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St. Louis lawmakers on Friday allocated another $93 million the city has received from the federal American Rescue Plan Act. But the vote — with support, officials said, from the city's top fiscal board — came amid complaints from some aldermen that a small percentage of funds already allocated by the city has actually been spent. The city says $135 million has been appropriated of some $498 million in ARPA funds it's to receive. But one alderman, Marlene Davis, said an online spending portal…

The gala, which also will celebrate the council’s 60th anniversary, is set for Jan. 30 at the Chase Park Plaza. Ron Himes will emcee the event.

The Chinese government hates its Muslim residents. It won’t even pretend otherwise. The Uyghur Muslim population has been targeted for years, resulting in disappearances, violence, oppressive surveillance, and other efforts that demonstrate that finding the country’s “EXIT” sign isn’t even an option. It’s everything we’ve come to hate about China, albeit something that follows a […]

by Caleb Bedillion, Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

The Mississippi head of a legal advocacy organization has filed a formal complaint with the state judicial commission against a municipal judge whose no-knock search warrants have been challenged in court.

Cliff Johnson of the Mississippi office of the MacArthur Justice Center said he filed the complaint with the state Commission on Judicial Performance to push the state Supreme Court to clarify that judges must hand all search warrants they sign over to local court clerks.

Greenville Municipal Judge Michael Prewitt signed a number of no-knock search warrants that have been challenged in court. Those warrants allow police to barge into someone’s home unannounced. Rather than turn search warrants that he signs over to the clerk, he keeps them. Key legal figures in the state say that violates court rules.

In a statement released before he filed the complaint on Tuesday, Johnson said Prewitt’s handling of search warrants violates Mississippi’s rules of criminal procedure, thwarts public scrutiny and prevents people charged with crimes from defending themselves during the early phase of proceedings.

“It is our hope that the filing of this Judicial Performance complaint will result in the Mississippi Supreme Court sending an explicit reminder to Judge Prewitt and other judges across the state that they are responsible for making sure court files are complete,” Johnson said in the statement.

The complaint follows an investigation by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal and ProPublica, which reported that search warrants, including no-knock warrants, are missing from some of the state’s largest municipal courts and many county-level justice courts.

The Daily Journal and ProPublica found that about a third of the state’s 82 county-level justice courts are breaking rules that require them to keep all search warrant records. So are municipal courts in at least five of the state’s 10 largest cities, including Greenville and Jackson, the capital.

Even if the commission substantiates Johnson’s complaint, it could choose to admonish Prewitt privately. Sanctions beyond that, including a suspension, fines or a public reprimand, would require action by the Mississippi Supreme Court.

Hundreds of complaints are filed each year. Since 2010, the Mississippi Supreme Court has sanctioned judges about 50 times following a commission investigation. Many other complaints have resulted in private action.

Johnson declined to provide a copy of the complaint because of confidentiality rules governing complaints before the commission.

Prewitt said Tuesday that he had not yet been notified of a complaint against him. “I’ll be happy to review it and respond to it and go from there,” he said.

In a criminal appeal pending before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, public defender Merrill Nordstrom argues that Prewitt improperly authorized a no-knock search warrant in 2019 after a police informant purchased less than a gram of marijuana from a Greenville man named Antoine Bryant.

Police burst into Bryant’s home early one morning while his children slept. Bryant’s girlfriend alleged that she received a minor injury during the raid.

Nordstrom argues that the evidence seized in the raid should be thrown out because Prewitt had a pattern of approving no-knock search warrants that failed to pass legal muster. However, she wasn’t able to find most of the search warrants Prewitt had signed because they weren’t at the courthouse.

Her motion to suppress the evidence was denied by a federal judge, as were other challenges to Prewitt’s search warrants that were reviewed by the news organizations.

Prewitt told the Daily Journal and ProPublica this year that he keeps search warrants at his law office. Municipal Court Clerk Priscilla Bush said at the time she was unaware he had them.

On Tuesday, Prewitt said he still doesn’t give warrants to the clerk. Citing the complaint now pending against him, he wouldn’t discuss whether he plans to change that.

The news organizations found that 15 justice courts have no search warrants and 16 have only some.

