By Justin Diep
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
CLAYTON, Mo. — St. Louis County staff made critical mistakes leading up to a jail riot in February, decisions that added hours to the turmoil and led to the destruction of thousands of dollars in jail equipment, a newly released investigative report and accompanying video show.
The 102-page report cites “significant concerns,” saying staff acted outside standard policy, especially by leaving the housing unit — with detainees inside roaming free — without clear direction from higher-ups. The report also contradicts initial statements from county officials, who downplayed the incident.
“These decisions represented a substantial deviation from required protocol and contributed to the magnitude of the incident,” the report’s author, jail integrity unit manager Amy McKinney, concludes.
County officials offered few details publicly in the days that followed. County Executive Sam Page denied that a riot had happened when questioned by the County Council in February, saying 15 to 17 or so prisoners had refused to leave a common area, but that corrections staff had been able to handle the situation.
And Jonel Coleman, the acting jail director then, didn’t answer more than 20 questions County Council members asked her at a meeting in the following days.
The investigative report now fleshes out the extent of the incident: 34 inmates refused to return to their cells, angry that phones and internet weren’t working. It lasted at least 3-and-a-half hours. It damaged more than $30,000 in computers, TVs and equipment.
An expert on jails and prisons, who reviewed the report at the Post-Dispatch’s request, said staff shouldn’t have left the housing unit with detainees outside their cells.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Margo Schlanger, a University of Michigan law professor, formerly at Washington University in St. Louis. “That’s just not how you would respond to this kind of thing.”
“The people who escalated this incident were the staff,” she added.
The jail has been wracked by issues in recent years. Last year, it failed an annual accreditation inspection by the American Correctional Association, which said it was overcrowded, understaffed and unsanitary. It needs tens of millions for an infrastructure overhaul, Page said, but the county hasn’t found funding for improvements. It’s at three-quarters staffing — about 80 correctional officers short.
And St Louis County Police Capt. Timothy Ware, who became the jail’s acting director in June, is the facility’s ninth chief in seven years.
Ware, who released the report publicly, said corrections officers largely followed standard procedures — aside from leaving the housing unit.
“I would’ve liked them to use more time to talk with the residents,” he said. “There’s nothing urgent for us to leave the housing floor.”
“They made some decisions, and then there’s always consequences to your decisions,” Ware added.
A decade ago, detainees were allowed out of their cells about eight hours a day, said Coleman, the former director. Staffing shortages have cut that dramatically.
“It could be for just an hour, depending on what our staffing looks like that day,” Coleman said in an April interview with the Post-Dispatch .
That reduction has driven an increase in behavior problems and was the primary cause of the Feb. 7 incident, she said.
“Individuals who can’t come out much start getting more agitated, they get upset,” Coleman said.
Page did not respond to a request seeking comment.
What happened?
At 5:04 p.m. on Feb. 7 , residents in housing unit 7C were upset about insufficient time outside their cells and issues with Wi-Fi and phones, says the report released to the Post-Dispatch, which redacts the names of officers and supervisors.
The detainees refused to return to their cells.
The phone system was down throughout the building. Detainees widely believed the outage was intentional, according to an officer’s testimony in the report.
At the time, three officers and a supervisor were assigned to the seventh floor, which has four housing units, the report says.
Additional staff were called to attempt to de-escalate the situation and get the detainees in their cells.
“A majority of inmates walked around the unit as if they were walking to their cells,” an officer says in the report. But “very few” inmates actually did.
At 5:21 p.m., an officer contacted a supervisor who was not at the jail at the time regarding the incident, according to a supervisor. “I gave [redacted] the directive to go back to the housing unit and speak to the residents to see if [redacted] was able to get them to comply,” the supervisor writes.
The residents did not comply, remaining outside their cells.
From 5:21 to 5:41 p.m., staff removed equipment from the housing unit, including computer monitors, a modem, a fire extinguisher, a CPR kit, a “breathing apparatus” and a washer and dryer.
Ware said officers removed the equipment to protect it from damage.
But no supervisor was documented as issuing the order, the report says.
At 5:43 p.m. , all staff left the housing unit. That action created a “crime of opportunity,” the report says.
“No policy supports evacuating staff from a populated unit under non-emergency conditions without higher-level authorization,” it says.
Within 15 seconds, the detainees started moving tables and chairs to barricade the two entrances.
Residents who had gotten into their cells earlier watched as detainees threw tables and chairs and ran around the housing unit, the video shows. Some made masks with their clothes. A few dribbled a basketball.
One of them threw it at the camera, knocking it down.
The security camera footage ends at 5:51 p.m., as the camera swings away from the wall.
Officers respond
About an hour later, additional staff arrived at the jail to find tables and chairs barricading both entrances to the housing unit, the report says.
At 7:35 p.m., an officer threw a pepper spray grenade into the housing unit.
Five minutes later, the same officer threw another grenade.
Ten minutes later, a third was thrown; 25 minutes later, a fourth.
Finally, an officer reported, inmates began to ask for their cell doors to be opened.
By 8:30 p.m. , detainees had begun returning to their cells. Staff entered the housing unit and ordered all residents still outside their cells to lie on the floor.
Officers handcuffed those and brought them to unit control before returning them to their cells.
Medical staff checked on detainees, and they were given dinner.
The riot caused $30,803.88 in damage to the housing unit, including to a computer, security equipment, 33 ceiling tiles, five ceiling lights, two 50-inch TVs and a commissary kiosk.
The investigation showed four residents as the “main actors” in the incident, which is being reviewed by the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. The Post-Dispatch is not naming them because no charges have been filed.
Shortly after the incident, residents in neighboring housing unit 7B started flooding their cells by clogging their toilets, according to a supervisor’s incident report. Staff shut off the water to 7B to prevent further flooding that had reached the floor below.
Ware declined to say whether disciplinary action was taken against the officers involved, citing “personnel matters.”
The report offers several recommendations to address “systemic, supervisory and operational deficiencies” that allowed the riot to occur, including improving training for supervisors and officers, standardizing responses to mass refusals and proactively addressing residents’ concerns.
Ware said staffing remains one of the jail’s biggest issues. He’s also pushing now for more training for his current staff.
“Training is ongoing and will remain ongoing,” Ware said. “We have much to learn from this incident and much to teach.”
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