‘Alarming’ abuse in city jails alleged at hearing

Representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri called for an independent investigation into allegations of human rights violations in jails in the city of St. Louis.

John Chasnoff and Redditt Hudson spoke Wednesday morning to the Public Safety Committee of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen. The board has scheduled another hearing – tentatively next Wednesday morning – to hear from officials with the St. Louis Department of Public Safety.

The local ACLU issued a report detailing its findings of abuse in the St. Louis Justice Center and the Medium Security Institution in March. The 70-page report is titled “Suffering in Silence: Human Rights Abuses in St. Louis Correctional Centers.” (Read the ACLU’s summary of its findings and the full report at the bottom of this article.)

Charles Bryson, the city’s director of Public Safety, said Wednesday afternoon that he supports an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. “As soon as we got the report, we said this meets the criteria for an independent investigation” and sent it to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“You do want your offices – especially your corrections office – to be credible institutions,” he said. “So if there’s anything going on like the allegations, we want to know that.”

“I’m absolutely appalled by the abuse that’s taken place,” Alderman Frank Williamson, 26th Ward, said after the hearing.

Hudson described instances of abuse, assault, negligence and sexual misconduct on the part of some corrections officers toward the inmates. Inmates have been forced to sleep in their own waste and have been denied medical care, he said.

He also alleged a cover-up and an atmosphere of intimidation against corrections officers who object to how the inmates are being treated.

Alderman Terry Kennedy, 18th Ward, referred to some of the ACLU’s findings as “alarming” and said, “It certainly merits further investigation.”

Since the ACLU’s report was released in March, eight additional former and current corrections officers have stepped forward to describe what they’ve witnessed, said Hudson, a former St. Louis police officer who wrote the report.

During the hearing, Alderman Charles Quincy Troupe, 1st Ward, addressed the allegations of sexual misconduct.

“There is no way an inmate can have consensual sex” with a guard, he said. “It’s rape, and it needs to be looked at like that.”

Troupe pointed out that the people sitting in jails are waiting for their trials.

“These people have not been found guilty of doing anything,” he said. “To be subjected to this kind of insanity is unacceptable.”

Alderwoman April Ford-Griffin, 5th Ward, voiced her support for an independent investigation. She described the allegations as “disturbing news but not shocking.” People “go into these institutions, get treated like animals and go back to their communities and treat others like animals,” she said. “If we know they’re coming back to their communities, … we have to do something to try to rehabilitate them.”

Chasnoff and Hudson were encouraged by the committee members’ interest. “I think people took the information today very seriously and want to do a follow-up investigation,” Chasnoff said.

“More of this information is going to come out in the coming months,” Hudson said after the hearing. “They need to do what’s best for the city and for the people” in the institutions. In this case, it’s the same thing, he said.

ACLU summary: “Suffering in Silence: Human Rights Abuses in St. Louis Correctional Centers”
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ACLU full report: “Suffering in Silence: Human Rights Abuses in St. Louis Correctional Centers”
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