Last week state Auditor Susan Montee delivered a public report on an audit of the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners. It revealed a police board that had overseen a police department where a staggering number of things went wrong, from missing monies to opportunistic accounting of sick time to signing off on highly questionable expenses by the police chief to misuse of seized assets.
It also noted that the police board granted Police Chief Joe Mokwa a generous severance package that included full coverage of his legal expenses pertaining to his tenure as chief, when it was not bound by contract to do so.
Curiously, media reports on this audit focused very little on the current police board, the supposed subject of the audit. Media reports focused to a large extent on a renewal of the perennial call to change the form of police board governance to local – City – control.
The current form of governance, which dates from the Civil War, calls for four commissioners who live in the city of St. Louis, but are appointed by the Missouri governor. The current mayor also serves on the board as its only elected member; since 2001, that has been Mayor Francis G. Slay.
The St. Louis American asked current Police Chief Daniel Isom to discuss the audit report and media coverage of it. This is part 1 of a multi-part series that will continue next week.
St. Louis American: As I looked at the dates of the audit, every single thing in that audit predated you as chief, correct? And for the entire audited period Chris Goodson was the board president, not Todd Epsten (the current president), correct?
Chief Daniel Isom: Yes.
American: When I got the audit report, it said they were auditing the Board of Police Commissioners, yet I didn’t hear anything in the audit about any of the police commissioners.
Isom: It actually was my understanding that it was a comprehensive audit. Certainly there are responsibilities of the board that are related to areas in that audit. The board structure is such that they have a board secretary who acts as their liason and oversight over the police department …
American: And that person is?
Isom: At the time of this audit, it was Paul M. Nocchiero. So the board is directly responsible for certain aspects of the police department. They’re responsible for budget and finance, purchasing, and at the time they weren’t responsible for legal and supply, but they are now. So, certainly there were some areas which were reviewed and audited that were under the direct control of the Board of Police Commissioners.
American: The Board of Police Commissioners was and is responsible for budget and finance of the police department?
Isom: Yes.
American: As I read this audit, it’s basically an indictment of financial and budgetary mismanagement, more than anything, and lack of oversight. I mean, you have Mokwa going to Australia for a Pacific Rim policing conference. Would you put in to the Board of Police Commissioners for you to go to Australia? Probably their problems are not our problems here in St. Louis, we can agree?
Isom: I agree. But there is some explanation for that. The FBI has an executive leadership program, and actually that was paid for by the federal government, so it really was no cost to the police department. Actually, the police department should have been reimbursed for I think the $1,300 to $1,500 in terms of per diem that he received.
American: So that was just a failure to collect money from the FBI, which again would be a budgetary failure.
Isom: Which again would be a budgetary issue.
American: So, what I couldn’t believe when I picked up the newspaper and turned on my television set, this is an audit of the Board of Police Commissioners, according to the document I have, yet all the responses come from you. And all I hear in the media is the political football immediately got passed to the governor. “We need a new board of police commissioners.” But I don’t see any attempt to hold accountable the current police board we do have. And they seem to be responsible for much of what went wrong in the police department, if they were responsible for the budget and financing.
Now, you report to this same board that Mokwa did. Chris Goodson’s gone, Bettye Battle-Turner is in. Todd Epsten is the president, whereas Goodson was before, but other than those changes it’s the same board for that audited year, which would include Mayor Francis G. Slay, Vincent Bommarito Jr. and Julius K. Hunter.
Isom: Yes.
American: What oversight do they have over you as the top cop?
Isom: Well, the way the structure should work is that you have a board secretary who is their day-to-day contact with the chief of police. And that person really should have oversight responsibility over the police department, giving the board the information they need to assess whether the police department or the chief is performing well. One of the things that I’m going to recommend at the next board meeting is a new structure. There’s been a lot of debate about local control, and certainly that’s one of the things for the legislators and the people to decide.
But I don’t think that’s necessarily the issue in terms of managing the police department more effectively. We have done some analysis of other police departments, and what we find is that the internal structure for our police department is highly irregular. Meaning that the board does have direct control over budget and finance, purchasing, legal at this time, and supply. Those entities report directly to the board secretary. To me, as we look at other organizations, a police board having both oversight and operational control is something that’s not a best practice.
The board secretary simply should be an oversight mechanism – looking, investigating the performance of the police department and the chief. We looked at several different agencies, and each one of them places budget and finance, purchasing, legal and supply under direction of the chief.
It’s important for a lot of reasons. It’s important for accountability, who’s responsible, cohesiveness and consistency. Board secretaries change, because a new board might come in and change it around; this leads to inconsistencies in command. The board secretary is often a police officer – some might have a whole bunch of experience in budget and finance, and education in areas, some may not.
The other problem is you can’t have both oversight and operational control. There’s a natural conflict. So my proposal to the board would be budget and finance, purchase, supply and legal come under the direction of the police department. The other suggestion to the board would be to hire a person as a chief financial officer, a civilian, who has some city manager type experience – one that will give you the education and experience you need, but also the consistency so you have someone in that position reporting to the chief under the same strategic operational direction.
Now whether we have state control or local control, I think that’s a separate issue. But what I’m more focused on is bringing best practices to the police department, and we found in our research of over 10 different police agencies there’s no agency that has a similar structure where these agencies report directly to the board and there is an oversight plus an operational aspect to it.
