On Thursday, June 4, three corrections officers employed by the City of St. Louis at the City Justice Center were indicted on charges involving the attempted distribution of heroin to inmates at the City jail, according to Acting United States Attorney Michael W. Reap.
James Lamont Moore, 36, and Marilyn Denise Brown, 54, both of St. Louis, were each indicted by a federal grand jury on one felony count of attempted distribution of heroin. Peggy Lynn O’Neal, 48, St. Louis, was indicted by a federal grand jury on two felony counts of attempted distribution of heroin.
According to the indictment, between January and March 2009, on several occasions, the defendants received purported heroin from an individual outside of the Justice Center, along with cash payments, and secretly delivered the purported heroin to an inmate at the Justice Center.
The Justice Center is administered by Eugene Stubblefield, superintendent of Corrections, under the direction of Charles Bryson, director of Public Safety, who was appointed by Mayor Francis G. Slay and reports directly to the mayor.
The federal sting operation that resulted in the indictment transpired shortly before the March 23, 2009 release of an ACLU report on conditions in the City jails, which resulted from an investigation initiated in 2007.
The report, Suffering in Silence: Human Rights Abuses in St. Louis Correctional Centers, lists drug trafficking – including, specifically, heroin – among crimes and abuses allegedly perpetrated by City corrections officers and/or administrators.
An April 6 editorial in the Post-Dispatch dismissed the report, which was authored by Redditt Hudson, without any apparent attempt to investigate its claims other than to interview City officials.
“ACLU fails to make its case in report on St. Louis jails,” the editors of the Post declared in their headline.
The Post quoted Stubblefield saying the ACLU report “is not a credible document.”
In her preface to the report, Brenda Jones, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri, describes it as “a body of material that can serve as a guide to discovery for government officials aware or unaware of what goes on when they are not looking.”
The ACLU report relied on anonymous corrections officers, though one source, Darius Young, later identified himself. They explained their anonymity by reference to what they describe as a culture of intimidation and retribution within the administration.
An officer at the Medium Security Institution told the ACLU, “Down there, you have well-known mules; a mule is a person that brings in cigarettes and drugs to the inmates. Everybody pretty much knows who the mules are but there is so much favoritism, subjective discipline.”
This officer, identified as CO 3 in the report, said corrections officers once “found large quantities of marijuana and tar (black tar heroin) in the facility” but there was no investigation or official action and “no one was reprimanded.”
According to the report, another source, identified as CO 2, witnessed the smuggling of crack cocaine to inmates in the Medium Security Institution in exchange for use by jail staff.
This source said of the drug trafficking, “You know who they are. Nothing is done about it.”
According to this source, “a culture of abuse is encouraged inside the MSI and those corrections officers who adapt themselves to it and embrace the systemic cover-up of the abuse are advantaged with promotions or other favors from administrators.”
This source said that officers who collaborated in or permitted the crime and abuse “were given days off or given drug test alerts prior to ‘random’ drug testing.”
According to the report, CO 2 also said that anyone “advocating policy adherence in the MSI” is fired by Captain Irene Mitchell.
The ACLU report was received by the City of St. Louis and U.S. Justice Department back in March. These specific allegations were provided again on Tuesday to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in St. Louis and the Mayor’s Office. The Mayor’s Office was asked for an interview or comment from anyone on the chain of command.
A union representative for City corrections officers also was asked for a comment or interview opportunity. A message was left for Mitchell at MSI.
The only response from these requests was from Ed Rhode in the Mayor’s Office, who praised the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department’s work on the case.
However, the mayor of St. Louis, as Slay’s chief of staff Jeff Rainford has pointedly reminded The American, has no authority over the police department, which is governed by a Board of Police Commissioners on which Slay is an ex-officio member.
Rhode was asked, again, for comments or interviews regarding indictments for drug trafficking within a City department where the mayor does have direct authority, but he did not respond.
‘Systematic issues’?
The ACLU report alleges drug trafficking within the Medium Security Institution, whereas the federal charges relate to alleged drug trafficking by corrections officers at the City Justice Center – suggesting what could be a widespread practice within the Division of Corrections, which runs both facilities.
KMOX interviewed Bryson, who oversees Stubblefield and Corrections, after Bryson testified at a Board of Aldermen committee hearing devoted to the ACLU report. Bryson told KMOX he was trying to determine whether the allegations were true and if they were “individual situations or a set of systematic issues that need to be addressed.”
The Post, however, relied on Stubblefield’s account of “internal reports by corrections officers” that he said “do not reveal a pattern of abuse or misconduct.”
According to a page on the City of St. Louis website – which presumably was approved by Stubblefield, Bryson and Slay – the Division of Corrections “provides for the basic human needs of the residents/client population and creates an environment in which positive behavioral change may occur.”
Acting U.S. Attorney Reap commended the work on the case by St. Louis police, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Assistant U.S. Attorney Hal Goldsmith.
The charges in the indictment are merely accusations, and each defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty. If convicted, each count carries a maximum penalty of 20 years and/or fines up to 1,000,000 dollars.
The Post reported these serious charges with a flourish borrowed from the Evening Whirl, supplying the nickname of “Pumpkin” for O’Neal and “Peaches” for Brown.