Judge notes lack of independent internal investigations at St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department
ST. LOUIS– A circuit court has ruled the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department routinely acted contrary to the law when asked to provide information to the public about officer conduct complaints. The decision came in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Missouri on behalf of a man who had requested to see the results of his complaint of criminal conduct by several police officers.
The court also noted the department’s process of investigating potentially criminal officer conduct is not truly independent operation.
City of St. Louis Circuit Judge Robert H. Dierker ruled that St. Louis police must disclose to the public all portions of internal affairs records that are not created solely for the purpose of hiring, firing or promoting an officer. He expressed concern that the police department has reserved for itself the job of investigating misconduct complaints against police officers.
“It is abundantly clear to this court that it is high time for the Civil Service Commission to take control of disciplinary procedures of the Police Department,” wrote Dierker in the decision.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of Curtis Farber, who filed a complaint against an officer for misconduct in March 2013. The lawsuit claimed the department violated the open records law.
The court agreed.
“It is apparent from the record that the Police Department doggedly maintains its IAD [internal affairs department] files as closed records without regard to the Sunshine Law,” Dierker wrote.
“This case reveals that the St. Louis police usually do not investigate allegations of criminal activity when police officers are the accused,” said Tony Rothert, Legal Director of the ACLU of Missouri. “While the police department pretends to investigate crimes by police officers like they do other complaints of criminal activity, it instead sweeps most complaints under the internal affairs carpet without ever even considering whether a crime has been committed.”
In June 2013, internal affairs notified Farber that it received his complaint – and the investigator assigned quickly concluded that there was no need for a criminal investigation of the officer. That conclusion was reached, however, with information gathered in Farber’s criminal case, not independently through the internal affairs investigation.
The police chief accepted and signed the report in January 2015 – nearly two years after Farber filed his complaint. In November 2015, Farber formally requested to see the internal affairs report. Farber renewed his demand to see the report in March 2016, a month later the police department told him it was a closed record unavailable to the public. In the court decision, the judge ruled that parts of the record are indeed open to the public.
“Law enforcement must be transparent in its actions to earn the trust of the community it serves,” said Jeffrey Mittman, Executive Director of the ACLU of Missouri. “We hope that officers will begin to hold themselves to standards of the law, and not above them.”