The Ethical Society of Police, which was founded in 1972 by black police officers to address race-based discrimination in the community and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, has now expanded its membership to include officers from St. Louis County. It now has about 280 members, including police officers, park rangers, and civilian employees in the city and the county. While membership is mostly African-American, the group welcomes members of all races, genders, sexual orientations, and religions.
The Ethical Society of Police (ESOP) held a town hall meeting at Jennings High School on Thursday, July 26 to welcome its expansion into the county and to discuss the future of community policing in the region. Panelists included ESOP President Sergeant Heather Taylor, Jennings Mayor Yolanda Austin, St. Louis County Councilwoman Rochelle Walton Gray, Lieutenant Colonel Troy Doyle of the St. Louis County Police Department, St. Louis County Police Officer P.O. Shanette Hall, and Redditt Hudson, vice president of Civil Rights and Advocacy at the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis and a former police officer.
Reverend Daryl Gray, ESOP community liaison and a veteran protestor, moderated the panel. He reminded the panelists of a question that young protestors he mentors often chant to police: “Who do you protect? Who do you serve?”
Many St. Louis-area elected officials attended the panel, alongside members of the public and candidates for elected office, including congressional candidate Cori Bush, U.S. Senate candidate Coffee Wright, and state Senate candidate Sharon Case. Wesley Bell, candidate for St. Louis County Prosecutor, opened the panel with remarks; current County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch was also sent an official invitation, along with County Executive Steve Stenger, but neither came.
“As many of you know, I’m a big advocate of community policing,” Bell said. “That’s something that I don’t think I’ve gone one single speech without addressing the need for. We’ve seen that in places like Ferguson, we’ve seen that in places like Jennings. When you get officers into the street and they get to know the individuals, it’s just a different type of policing that you get when it’s someone that you know, and someone that you’ve connected with. When the only time that I’ve seen you is when you’re pulling me over, that’s not going to foster the kind of relationships that build trust.”
The theme of trust – how it can be built between police and communities, and how it is often broken – continued throughout the evening. Many panelists emphasized the need to diversify police departments as a way of building trust. Sgt. Heather Taylor said that, as a black woman who works in the Homicide Division of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department – often as the only black woman on her team – she is able to communicate with victims’ families in a way her white coworkers cannot.
“There is language that I can understand,” she said. “I work nights in Homicide, and most of my team of detectives, at one point, were all white. And there was some times when our victims would identify with me. Number one, because I’m a female, and number two, because I’m African-American. And sometimes, when I’m working nights, I have to supervise this whole scene, but then at times, I have to speak to witnesses, surviving victims. And it’s a lot. It’s overwhelming.”
In addition, she sometimes has to translate for her coworkers.
“Sometimes, I have to tell my detectives what something means, because we have our language, we have our culture,” she said. “And there’s things that I have to explain: ‘This is what this means.’ Diversity is important from that standpoint.”
Diversity on its own, though, is not enough to build trust. ESOP, along with creating community service opportunities for its officers, has been lobbying to fulfill the recommendations of the Ferguson Commission report and equip every St. Louis County Police officer with body cameras to boost accountability.
Now, according to Lt. Col. Troy Doyle, the department is working on a contract for the body cameras. “It has now become somewhat political, as to these vendors who are going to get paid for these body cameras,” said Doyle.
ESOP also advocates for accountability among police officers and encourages a willingness to call out other officers out when they abuse their power.
“I can tell you one thing: I snitch,” said Taylor. “And I encourage others to tell the truth. And officers, we’re not perfect, we already know. So it’s important that we stand up and tell the truth if we see something wrong. I’m not going to allow that to happen in front of me, and I’m going to lead by example.”
A community member stood up from the audience and told Officer Hall that she remembered seeing Hall while she and her sister were being beaten during Ferguson protests in 2014, and asked where her accountability was then. “Who did you tell?” she asked. Demands for accountability continued throughout the evening.
Now, by expanding into St. Louis County, ESOP hopes to continue having these conversations and finding ways to create more community accountability.
“The main thing we wanted to do was to show you that these folks are us,” Rev. Gray said in closing. “They’re us. And we wanted to have this conversation with us.”
