CLAYTON — The St. Louis County health director’s claims he faced racist harassment at a council meeting this week continued to reverberate Thursday as leaders took sides and his story began to draw national attention.
The office of County Executive Sam Page has already launched an investigation into Dr. Faisal Khan’s allegations of what happened Tuesday night when the council moved to terminate the administration’s controversial new mask mandate.
“We’re not going to ignore this,†said Page spokesman Doug Moore. “His safety is a priority of ours, we want him to feel safe, and currently, he doesn’t.â€
At the same time, Council Chairwoman Rita Heard Days, D-1st District, said she would open her own probe.
And several council members remained skeptical of Khan’s story and dubious of a Page-led inquiry.
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“We’ve seen no evidence,†County Councilman Tim Fitch, R-3rd District, told KMOX (1120 AM), “and my guess is (Khan) will not make a police report because it’s a crime to make a false report.â€
By the end of the day, the only certainty was there was yet another dispute in a county government already awash in controversy.
The differences in opinion were no surprise. Page and a bloc of council members that includes Days and Fitch have for months been locked in political combat over pandemic aid, health orders and Page’s outside work as an anesthesiologist. It is clear Khan’s accusations have become yet another dispute on the list.
The latest fight began when Khan appeared Tuesday to answer questions about a mandate he enacted the day before to combat the rising threat of the delta variant. He was greeted by a council majority furious that he would issue any order without going through them first.
But while the exchanges between Khan and some council members were sharp, his testimony early in the council meeting was soon overshadowed by two hours of angry public comment followed by the council’s 5-2 vote to rescind the order. Late in the meeting, long after Khan left, Fitch said he’d heard that the health director made an obscene gesture at protesters outside the council chambers and asked that the report be investigated.
On Wednesday, in a letter to Days, Khan acknowledged he gave a protester the middle finger on his way out but did so only after being surrounded, shoved and berated with racial slurs. He accused Fitch of helping stoke the anger with a “dog-whistle†question. And he said Republican politicians in the audience heckled him, and Days had failed to do enough to stop them.
His letter to Days, provided by his spokesman Wednesday night to the media, elicited an outpouring of sympathy from supporters.
“I believe Dr. Khan & I stand with him. There will be accountability,†County Councilwoman Lisa Clancy, D-5th District, who voted to keep the mandate, .
But opponents like state Sen. Bob Onder, R-Lake Saint Louis, also seized on the letter, noting Khan’s admission and dismissing the rest as a smokescreen.
“Unlicensed ‘public health expert’ Faisal Khan admits making an obscene gesture to St. Louis County citizens,†Onder . “Of course it’s their fault: he calls his opponents racists and xenophobic. Sam Page should fire him immediately.â€
Those criticized in the letter also began firing back. Fitch dismissed a claim that his questions about Khan’s medical credentials — “Why are you called Dr. Khan? Are you a physician in the United States?†— were intended to emphasize Khan’s foreign heritage.
A spokesman for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark McCloskey called allegations his boss heckled Khan “fictitious.†And when asked about Khan’s claims that she failed to keep order in the meeting, Days, the council chair, noted that at one point in the meeting, Khan “threw a little threat†at her, saying he would leave unless she imposed decorum.
By Thursday morning, Khan’s story , which cast him as yet another heroic public health official struggling to make the truth about the pandemic heard where politics has made the truth unwelcome.
“We are not the enemy,†he told the newspaper.
He made similar comments in an appearance Thursday night on MSNBC. He also was a guest on PBS’s “†and CNN’s “.â€
But back home, opponents weren’t listening.
Fitch, on KMOX Thursday morning, said he had yet to see proof of Khan getting “shoulder-bumped†or “pushed†as he claimed in the letter.
Fitch also said that with a number of police in the chamber and the area outside of it, it seemed like one of them would have intervened had Khan been assaulted.
He made clear he didn’t think Khan should resign or be terminated.
“But if he wants to apologize to the public and say, ‘I lost my temper,’ I’ve got no problem with that at all,†Fitch said.
And in the afternoon, Days, the council chair, told the radio station that while racism has no place in St. Louis County, she did not personally hear any of the racist rhetoric Khan described. She also disputed his characterization that she failed to keep order in the chamber as he spoke and said she was disappointed to hear he gave the middle finger to constituents on his way out of the meeting, even if things were tense.
“You are a professional,†she said. “When you take this job, that kind of comes along with the territory, so I would have expected a more professional response from Dr. Khan.â€
Not everyone on the council felt the same way. Clancy told the Post-Dispatch she was supportive of the county executive’s investigation and thought the whole incident should be a wake-up call for the legislative body, too.
“We need some change in that chamber,†she said.
Councilman Ernie Trakas, R-6th District, agreed, saying Days was far too lenient with the raucous crowd Tuesday. Trakas, who voted to rescind the order on Tuesday, supported Clancy instead of Days for council chair in January.
