Consultants: St. Louis County, Mo., Facing Outdated Tech

(TNS) — St. Louis County Police are years behind in updating policies and technology, addressing an internal racial divide, working with community stakeholders and collaborating with the city's police department, according to a 43-page report by outside consultants hired to analyze local law enforcement.

A parallel report on the city's department, also produced by Teneo Group, was released separately early Monday afternoon.

Teneo's review, funded by Centene Corp. and other St. Louis area companies, was announced in June at a time when the county department was facing calls to address systemic racism and when public leaders in the region were pressured by the business community to lower violent crime rates. Centene, under its CEO  Michael Neidorff , has pushed for changes in local policing to address crime, which it says has been an impediment to recruiting.

The report released to the county on Monday doesn't call for merging or consolidating the city and county departments. But it does criticize a lack of communication and cooperation between the two agencies, calling for both police chiefs, command staffs and specialized task forces to talk with one another almost daily, and to regularly share crime analysis and investigations intelligence.

In other parts of the country, police chiefs of neighboring departments talk to one another much more frequently than St. Louis County Police Chief  Mary Barton  and St. Louis Police Chief  John Hayden  do, and that has been true of their predecessors too, the report says.

The county "does not have a coordinated agency-wide methodology to reduce crime," the report said. "While precinct commanders are properly empowered to lead the crime fight, there is no overall planning, coordination, or strategic deployment of resources to assist them."

Overall, the report broadly commended the county department, but said it's out of date with other large, modern police forces, listing numerous policies over internal affairs and policing practices that haven't been addressed for years. The department's use-of-force policy, for example, hasn't been updated since 2010.

One roadblock to revising policies in the county, the report asserts, is the union that represents officers. The St. Louis County Police Officers Association, the report says, has collective bargaining power that gives it the right to challenge and possibly reverse policy decisions by the police chief. The report, however, doesn't go on to suggest a detailed solution to the chief's relationship with the union.

The collective bargaining agreement also purposefully makes it hard for the public to access information about officers, the report says.

"These are a hindrance to the full transparency expected of police agencies in the current era," the report says.

And unlike other departments, St. Louis County does not collect data on its own demographics, so the department doesn't track, for example, how many Black or Hispanic recruits enter the police academy or how many become officers.

And the department's Diversity and Inclusion Unit lacks a clear focus or mandate, the report says.

Both issues further "a serious racial divide" within the department, the report says. "There is a narrowing window of opportunity for the chief to address this racial divide, exert new leadership and lead positive cultural change, some steps of which are currently underway."

Officers interviewed by Teneo said the department's hiring, promotion and transfer policies were "unfair, biased and/or too subjective," the report says.

The conclusions echo criticism from the Ethical Society of Police, an independent group that mostly represents minority officers in the county and city, which has called on Barton to take a series of actions to eliminate systemic racism in the department. ESOP has also been critical of leadership of the Diversity and Inclusion Unit under Lt.  Keith Wildhaber , who was appointed by former Police Chief  John Belmar  to lead the unit weeks after he won a $20 million judgment against the county in an anti-discrimination suit. Wildhaber, who alleged he was passed up for promotion becuase he is gay, later settled with the department for $10.25 million.

The report calls for the department to revise its hiring and training policies to make them more transparent and have more objective criteria, noting that both ESOP and the county police union share that goal.

The county report covers five focus areas: crime-fighting practices, racial divisions within the police department, police communications with the public, the department's technological capabilities and its internal policies.

The report also calls on the department to revise its crime-fighting strategies to focus on precision policing, the idea that investigators should target a small percentage of offenders responsible for an outside proportion of crime.

But the department also needs to better coordinate crime-fighting with community agencies, including instituting regular meetings with community groups to discuss detailed crime statistics down to the neighborhood block level.

The report placed emphasis on Barton's role as chief, calling on her to take a more active role in briefing the public on high-profile crimes and coordinating partnerships with community groups.

The report was released publicly Monday as part of the agenda for the St. Louis County Council's regular meetings Tuesday. The council's Justice, Health and Welfare Committee has scheduled an 11 a.m. Tuesday meeting to discuss the findings; the full council meets at 1 p.m.

In a letter to the council, St. Louis County Executive  Sam Page  said he received the report Monday and found it "serious, candid and straightforward."

"Some of the report's findings and recommendations are consistent with perceptions of the department in the community while others will be new to many," Page said in the letter. "I share the outside experts' view that the Police Department is sound in the fundamentals of policing with a strong, ethical foundation and talented personnel. And I also believe the department has significant opportunities to implement new crime-reduction strategies, to bridge the racial divide within the department, to improve hiring and promotion practices, to updates its policies, and to improve its relationship with the community."

A spokesman for Page said the executive would not comment further on the report Monday.

Consultants hired for the project also included former Philadelphia police commissioner  Charles Ramsey  and Washington police chief  Daniel Oates , a former police chief in Aurora, Colorado and Miami Beach, Florida.

Page was the first to announce the privately funded review of the police department in late June. The announcement appeared to undermine the police board, which had just weeks before passed up Page's top choice for the job, Lt. Col.  Troy Doyle , to name Barton. Doyle, who is Black, then filed a complaint of racial discrimination that remains pending.

Days after Page's announcement, St. Louis Mayor  Lyda Krewson  agreed to a parallel review in the city.

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