CLAYTON, Mo. — Kenneth Gregory is coming in as top cop in St. Louis County at a difficult time in the department.
Multiple lawsuits alleging discrimination have hit the department in recent years. Crime is on the rise. And his predecessor, Chief Mary Barton, resigned less than two years after she took the job amid allegations of discrimination of her own.
“Chief Barton, she left here, but, the issues stay here, issues that I have to deal with, concerns and I have to deal with, and I’m trying to work through those things in my own way,” he said during an interview with 5 On Your Side Friday inside his new digs at the department he has served for 41 years.
He has been the interim chief for about two weeks now, and says he plans to do more than just keep the seat warm.
But whether he will apply for the position permanently remains to be seen.
In 2014, he was one of three finalists for the job that Jon Belmar ultimately got. Gregory did not put his name in the running after Belmar retired. Barton got the job five years later.
And at 69, and with the number of years under his belt, Gregory is more than eligible to retire with a full pension.
“It's too early to tell,” he said when asked if he will apply for the job full-time. “I’ve been in this two weeks.
“I’ve learned a lot about this position. It's a very difficult position. I've been deputy chief under two chiefs and I've seen what they were going through, and I don't know what it's going to bring for me down the road, but we'll see.”
For now, he’s got his priorities, and said he’s been planting notebooks everywhere he goes to keep track of them.
“In the garage, in my car, so when something comes to my mind, I’ll write it down and figure out what I need to do,” he said.
He starts his days with a can of the energy drink Monster and a protein bar.
"That usually gets me to lunch," he said, adding that he hasn't had much time for lunch lately.
At the top of his priority list is boosting the number of officers on his force and attracting a diverse group of recruits to combat the county’s skyrocketing homicide rate.
“We are having a problem with manpower right now,” he said. “We need to improve that.
“That is going to help us patrol, get more officers out there on the street to do the job. And once we improve that, we're going to take a lot of stress off our officers who are probably working a lot of overtime and dealing with that stress in themselves. So that's very important to me to do that.”
But some activists, and political leaders, believe fewer officers and more mental health workers is the answer to preventing crime. And, to do so, political leaders must Defund the Police, as the movement has become known.
Gregory says he believes social workers and mental health workers provide a valuable service, but doesn’t believe in cutting police officer positions.
“I would doubt very seriously that citizens, whether in the urban area or county, would ever want to see fewer policemen, because we hear it all the time, ‘We want we want more policemen out there,’” he said.
Officer by accident
Gregory’s philosophy on policing is rooted in north St. Louis in the former Seventh District – which has some of the city’s highest crime neighborhoods.
“Growing up in that area, it was a very, very rough neighborhood and I've had dealings with police officers at that time, and I've seen dealings with police officers at that time back in those days that were not favorable of what I thought a policeman should be,” he said. “And that stayed in my mind when I became a police officer that I never wanted to be that type of officer.
“We're talking many, many, many, many moons ago. It was different.”
He didn’t go into detail about those encounters, but added his original plan for his life was teaching. He got his undergraduate degree on a football scholarship from the University of Missouri. After graduation, he became a teacher in Jennings, which required him to have a master’s degree after five years. But his first contract with the district was for $4,000.
“I could not afford to go back to school and get my master’s degree within five years,” he said.
So he met some guys playing flag football who were St. Louis County police officers.
“Never in my life had I thought about being a policeman,” he said. “And 41 years later, here I sit.”
He continued: “I never came into this profession with the goals of locking people up, locking up criminals. My goal when I came in here was to help people. And I've had an opportunity to do that and opportunities to help people. The locking up people? That came along with the job.”
Now, St. Louis County’s homicide rate is climbing faster than the city’s, which has the highest murder rate per capita in the country.
Gregory said most of the county’s homicides are domestic, or personal disputes.
“To patrol against an issue that's going on inside of your house, it's difficult to patrol,” he said.
He said a partnership with St. Louis Police to target hot spots for crime along the city's northern border with the county and the Jennings Precinct is seeing some success, which he wants to continue.
"I talked with chief the other day, and we're looking to continue to do collaborative things with them," Gregory said.
Weathering some storms
Gregory was a lieutenant colonel when his department made national headlines for its handling of the protests in Ferguson following the police shooting of Mike Brown.
“The first thing that I would do in a situation like that is to make sure that we definitely got out in front of that with social media, because if we don't get out in front of that, there's no telling what social media can put out there in reference to what happened in that particular case,” he said.
For months, his department leaders said little about the investigation into the killing of Brown, who was unarmed and shot by a white officer. Protesters chanted for months, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” after rumors spread on social media that Brown was surrendering with his hands up when the officer shot him.
Local and federal investigations did not find any evidence to back that claim.
“We weren't out in front of the situation and we got called out on that,” he said. “And it didn't help us with the fact that we couldn't defend the things that were happening with us during those 18 days of protests in Ferguson.
“The biggest support that we had in Ferguson was the clergy. And they got out there and they talked with the people out there as best they could to try to keep people at ease with the situation that was going on. That helped us a great deal, so those are some of the things that I would do to try to ease the situation.
Gregory said the department is constantly working on how to provide information quickly about ongoing investigations. He said he is working with St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell on how soon to release body camera footage.
Had it existed following the Ferguson shooting: “There’s no way that we cannot be transparent about what happened in a case like that.”
Gregory has weathered some controversy of his own.
Keith Wildhaber sued the department in 2017 alleging Belmar passed him over for promotions because he is gay. At the trial in 2019, Wildhaber’s attorneys put one of Gregory’s former underlings on the stand to illustrate how the department’s culture discriminates against homosexuals. His former executive assistant Mary Beth Ruby accused Gregory of telling another commander that the Bible calls homosexuality “an abomination.”
Under oath, Gregory denied the accusation.
Wildhaber went on to win a $20 million jury verdict against the county, which was later negotiated down to about half that.
Gregory also stepped in when Barton’s brother-in-law was accused of using the n-word on an open police radio mic during his shift as a dispatcher. Barton recused herself from the investigation, so it fell to Gregory. Documents obtained by the I-Team showed he was terminated, but not long after, a newsletter published by St. Louis County government wished him good luck on his “retirement.”
Barton also faced criticism after she told the St. Louis County Police Board she didn’t believe systemic racism existed within her department. She has since clarified her remarks and accused the media of taking them out of context.
Gregory is more direct on the topic.
“I think systemic racism established itself a long time ago,” he said. “And I don't think there's any corporation like the police department, like big businesses that could avoid systemic racism.
“And it didn't just dodge the St. Louis County Police Department either…The only way that I'm going to change that in any way is to work with my command staff, and get them on the same page that I'm on, and try to get that down to the over 1,300 people on this department to work toward making that change, because it's a very negative issue that we have to deal with. I think it's one sign that the culture in this department is changing with me sitting here. I hope that the younger officers on our department can see that and realize that there are opportunities for them, especially African-Americans in this department, and that there are changes coming.”