“I don’t remember a more raucous meeting in my time on the council,†he said. “It slipped out of control, and now we’re dealing with it.â€
Moore, Page’s spokesman, said work on investigating Khan’s complaint had already begun within the executive’s office and could eventually extend to the county counselor’s office, the police and the county prosecutor’s office.
The timeline for decisions on that was not immediately clear.
No police report had been filed as of Thursday afternoon.
Khan, meanwhile, told the Post-Dispatch he was not thinking about any investigation.
“All I want is for people to wear masks,†he said. “Otherwise more people will become sick and more people will die.â€
Text of the letter sent by Dr. Faisal Khan to Council Chair Rita Heard Days
This is the text of the letter sent by Dr. Faisal Khan, acting director of the St. Louis County Department of Public Health, to St. Louis County Council Chair Rita Heard Days on Wednesday, July 28, 2021. In his letter he refers to Councilman Tim Fitch, a Republican who represents the council’s 3rd District; Mark McCloskey, a Republican running for U.S. Senate; Paul Berry, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for County Executive in 2020.
_____
Dear Chairwoman Days,
I appreciated the opportunity to share the latest data, scientific research, and public health advice with the County Council last night. As I mentioned in my letter on Monday, the latest public health order regarding masks is an important disease transmission mitigation strategy necessary to slow the spread of the coronavirus, especially as the much more contagious Delta variant is now the dominant variant in Missouri and in our region. As Director of the Department of Public Health, it is incumbent upon me to offer the best public health guidance I can, and that is what I endeavored to do last night.
After completing my medical training, I chose to focus my work on public health. I have committed myself – over my entire 25-year career – to improving health status indicators for entire communities, particularly in the most vulnerable segments of society. I have worked to improve public health around the world, working in Australia, Vietnam, Pakistan, South Africa, the People’s Republic of China, Zimbabwe, Botswana and the United States (West Virginia, Massachusetts and Missouri). I have been a proud citizen of the United States since 2013.
In all that time and in all those places, I have never been subjected to the racist, xenophobic, and threatening behavior that greeted me in the County Council meeting last night. My time before the Council began with a dog-whistle question from Councilman Tim Fitch, who said he wanted to emphasize for the assembled crowd that I was not from this country. As you know – and as Mr. Fitch surely knew since he was the crowd’s leader – the great majority of the people in the raucous crowd appeared to be from the “MAGA†movement, as evidence by their “Trump 2024†chants. The MAGA movement is well-known for xenophobia and discriminatory treatment of racial minorities and has engaged in violent acts against government institutions like in our nation’s capital on January 6.
I later saw that around the time that Mr. Fitch asked his question, his friend Mark McCloskey – who was seated right behind me and situated near Mr. Fitch’s position on the dais – posted on social media that mask mandates are “un-American.†One cannot help but see the connection between the efforts of Mr. McCloskey and Mr. Fitch to stoke xenophobia against me. I’m sure you are aware that Mr. McCloskey – like Mr. Fitch – is a well-known MAGA movement figure.
In line with Councilman Fitch’s incendiary comments and Mr. McCloskey’s social media post, several audience members then started mocking my accent while I was presenting to the Council. I heard people doing their impersonation of Apu, a caricature character from The Simpsons television show that mocks people from South Asia such as myself.
While I was presenting my analysis of COVID-19 to the Council, two politicians (Mr. McCloskey and Paul Berry) seated right behind me consistently berated me and tried to distract me from my presentation. When I asked you to intervene to prevent Mr. McCloskey and Mr. Berry from interfering with my presentation, you lectured me – not them. Such demeaning treatment was surprising to me, as I had heard that you were sensitive to issues of race and treating people equitably.
After my presentation was completed, I tried to leave the chamber but was confronted by several people who were in the aisle. On more than one occasion, I was shoulder-bumped and pushed. As I approached the exit and immediately outside the chambers, I became surrounded by the crowd in close quarters, where members of the crowd yelled at me, calling me a “fat brown cunt†and a “brown bastard.†After being physically assaulted, called racist slurs, and surrounded by an angry mob, I expressed my displeasure by using my middle finger toward an individual who had physically threatened me and called me racist slurs.
Political operatives – and even Mr. Fitch himself – have sought to use my instinctive reaction as political fodder against me. I would like to think that I would not react like that because it risks creating a distraction from what should be a consensus around masking and vaccines. I have to say, however, that when faced with the racist vitriol that Councilman Fitch has been privately and publicly stoking against me since my appointment, I cannot say I am sorry.
I remain open and willing to brief the Council on public health issues dealing with COVID-19 and the other important challenges we face in public health in St. Louis County. I simply ask that you take appropriate steps to investigate these matters, prevent similar events from happening in the future, and ensure that a safe and orderly environment be created for any future testimony me or my staff are asked to provide to the Council.
Sincerely,
Faisal Khan, MBBS, MPH
Director
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