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Mammoth WVH brought some grunge to the Young Guns tour with a cover of Alice in Chains. During the outing's stop in Salt Lake City on Monday, Wolfgang Van Halen…

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Today on TAP: The union campaigning to organize an Alabama Amazon warehouse is hoping it will.

On the first day of candidate filing for state and federal races on the August primary ballot, congressional candidates in Missouri faced a dilemma. They still don't know exactly what the boundaries of their districts will be, as the redistricting process has been stuck in the Missouri State Senate that past few weeks, as conservatives hold out for a map that would show a 7:1 ratio of likely Republican versus Democrats representing the state in Washington. A 6-2 map has passed the Missouri House.

Whether you are only visiting or planning a fun staycation, these St. Louis Airbnbs offer everything you need, plus personality and adventure.

The post 6 Unique St. Louis Airbnb Stays for Off-the-Beaten-Path Tourists appeared first on Cherokee Street.

EDWARDSVILLE - For 21 years, Ellen Bridgewater has been teaching the importance of staying active and improving students’ health in Edwardsville School District #7. She did not always want to be a teacher and didn’t originally follow that route even though both of her parents were physical education teachers and despite the fact that during her soccer career, her favorite jobs were the ones involving kids. “I actually started my degree in a dietitian program, but I ended up changing courses while in college. I kept gravitating towards the classes that interested me the most in the field of nutrition, but away from chemistry. And then I met some people who were physical education majors and decided that they were all the kind of people I enjoyed.” She began her career as a middle school teacher at Lincoln Middle School prior to the split and continued at Lincoln after the split. She also coached 7th-grade volleyball during her time at Lincoln. Bridgewater then

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Vasan comes to 5 On Your Side from sister-station WHAS11 in Louisville, Kentucky.

The proposal, from a family with deep ties to the Central West End, would further transform an area near the northeast corner of Forest Park — which already saw a 36-story building finished in 2020.

ALTON - Vera Harper marked her 100th birthday on December 16, 2021, and she is a treasured member of the North Alton Baptist Church congregation. Vera has been a church member for 53 years, her pastor Rev. Sonny Renken said. "Vera is the sweetest lady," the pastor explained. "She is a grandma or mother to everyone. She has never had children and church members are considered her family. She is 100 and still has a driver's license." Vera still attends church at North Alton Baptist. She is also a die-hard St. Louis Cardinals fan who often communicates in loud fashion with the television when a game is on, Pastor Renken said. "She is a full-blooded St. Louis Cardinals fan," he said. "It is like she is at the game when she watches one on television." Vera said she has lived such a long life because of her belief and trust in God and feels she has been very blessed along her journey. "If she doesn't get to church, someone makes sure she gets a cup of coffee and doughnut," Renken said.

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Light accumulating snow and sleet is likely mid to late week, some areas of freezing rain possible

Gary Brooker, the lead singer, pianist and main songwriter for the veteran British band Procol Harum, died Saturday, February 19, at the age of 76. A post on Procol Harum's…

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There will be no bail for an employee of the Rockwood School District accused of sexually abusing a student with Down syndrome.

But the audit report gives the St. Louis Development Corp. and Community Development Administration an overall rating of ‘good.’

The man presiding over a law enforcement agency filled with gangs and cliques would prefer city officials stop referring to his employees as gang members.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has stated that there are no gangs within the Sheriff's Department, a claim he is obviously unable to back up with facts, because the facts make it clear that the LASD has been (and apparently still is) home to multiple gangs composed of deputies. There's even a Wikipedia page dedicated to the gangs infesting the Sheriff's Department.

If you distrust the info on the anyone-can-edit Wikipedia page, there's also this comprehensive database compiled by journalist Cerise Castle for Knock LA -- one that pulls info from public records and court documents to list suspected and verified members of LASD gangs.

Sheriff Villanueva continues to claim there are no gangs within his department. He has also instituted a policy to address the problem he says doesn't exist, forbidding deputies from "joining any group that commits misconduct." You'd think this policy would forbid any deputy from being employed by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, but I guess that's not how Villanueva reads his edict.

As for Villanueva's claim gangs and cliques don't exist within his department? Well, let's take a look at what his employees say:

Hundreds of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said they have been recruited to join secretive, sometimes gang-like cliques that operate within department stations, according to the findings of a survey by independent researchers.

The anticipated study into the problematic fraternities — which L.A. County officials commissioned the Rand Corp. to conduct in 2019 — found 16% of the 1,608 deputies and supervisors who anonymously answered survey questions had been invited to join a clique, with some invitations having come in the last five years.

Well, all evidence to the contrary aside, Sheriff Villanueva is no longer going to stand idly by while city officials continue to make accurate statements about his problematic agency. He's issued a… well, not really a "cease and desist" letter [PDF] to the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors demanding (but not really) they stop saying his department has a gang problem. (h/t Adam Steinbaugh)

The letter is a fun read, even more so because Sheriff Villanueva definitely did not want his vaguely threatening fluff to be considered enjoyable for all the wrong reasons. Behold the semi-coherent wrath of a pissed off public servant.

As the elected Sheriff of Los Angeles County, I demand you and other elected leaders, as well as your appointees, immediately cease and desist from using the derogatory term “deputy gangs” when referring to members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (Department). This willful defamation of character has injured both individuals and the organization. It also serves no purpose other than to fuel hatred and increase the probability of assault and negative confrontations against our people.

