Jason Flanery – the St. Louis city police officer who killed VonDerrit Myers Jr. – was high on cocaine as well as drunk when he smashed his police vehicle into a parked car at 6:17 a.m. on December 19, according to Missouri State Highway lab results released on January 27.
Two days earlier, on January 25, Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce charged Flanery with two misdemeanors – Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) and leaving the scene of an accident – after receiving a lab report on Flanery’s Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC). Though his blood was sampled hours after the accident, he had a BAC reading of .117, according to the statement. The legal limit is 0.08.
St. Louis Police Chief Samuel Dotson told The American that he then asked the lab to test Flanery’s blood for narcotics, acting on intelligence that he had received that Flanery used cocaine. The positive test results for cocaine came back on January 27.
Now Joyce will charge Flanery with driving under influence of alcohol and drugs, which is still only a misdemeanor.
Joyce told The American that Flanery’s toxicology results from December 19 have no legal bearing on his actions on October 8, 2014, when he fatally shot Myers. However, she said, this does point to the need to test officers for drugs and alcohol after an officer-involved shooting.
Dotson told The American that the police union opposed him, but that he was working on issuing a new policy that orders toxicology screenings for officers involved in officer-involved shootings. He said he hoped to make this announcement within days.
The incident
On December 19 at 6:17 a.m., Flanery was allegedly driving a police vehicle when he struck a parked car at the 3900 block of Jamieson Avenue, according to the probable cause statement released on January 25. The woman who owned the hit vehicle saw the police car crash. By the time she went out to assess the damage, the driver had left without leaving any information.
The police vehicle – which the police department had assigned to Flanery – was found later that morning not far from the accident and “had damage consistent with striking the parked vehicle.”
Other police officers observed that Flanery smelled like he had been drinking and was “unsteady or wobbly on his feet,” according to the statement.
Flanery was arrested, refused a breathalyzer test, and then was released without bail, said police department officials. Joyce’s office was contacted and a search warrant was obtained from a circuit judge to draw blood from Flanery to see if he was intoxicated or under the influence of drugs when involved in the alleged accident. This is standard procedure for when a driver suspected of drunk driving refuses a breathalyzer test.
Flanery resigned from the department on December 19. However, he still has a valid “Class A” officer license, according to a spokesman for the Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) program. But he is not currently commissioned by any law enforcement agency, according to POST.
When asked if POST officials are investigating whether or not to revoke Flanery’s license, the spokesman said by law the POST program cannot disclose when it is investigating an officer.
Flanery was working as an off-duty security officer in the Shaw neighborhood when he shot and killed Myers on October 8, 2014, but was not charged with any crime by Joyce. Several witnesses told police that Myers and Flanery were involved in a gunfight, and police claimed to retrieve a firearm from Myers’ corpse, along with several bullets and casings that matched the weapon.
Flanery later caused a stir when he worked the protest following the fatal police shooting of Mansur Ball-Bey on August 19, 2015.
Flanery was working a shift for GCI Security when he killed Myers. Someone who answered the phone at GCI on January 25 said she could not confirm whether Flanery was still employed there.
Flanery, who graduated from the police academy in 2008, was 31 at the time he killed Myers, according to Joyce’s report. He had a previous misdemeanor conviction for unlawful use of a weapon in 2001.
