Until the North St. Louis County community started raising questions, the St. Louis County Police had been consistently telling the media that their officers did not engage in a high-speed chase of a vehicle that ultimately crashed into a tree in Berkeley on August 10, killing two black men.
After the car crashed, the two county officers – who initiated the pursuit because of a traffic violation – kept driving. The two men who died in the crash were Mikel Neil, 49, and Townsal Woolfolk, 59.
Now nearly four months later, Police Chief Jon Belmar announced that the two county officers did pursue the car and provided “misleading” information to their commanders, the department’s internal investigation found. It goes against county police policy to pursue a vehicle if a felony has not been committed. The two officers, Alex Maloy and Mark Jakob, have been fired.
“Through the examination of the Highway Patrol’s crash investigation, internal documentation, and video evidence, it was determined that the involved officers provided statements that were ultimately found to be misleading, and actions by those two officers discredited themselves and the image and reputation of this Department,” according to a November 26 statement from Belmar.
However, Belmar’s statement did not answer the community’s questions about whether or not the police officers hit the car that Neil and Woolfolk were in, causing it to spin out and crash. Nor did Belmar address the reason why the officers fled after the car crashed.
A St. Louis County police spokesman said that the completed investigation report is closed to the public and that the police will not answer any more questions about the incident. The St. Louis American repeatedly reached out to the Missouri Highway Patrol, which also conducted an investigation, and has not received a response.
Woolfolk’s family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the county police. Neil’s family is looking to take similar actions.
“I like the fact that Belmar fired these officers,” said Darryl Neil, Mikel’s older brother. “That’s step number one.”
However, the family and community will fight to see their licenses revoked and see them prosecuted, Darryl said.
“There is no way you didn’t see this accident happen,” Darryl said. “The natural reaction for someone doing wrong is to run. Basically what they are saying is that they gave misleading information, but I think they did more than that. I might suspend you for telling me a lie. But to terminate these two officers is saying that they did something worse than just lie.”
Christopher Bent, the attorney representing the Neil family, said that they plan to seek justice and to obtain the truth.
“Unfortunately because there was misinformation given to the family on August 10 and thereafter, it is extremely difficult for the family to believe anyone who has conducted an investigation,” Bent said. “If you lie to me once, what makes you think you won’t lie to us again?”
The St. Louis County Police Association has rallied behind the two officers, Maloy and Jakob, saying that they cooperated with the investigation and did nothing wrong.
“Chief Belmar made a poor decision based on embarrassment and political expediency designed to rehabilitate his image,” according to the association’s November 26 statement.
The union is fighting for the officers’ reinstatement.
However, the Ethical Society of Police, a police association that advocates for racial equity in policing, said this is a lesson for the police department to listen to its citizens. The Ethical Society criticized Belmar for authorizing a statement that cleared the officers soon after the crash occurred, without doing a thorough investigation.
“He was obviously wrong in doing that,” said Sgt. Heather Taylor of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, president of the Ethical Society of Police. “Two human beings are dead. If a police department can’t take the time to do a thorough investigation under these circumstances, you can only imagine what else they’ve failed to do.”
Lorenzo Johnson, a Berkeley resident and former Atlanta police officer, was driving home at about 9:30 p.m. on August 10 when he saw a St. Louis County Police vehicle chasing a car down Airport Road at high speed with its lights flashing. Johnson was going the opposite direction and had just turned on his street of Whitewater Drive when he heard a huge crash across the street.
He jumped out of his car and ran to the scene of the accident at Airport Road and Tyndall Drive, where Neil and Woolfolk had driven into a tree and had clearly died on impact, he said.
The St. Louis County police car was nowhere to be seen, and St. Louis County police didn’t arrive on the scene while Johnson was present – which was about 45 minutes, Johnson said.
Looking at the crashed car, Johnson could also tell that the vehicle had gone into a “spin out.”
“You can tell the vehicle was hit on the rear end and made to go into a spin and that caused the vehicle to go out of control,” Johnson said.
Although Johnson was present and willing, no law enforcement agent asked for his statement after the crash. A woman in her 20s who saw the entire accident gave a statement to Berkeley Police and the Missouri Highway Patrol that the county police car hit the vehicle before it crashed, Johnson said. He knows because he stayed with her on the scene.
Although the Highway Patrol asked The American for Johnson’s contact information, Johnson said no one from the patrol or the county police ever contacted him to get his statement.
St. Louis County Police told The St. Louis American in August that officers from the Central County Precinct attempted a traffic stop of a vehicle for violating a red light signal at the intersection of Airport Road and Dade Avenue.
Mikel had six older siblings – mainly brothers – and a tight-knit family. Mikel’s mother is active in the Universal African People’s Organization, which led the fight to investigate the officers’ actions.
The group is happy to see the officers were terminated, but they will continue to fight to make sure the police officers lose their ability to be officers anywhere else, said Zaki Baruti, leader of the organization.
“Seldom do black and poor working people receive any form of justice when they allege instances of violence and brutality towards them,” Baruti said. “We count this as a victory, but we feel other steps towards complete justice is necessary.”
