ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — Acting St. Louis County Council Chair Rita Days sent a scathing letter to the Board of Police Commissioners this week, calling its members “negligent and irresponsible in their own appointed duties.”
“My hope was that you would recognize the need for strong leadership at this time and you would deliver,” she wrote in the Feb. 9 letter obtained by 5 On Your Side. “I am no longer confident that you can do either.”
The letter arrived just days after 5 On Your Side first reported the board gave Chief Mary Barton about a $12,000 raise during an executive session meeting in December. The board also gave Barton’s second-in-command, Lt. Col. Kenneth Gregory an 8% raise, bringing his salary to about $146,000 from about $135,200, according to a public records request.
Board Chairman Judge William “Ray” Price hung up on a reporter after saying the chief’s raise was a personnel matter he could not discuss.
But he offered a statement in response to Days' letter, which read: "The Board of Police Commissioners is fully engaged in our duties to the citizens of St. Louis County and the members of the department. Some of the decisions we are responsible for making will not always be popular, but we are running the department in a fair, just, and apolitical manner.
"We thank Councilwoman Days for her concerns and even share some of them. We will engage with her, and other stakeholders, to move the department forward."
Barton has come under fire from the Ethical Society of Police, which represents primarily Black officers, after she told the County Council she does not believe there is systemic racism in the county police department.
In her letter, Days told the police board she asked Barton for a meeting on behalf of State Rep. Kevin Windham.
“To this day, I have not heard from anyone,” she wrote. “Although there are differences in government and private sector employment, your law firms or educational institutions would not accept this lack of response, or reward this type of behavior.
“I can certainly understand the pressure associated with this commission, however, if this is not what you expected or you cannot devote the appropriate time to deal with the pressing matters, it would behoove you to step aside for the greater good.”
Days’ letter also comes at a time when race-related controversies within the police department are happening with some regularity.
Three Black police commanders have filed discrimination lawsuits against the county. Barton’s brother-in-law, Mark Peeler, used the “n word” on an open police radio mic while working as a dispatcher in January and two police academy instructors have been fired for using racial slurs.
In her letter, Days cites a quote Police Board Chairman William “Ray" Price gave to the Missouri legislature in 2011 while he was Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court.
It read: “…we rule individual case by individual case, with each individual having only that one chance for justice. In every case, someone loses. Fairness, impartiality and a level playing field, not subject to outside influence or manipulation, not dependent on a pre-existing promise, are the absolute necessity.”
Days wrote: “Did you Commissioner Price mean those words?”
In his statement, Price wrote: "On a personal level, I meant those words when I said them and stand by them today."
She lists about a dozen people, including residents – some of whom have alleged discrimination and police brutality – as well as officers including Barton, Lt. Col. Troy Doyle, Lt. James Morgan and Lt. Ray Rice in her letter stating, “the Police Board has failed at every turn.”
“It is as though the board fundamentally does not have the resourcefulness to bring justice to anyone, nor does the board exercise independence away from the administration or the St. Louis County Police Department.”
County Executive Sam Page appointed four of the five police board members. Page and Days have been locked in political warfare ever since Page fired Hazel Erby, who has alleged in a lawsuit she was fired from a government diversity post for disclosing violations of the county's minority contracting ordinance.
Page recently appointed a new member to the police board after Dr. L.J. Punch abruptly resigned.
“I can truly understand the frustration that Dr. L.J. Punch has expressed with this body and administration,” Days wrote.
She also wrote that the St. Louis County Police Association and the Ethical Society of Police, which represents primarily Black officers, are not “working together consistently on collaboration on police department policies, protocols and practices.”
She blames the board for the divide, saying it’s a “reflection of the board’s longstanding inaction and refusal to recognize ESOP as a legitimate organization.”
“They are here to stay,” she wrote. “The board is a huge part of the problem.”
