ST. LOUIS — The day after testifying for the defense during the trial of three police officers accused of assaulting one of their own, St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department leaders put Capt. Michael Deeba on administrative duty without explanation, according to his attorney.
It means the more than 30-year veteran of the force can’t work on the streets, work certain shifts, be eligible for in-service training, can’t wear a uniform, must get permission to carry a weapon, loses any department-issued vehicle he may have or work any secondary jobs, according to Deeba’s attorney John Bouhasin.
“I mean they’re putting handcuffs on what they can do here, ‘Come to the station, don't wear a uniform, you’re to sit here for eight hours and go home with no overtime, no secondary, good luck surviving,’” Bouhasin said. “It's a way of pushing them out. Once they get to the point where they're not being able to provide for their families, some people leave.”
Deeba’s attorney is also a former attorney for the City of St. Louis and has represented dozens of police officers during disciplinary proceedings. He said he’s never had a client put on administrative duty without explanation like Deeba has been. Bouhasin said he considers the move to be disciplinary, but the department does not view it as a disciplinary action.
“I mean imagine your employer calling you telling you, ‘You're on administrative duties,’” Bouhasin said. “That's it.
"Isn’t there more?”
Chief John Hayden announced Tuesday that his department will begin an internal investigation into the 2017 beating of undercover officer Luther Hall.
In all, five officers were indicted.
Two have already pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.
Three spent the last two weeks of March in trial. Two of them, Steven Korte and Christopher Myers, were acquitted Monday of the most serious charge – depriving Hall of his civil rights. A mistrial was declared for the third, Dustin Boone.
Korte was also acquitted of lying to the FBI.
A mistrial was declared on whether Myers intentionally destroyed Hall’s cellphone to conceal evidence.
Hayden said federal prosecutors asked the department to postpone its internal affairs investigation to avoid interfering with their criminal investigation into the assault.
“Our department has fully cooperated with the federal investigation and has been assured that the FBI will fully cooperate with our internal investigation,” the statement said. “It is our hope to now obtain all relevant evidence from the FBI to conduct a complete and thorough internal investigation.”
The statement continued: “Officer accountability is, and has been, a pillar of my administration.”
But only four of the five officers indicted in this case remain employed by Hayden's department. Korte is still on the payroll, but his attorney John Rogers told reporters Monday his client was unsure whether he would return to the job.
Defense attorneys for the three officers who went to trial in March called Deeba to the stand Thursday, and he testified for about an hour.
He said no one ever told him the names of the officers involved in the assault – a point on which First Assistant U.S. Attorney Carrie Costantin challenged him. She said Deeba asked another sergeant to find out who assaulted Hall, but Deeba said that sergeant never gave him the names.
“You expect us to believe that?” she asked him.
Defense attorneys for the officers spent a great deal of time picking apart how their clients’ names came up in the investigation – which they called a “rogue” investigation conducted by Hall’s closest friends based on nothing more than rumors.
Deeba told jurors those friends should have stayed out of any investigation because of their closeness to Hall and the possibility of tainting an investigation, at one point saying they could be disciplined or even fired for doing so.
Costantin turned Deeba’s words around on him on the stand after Deeba told jurors he considered Hall a “dear friend,” and asked him if he, too, should have stayed out of the investigation and was wrong for asking the sergeant to find out who assaulted Hall.
“I was very cautious,” he said.
On the stand, Deeba also found fault with Hall and his partner officer Lewis Naes for not blowing their undercover status the moment they felt they were in danger – and that moment, according to him, was when police started firing pepper balls at the protesters they were among.
Hall testified that he did not feel safe blowing his cover during the assault because he was too close to other protesters and didn't want his operation to be compromised.
Hall and Naes were working undercover as protesters to document property damage and other crimes in September 2017 after the city erupted following the acquittal of former officer Jason Stockley, who had been charged with the murder of a Black drug suspect in 2011.
Deeba admitted he did not give the men a "safe word" to use if confronted by police – saying oftentimes the word would leak to protesters or the media. It was another point on which Costantin pressed him.
"But I took corrective action," Deeba told her, saying the day after Hall's assault he instituted a safety word.