Some justice and municipal courts fail to require law enforcement to return search warrants and related documents, including inventories of what they seized. Others keep search warrant records but won’t let the public see them, defying well-established jurisprudence about the availability of court records.

Exactly how many warrants are missing from clerks’ offices is unknown because they often don’t know when judges sign warrants or when they are executed.

Experts say the failure to allow access to court records prevents oversight of no-knock raids, which have faced increased scrutiny since Louisville, Kentucky, police shot and killed Breonna Taylor in a 2020 no-knock raid.

In previous comments to the Daily Journal and ProPublica, Prewitt argued that his handling of search warrants complies with the rules of criminal procedure, and if not, the Mississippi Supreme Court should clarify its rules.

Johnson’s complaint against Prewitt argues otherwise, and he wants a definitive statement saying so. Johnson has won key legal victories in Mississippi that prevented cities and counties from jailing poor people for their inability to pay fines and fees.

Mississippi’s rules of criminal procedure, set down by the state Supreme Court, require that search warrants and some other related documents be returned to the court. Those rules don’t specify who should receive the documents. But they do say the court clerk is custodian of all court records, and they require that judges turn over to the clerk any documents filed with them.

Several key legal figures who were involved in the drafting of Mississippi’s rules of criminal procedure agreed that judges should provide executed search warrants to the clerk and the court.

“The judge can’t keep it,” said William Waller Jr., a retired state Supreme Court justice. “That’s what the clerk is there for.”

The Thanksgiving eve showcase of local punk bands will benefit Operation Food Search.

Queen’s new The Miracle Collector’s Edition box set is out now and to coincide with the release, the band has dropped a brand-new video for “Was It All Worth It,” the six-minute closing track of…

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ALTON - The Overnight Warming Center of Alton is activating tonight, Friday, November 18 – doors open at 5 p.m. We are located at the Deliverance Temple Church at 1125 East 6th St. in Alton. Doors are located on Cherry Street. Please share the attached flyer so that anyone in need of a warm place can join us this evening. We also post our activations on our Facebook page: Overnight Warming Centers Alton .

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An ongoing NASA moon-orbiting mission known as Artemis I began Wednesday, and Missouri had a vital responsibility in making that happen.

O'FALLON, IL. - HSHS St. Elizabeth’s Hospital received an “A” Hospital Safety Grade from The Leapfrog Group. This national distinction celebrates St. Elizabeth’s Hospital’s achievements in protecting hospital patients from preventable harm and errors. “HSHS St. Elizabeth’s Hospital is dedicated to improving patient care by adhering to the latest evidence-based safety guidelines,” said Chris Klay, president and CEO at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. “I’m very proud of the work our colleagues do to prioritize patient safety to deliver high-quality care to the communities we serve.” The Leapfrog Group is an independent national watchdog organization with a 10-year history of assigning letter grades to general hospitals throughout the United States, based on a hospital’s ability to prevent medical errors and harm to patients. The grading system is peer-reviewed, fully transparent, and free to the public. Hospital

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SPRINGFIELD - State Superintendent of Education Dr. Carmen Ayala has announced plans to retire at the end of her current contract, which concludes January 31 st , 2023. Dr. Ayala has served as State Superintendent since early 2019, shepherding Illinois schools through COVID-19 and kickstarting their academic recovery – leading most recently to a decade-high in the state’s graduation rate. As the capstone of her nearly four-decade career in education, Ayala was the first woman and the first person of color to serve as permanent superintendent for the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE). “Dr. Ayala represents the highest level of dedication to public service, and over her long career she has positively impacted thousands of Illinois students,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “Not only did Dr. Ayala’s steadfast leadership guide our schools through an unprecedented pandemic, but she also kick-started students’ academic recovery. Under her leadership,

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Courtesy of Veronica Coit/Asheville Blade

Update: Bliss and Coit's trial has been postponed until April 19, 2023.

Two Asheville Blade reporters arrested last year for reporting on a police eviction of a homeless encampment are set to go to trial on Monday, according to court records and the journalists' lawyer.

The North Carolina reporters, Veronica Coit and Matilda Bliss, were charged with trespassing, apparently for taking pictures of the eviction after police instructed a crowd to disperse. They identified themselves as reporters but police arrested them and seized Bliss’ phone anyway. The “offense” carries a penalty of up to 20 days in jail and a $200 fine.

