors in the Ethical Society of Police’s office in the Euclid Plaza Building at Delmar and Euclid.
However, just hours before the meeting Simmons decided that he wanted an open meeting and called media outlets, community leaders, the police board and politicians.
Chief Mokwa showed up with the most of the department’s rank and file polices who sat up front in a row with Chief Mokwa.
The meeting was indeed open and candid. Officers discussed issues that one would think would have been saved for closed quarters.
“What you hear tonight is the same way the chief talks behind closed doors,” said Deputy Police Chief Lt. Col. Roy J. Joachimstaler, Bureau of Patrol Support.
After hearing complaints from Ethical Society of Police’s president and vice-president Officer Darren Wilson, Chief Mokwa responded and subsequently responded to most who followed him at the podium.
“First of all if anyone in the department is dissatisfied I’m dissatisfied and I appreciate this opportunity and I always believe we can improve 100 percent so I’m not closed to any ideas that can get more people in this organization, especially people of color,” Chief Mokwa said.
The all white class was happenstance according Chief Mokwa. A lack of funding for hiring police in mid-2003 and no projection for funding for up to 2006, ceased all recruiting and hiring. To Chief Mokwa’s surprise, in 2005 the department received an allocation of funding.
While African Americans had been in preceding classes, their numbers were diminishing which meant there weren’t many on reserve. Reserve recruits are enlisted when academy students leave the academy for various reasons.
The department created an initiative to get more African American officers and facilitated an open testing process at Harris-Stowe State University. However, only 176 people showed up to take the test. Chief Mokwa directed personnel to hurry intelligence of African American applicants.
“We were a hundred something recruits short and we were 80 officers short in the district. We had established dates every six weeks to put people into the academy. We ran out of people and had no African Americans,” Chief Mokwa explained.
Officer Wilson proposed that something be put place so that an all white academy class doesn’t happen again.
“Can we all sit down and go over the list and approve the pool of applicants together,” suggest Wilson, adding that before, “You put in a class of all white men I would rather see a postponement class until we can find some because now we have a class of 17 African Americans and the question now becomes where did we find them?”
The current, nearly all-black class was put in place to offset the recent all white class, but Deputy Police Chief Col. Gregory Hawkins dissented on the idea of an all-black class.
“I would have been uncomfortable with an all black class because until we have some input into who is hired and what their background is it’s too easy to put a class of 20 blacks in and eight of them flunk out. We’d be in the headlines for having an all black class with eight to flunk out,” Col. Hawkins said.
As for averting an all white class and hiring the best qualified Col. Hawkins suggested that an African American command rank officer have some autonomy within Human Resources, which is ran by civilians.
After Hawkins finished speaking, Chief Mokwa announced that that African American ranking officer, Henrietta Arnold, had already been offered the job and should have reported Monday.
On the issue of recruiting Col. Hawkins said new recruits can be good recruiters, “Because they can tell what you need to do to get through the police academy, I can’t, do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been in the academy?”
Hawkins also suggested recruiting MBAs.
“Good recruiting doesn’t mean standing back until they come up. Let’s go and tell them it’s a good job to be a police officer,” Co. Hawkins said.
Hawkins also shot down an earlier idea by Chief Mokwa to stop hiring applicants with GEDs (General Education Diploma).
“A GED is the equivalent of a high school education, so to eliminate that person would be totally unfair. We’ve had a chief of police who went to the service and came back on got his GED and went on to get a couple of masters degrees. We doctorates with GEDs,” Col. Hawkins said.
The Ethical Society of Police’s attorney, Anthony Grey, a former police officer and municipal judge in Northwoods, added that points should be accessed for those with GEDS versus those with high school diplomas and college degrees.
He also called order of hiring – doing intelligence background reports after candidates have been accepted into the academy – an opened can of worms for racism.
Chief Mokwa responded that doing an initial in-depth background report would be labor intensive and require too much manpower. However, Chief Mokwa said his response wasn’t a rebuttal and that he’s open to all ideas.
Officer Simmons said he was pleased with Mokwa’s quick response and he has never been one to shy away from anything.
“He will listen and we haven’t always had that in the past,” Simmons said.
The past did however, possess three lieutenant colonels, pointed Hawkins and civil rights activist Norman Seay. The department now has one, Hawkins.
Seay, however, praised Chief Mokwa for appointing and African American as his executive assistant, saying it was the first time in the history of the department that a white police chief appointed someone black to that position.
He also saluted Simmons and the Ethical Society of Police for standing up and identifying their concerns in front of all of the police officers.
And in his dramatic oratory stylist, Seay fired, “There is still discrimination within the police department! Black officers are not getting the opportunities within the police department that white officers are getting. I can see it when I go around the various districts. There is racism and we must attack it. Communication is good, but I’m going to be watching to see what happens.”