By Justin Diep
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
CLAYTON, Mo. — An internet outage at the St. Louis County jail led to a disturbance where detainees refused to return to their cells, the new acting director said this week.
“They were upset because there was a lack of Wi-Fi connection or trouble with connection,” St. Louis County Police Capt. Timothy Ware said.
Ware, who became the jail’s acting director last week, shared new details of the Feb. 7 incident in an interview Thursday.
Ware, like the prior acting director, Jonel Coleman , blamed staffing issues as the primary cause of the incident. Detainees were spending more time locked in their cells as corrections officers juggled manning the jail and transportation to court.
Ware said the jail is still about 80 officers short of where he would like to be.
In February, it reached a breaking point. People being jailed in housing unit 7c refused to return to their cells after raising concerns about the Wi-Fi and lack of time outside of their cells.
An officer’s statement, obtained by the Post-Dispatch through a public records request, said the phone system was down throughout the building, but detainees believed the outage was intentional.
Balking at returning to cells after recreational time had become “a more and more common occurrence” and had taken place frequently, Coleman told County Council members in February.
Officers unsuccessfully attempted to de-escalate the situation with verbal commands.
“They didn’t see that they were making ground, so they decided to remove some valuables from the housing unit and some electronic equipment,” Ware said.
Officers then left the housing unit. Soon after, residents barricaded the door with furniture.
Officers then re-entered the housing unit, eventually using four pepper spray “aerosol grenades” to “secure the floor,” according to officer statements.
“That is the consequence of not having enough people,” Ware said.
In total, 35 detainees were involved in the incident, more than what county officials previously said publicly.
County Executive Sam Page said to the council in February that 15 to 17 or so prisoners had refused to leave a common area, but that staff had been able to handle the situation.
County Councilman Mark Harder , R- Ballwin , said at that meeting, however, that two officers told him the incident was more serious than described publicly and that 75 inmates were involved.
Harder declined to comment Thursday on the newly released details until he could review the records.
No one was seriously injured in the incident.
Ware said corrections officers, for the most part, followed standard procedures.
“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. We could’ve stayed there all night and talked with them.”
An internal investigation was conducted, and Clayton Police Department officers were brought in to investigate the damage, about $30,000 total.
At the time, Corrections Supervisor Brent Cureton was in charge of the jail; Coleman was at an American Correctional Association accreditation panel in Long Beach, California .
The investigation showed four inmates as the “main actors” in the incident, which is being reviewed by the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. No charges have been filed.
Coleman offered few details publicly in the days following the incident, even after being asked by County Council members, saying she couldn’t comment while the investigation was ongoing.
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