Regardless of the outcome, the fact these charges were even filed, let alone brought to trial, is an affront to press freedoms and everyone involved should be ashamed. The First Amendment requires the government to let reporters gather news firsthand — not rely on self-serving spin from official sources. Courts tolerate restrictions on reporters’ access to public land only in exceptional circumstances, like serious public safety risks, and even then restrictions must be narrow enough to avoid unduly interfering with newsgathering.

Prosecutors dropped similar charges against Oregon journalist April Ehrlich in September, presumably after having realized the unconstitutionality of their case. The Asheville prosecution is even worse — police did not even bother to set up an already unconstitutional media “staging area” to allow reporters to watch from the cheap seats.

First Amendment freedoms are especially crucial when the press documents interactions between society’s most powerful figures (police officers) and its least powerful (unhoused individuals) but the Asheville Police Department apparently believes it can operate outside the view of the citizens it purports to protect.

Journalists should be commended, not prosecuted, when they document police actions, whether the police like it or not. As one appellate court explained, a police officer “is not a law unto himself; he cannot give an order that has no colorable legal basis and then arrest a person who defies it.”

Unfortunately, Bliss and Coit’s situation is not unusual. Their bench trial follows last year’s acquittal of Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri, who was arrested and charged with misdemeanors while covering a Black Lives Matter protest. Sahouri, whose case received a wave of national attention, courageously refused a plea deal, citing her First Amendment right to report. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker reports 215 arrests of journalists since 2020. Several of those arrested were reporting on similar encampment sweeps.

Attempts to criminalize journalism should serve as a call to action for citizens who value the freedom of the press. Of course, Bliss and Coit should be acquitted but hopefully they and other journalists — with the aid of activists and media lawyers — will also follow Ehrlich’s lead and file suit against police departments that punish them for doing their jobs.

This case has gotten little to no national media attention so far, however, our U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has been following it since the two reporters were arrested. You can read the Tracker's reports about all the details here and here.

Celebrate the life and work of Dr. Jane Goodall, who braved the unknown to provide a remarkable window into humankind’s closest living relatives – chimpanzees.   On Oct. 7, the

The post Becoming Jane: The Evolution of Dr. Jane Goodall appeared first on Explore St. Louis.

Why did Kelly McGowan start a St. Louis-politics-based YouTube series? The answer is simple. “Man,” she says, “local government is boring as hell.”

Can students and staff safely return to the shuttered Jana Elementary School? That was the question on the mind of Sandy Strickland Jr., when he walked into an open house Thursday night sponsored by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But at the end of the three-hour event, during which corps personnel repeatedly stated their tests showed that Jana Elementary did not harbor dangerous levels of radioactive waste, the jury was still out for Strickland, the father of two Jana students.

Jeffrey Plaza and its surrounding area was once a bastion of diverse locally-owned businesses in University City — that is until a $190 million development at the intersection of Olive and I-170 forced business owners, many of them immigrants, to move or permanently shutter their operations. Now, University City may soon replace this once beloved and thriving melting pot with none other than fast-food behemoths Chick-fil-A and Raising Cane’s. According to the St. Louis Business Journal, the two fast-casual chains are the latest tenants vying to occupy the Market at Olive development anchored by Costco in University City. Once zoning is finalized and construction finished, Raising Cane’s will open just south of Olive near McKnight Road and Chick-fil-A will serve its bland “hate chicken” in two lots that were once a part of Jeffrey Plaza.

This article originally ran in Area Development on Nov. 11, 2022.  AZZ Inc., the leading independent provider of hot-dip galvanizing and coil coating solutions, plans to establish an aluminum coil coating facility in Washington, Missouri. The $100 million project is expected to create 80 jobs. The 25-acre facility, located in the new Oldenburg Industrial Park, is scheduled for operations in 2025. […]

The post AZZ Establishes Washington, Missouri, Aluminum Coil Coating Facility appeared first on St. Louis Regional Freightway.

New research shows that rent has jumped nearly 10% in St. Louis over the past year, one of the largest increases among major metropolitan areas nationwide.