So, it looks like a cease-and-desist (it even uses the words!), but the Sheriff has no power to make this demand. And Villanueva is hopefully using the phrase "defamation of character" in the colloquial, no-relation-to-the-legal-meaning sense of the words, because there's plenty of evidence out there that would make any accusations about LASD gangs "substantially true" and, therefore, not defamation at all. I know we (and by "we," I mostly mean courts) don't expect law enforcement officers to be legal experts, which is good, I guess, because they clearly fucking aren't.

The letter continues in the same vein: Villanueva bitching, mostly ineffectively, that it's unfair to his department when city officials say bad things about him and his employees. The next paragraph of the letter basically says the Sheriff's Department has all the heroes and the Board of Supervisors has all the hypocritical assholes.

My personnel routinely place themselves in harm's way while serving our community and ask nothing in return, other than a paycheck and maybe a little respect for the tough job they perform. Elected officials have no problem attending the funeral of a peace officer killed in the line of duty and often fight for the opportunity to speak at the podium, but the manner in which some have enthusiastically branded my personnel as "gang members” every opportunity they get is disgusting.

It is completely possible for officials to show their respect for an officer killed in the line of duty while still suspecting the law enforcement agency they work for is home to groups of officers who commit serious misconduct while engaging in gang-like behavior: violent acts, tattoos/clothing/insignias/etc., codes of silence, et al. You know, just like it's possible for officers of the law to recognize the War on Drugs harms more than it helps.

According to the sheriff's letter, the only reason board members might refer to deputies as gang members stems from a dismissed lawsuit brought by a former LASD deputy. The letter claims this is the only "evidence" anyone has ever had and that other research arriving at the same conclusions is completely undermined because a single source of information was declared to be untrustworthy by a court decision. That willfully ignores the years of data that shows deputies have formed cliques/gangs within the department. And while that may not be the sole contributing factor to large amounts of misconduct, it certainly hasn't helped neutralize the "us vs. them" mentality that is the root of so many casual abuses of rights.

From there it gets truly laughable, with Sheriff Villanueva again demonstrating his inability to understand speech-related laws before claiming that referring to LASD gangs is actually a form of bigotry.

Those who want to further undermine the perception of law enforcement use it as hate speech to promote their own agendas, such as defunding law enforcement and redirecting those funds to their own non-profit organizations, many of which are nothing more than sham corporations who operate with virtually zero accountability. Further use of the term will be evidence of your actual underlying intent, which appears to be a campaign to inflict harm upon the reputation of the Department and myself.

First off, calling someone a gang member or implying there are gangs in the LASD isn't hate speech. It's not even hate speech in the most ignorant sense of the word. Speech someone doesn't like is not hate speech, and that's all that's really happening here. The Sheriff and his deputies aren't a protected class, nor is being employed by the LASD an immutable characteristic that can trigger hate crime laws when derogatory language is used. The rest of this is no less stupid. "Further use… will be evidence of your actual underlying intent" to harm the Department. Whatever. This isn't legally binding and further use will be evidence of nothing.

So very stupid.

As the first fluently Spanish speaking Latino Sheriff in over a hundred years, who supervises a majority Latino workforce, I hope you can see the blatant racial inferences your conscious bias displays every time you choose to attack our Department with this derogatory term.

Um, people were saying the LASD was gang-infested long before you took office, Sheriff. That they're still saying it doesn't reflect on you or your multilingual skills. All it says is that the problem persists and it's now your problem, Sheriff.

Finally, the Sheriff appears to believe this somehow is a valid legal threat, despite the fact he's unlikely to prevail in a defamation lawsuit against city council members. Here's how the letter wraps up:

I openly challenge every elected leader, or their appointees, to provide facts to me and name individuals who they can prove are "gang members," as defined by California Penal Code Section 13670, and subject yourself to defamation laws if wrong.

LOL. Well, this shouldn't be too hard. Here's the relevant part of the California Code:

"Law enforcement gang" means a group of peace officers within a law enforcement agency who may identify themselves by a name and may be associated with an identifying symbol, including, but not limited to, matching tattoos, and who engage in a pattern of on-duty behavior that intentionally violates the law or fundamental principles of professional policing, including, but not limited to, excluding, harassing, or discriminating against any individual based on a protected category under federal or state antidiscrimination laws, engaging in or promoting conduct that violates the rights of other employees or members of the public, violating agency policy, the persistent practice of unlawful detention or use of excessive force in circumstances where it is known to be unjustified, falsifying police reports, fabricating or destroying evidence, targeting persons for enforcement based solely on protected characteristics of those persons, theft, unauthorized use of alcohol or drugs on duty, unlawful or unauthorized protection of other members from disciplinary actions, and retaliation against other officers who threaten or interfere with the activities of the group.

To sum up: the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department is a gang associated with an identifying symbol that engages in all of the listed behavior. Therefore, it should be declared illegal under state law and disbanded.

There are few things more enjoyable than sternly-worded letters that are 50% bluster, 50% unintentionally hilarious. Recipients of this letter should take the Sheriff up on his dare and let him know just how many bad apples he's overseeing. If nothing else, council members should send Villanueva a "Thanks for the laugh. I really needed that." in response to his declaration of keyboard war.

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Sgt. Jatonya Clayborn-Muldrow had been accused of trying to convince someone not to file sexual assault charges against a fellow police officer.

ST. LOUIS, Mo. - A cold front is marching across Missouri and into Illinois today. Temperatures are expected to fall through the afternoon as winds swing to the northwest. Wind gusts this afternoon could be up to 30mph. Skies will become partly cloudy overnight as the colder air really sets in. Wednesday morning temperatures will [...]

The University of Missouri-St. Louis has received a $1 million gift from the estate of the late philanthropist Helen Shopmaker. The gift will endow the Opportunity Scholars Program at the university.