It seemed like a simple request.
In July, I asked the city of St. Louis to provide 18 months of jail statistics for the Justice Center. The request followed a tip that administrative segregation — a bureaucratic phrase for solitary confinement — was on the rise at the jail.
At the time, there had been five deaths — it has now climbed to six — at the jail, and both detainees and attorneys were raising a stink about conditions there.
So I asked for the numbers to guide my reporting. The information I sought used to be publicly available without a request. It was posted online on the city’s website — a monthly report showing use of force incidents, segregation, mental health needs and other statistics that nearly every jail in the country keeps on a regular basis.
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“They should be able to immediately produce those records. Any facility that is responsibly managed should be tracking those statistics, and there’s no reason why those aren’t readily available,†says attorney Elad Gross, an expert on the Missouri Sunshine Law. “With the delays the city continues to impose, the strategy sure seems to be to make the records you requested less relevant by the time they are finally released.â€
Indeed, I’ve made similar requests in other cities and received the information quickly, often the same day.
It’s been more than two months since I made my request to St. Louis. All I’ve received are delay notices from the city’s Sunshine Law coordinator, Joseph Sims, pushing out the dates by which my records might be available. Such notices from Sims are becoming infamous among the circles of folks — especially reporters and attorneys — who regularly file requests for open records with the city.
That’s why Gross filed a 273-page lawsuit earlier this month alleging dozens of Sunshine Law violations in the city. His request also started by seeking information on the city’s Corrections Department, only to encounter delay after delay. The lawsuit names Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, City Counselor Sheena Hamilton and Sims as defendants.
It was filed shortly before criminal justice reform advocates held a rally focusing on the tragedy of six detainees dying in the city jail in the past year. That Sunshine Law failures and bad news involve the same city department should not be a surprise. All too often, government obfuscation occurs when the news sought in public records sheds light on government failures.
So it was in the previous mayoral administration, when the city denied my request for bidding information related to the airport privatization effort, which has since been scuttled. Attorney Mark Pedroli later filed a lawsuit alleging violations of the Sunshine Law in that process, and the lawsuit is ongoing. To date, Pedroli has uncovered a trail of secrecy directed by the very city counselor’s office responsible for making sure the city is following the Sunshine Law.
Instead, that office, under two successive administrations, seems to work to obscure the inner workings of city government. In 2015, for example, Deputy City Counselor Michael Garvin directed his underlings to write a consulting contract with former mayoral chief of staff Jeff Rainford in a way that would ensure Rainford’s communications with the city wouldn’t be considered open records.
“This is to ensure that our communications with him become privileged even though he’s no longer employed by the city,†Garvin wrote in an email uncovered by Pedroli in his lawsuit.
The contract with Rainford, who became a major player in the failed airport privatization scheme, was never produced, according to the city’s recent response to my Sunshine Law request. (They responded to that one quickly).
Garvin still works for the city counselor’s office. And the Jones administration hasn’t yet settled the airport privatization lawsuit, while it continues to struggle to follow the same Sunshine Law that the previous administration tried to avoid.
“The city’s failure to follow the Sunshine Law is system-wide and goes well beyond just my document request and covers a wide range of topics,†Gross says. “Any Missourian requesting any records from the City of St. Louis will likely have to make a substantial effort to access public records, which is not how the Sunshine Law is supposed to work at all.â€
Indeed, when detainees are dying at the jail, the Sunshine Law is supposed to ensure that their families and the public can see documentation that might reveal an explanation — bad conditions, too much use of force, too much solitary confinement or lack of mental health care.
According to Sims’ latest email, the “earliest†my records would be available was Sept. 23.
That date has come and gone. The records that could help explain an unacceptable spike in deaths are still nowhere to be found.