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WASHINGTON — Members of a U.S. House Education and Labor Committee panel on Thursday questioned experts and leaders of youth rehabilitation programs about how the federal government could invest in programs to prevent kids from becoming incarcerated. “Although the juvenile justice system is intended to rehabilitate—not punish—young offenders, data shows that the more a young […]
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This article was originally appeared in The Times-Picayune | The Advocate, a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.
The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office has determined that the actions of a deputy captured on video last year, in which he grabbed a woman by the hair and slammed her to the ground, were “both reasonable and acceptable.”
The incident involved JPSO Deputy Julio Alvarado, a 17-year veteran, and Shantel Arnold, 34, a Black woman who is under 5 feet tall. It drew national attention after the brief video clip was covered by ProPublica, WWNO and The Times-Picayune | The Advocate.
State Sen. Gary Carter, a Democrat from New Orleans who is representing Arnold, said in a statement that the incident reflects the JPSO’s “well-documented history” of using excessive force against people of color. Carter, who said he is filing a federal civil rights lawsuit on Arnold’s behalf in the next few days, called on Sheriff Joe Lopinto to take stronger action.
“My hope is that Sheriff Lopinto sees Shantel Arnold’s federal complaint as an opportunity to turn the page on the dark history of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office,” Carter said, “and implement policies and procedures meant to protect all the people of Jefferson Parish, including women, African-Americans, and people of color, like Shantel Arnold.”
Lopinto, in an interview, strongly defended his handling of the case.
The incident occured after the deputy responded to reports of a street fight in River Ridge. Lopinto asserted that Arnold admitted “she pulled away” when Alvarado sought to detain her, and that resistance justifies the deputy’s actions. Arnold previously told investigators that she told the deputy she had just been assaulted, and then continued walking.
Deputy Julio Alvarado (The Times-Picayune | The Advocate)“The reality is fights don’t look good,” Lopinto said. “Fights don’t ever look good. This is what happens in real life every day. We’re not looking for trouble. Trouble happened and we showed up.”
He noted that Arnold, who said she lost several plaits in the scuffle with Alvarado, did not initially file a complaint but is now “looking for a paycheck.” Lopinto also said the anonymously posted video was “selectively edited” to show only the part of the incident that cast the JPSO in an unflattering light. He suggested that footage of what happened before and after the 15-second clip — if it existed — would present a more nuanced picture. Sheriff’s deputies are not allowed to speak with the media. Arnold’s attorney declined to discuss the details of the case outside the courts.
Two former law enforcement officials who teach or testify in trials on police use of force were less enthusiastic about how Alvarado handled the situation after they viewed the video clip and read the JPSO report on the incident.
W. Lloyd Grafton, a former member of the Louisiana State Police Commission, said he believes the video “unquestionably” shows excessive force.
“He’s a huge man; she’s a tiny girl,” Grafton said. “He’s handling her like a rag doll.”
Joseph Giacalone, a former sergeant in the New York Police Department who teaches a course in the use of force at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, was less critical of Alvarado’s actions in the moment.
“It doesn’t say anywhere that police can use force, but they can’t pull hair,” he said.
Still, Giacalone criticized how the JPSO handled the matter, suggesting it might have been defused by the earlier arrival of a ranking officer or by body camera footage, which the Sheriff’s Office was not then collecting.
“Bodycams could have avoided a lot of this,” Giacalone said. “Police departments shouldn’t leave it up to the public to provide things that you should be providing.”
The bystander-shot video sparked an internal investigation, which led the JPSO to suspend Alvarado without pay for a week and put him on probation for a year.
The punishment was not imposed over Alvarado’s treatment of Arnold, but over his failure to file a report about an incident involving the use of force — in which he handcuffed Arnold but did not arrest her and then called for an ambulance. Alvarado’s superiors were not aware of the matter until a day later, when the video went viral, the report says.
Shortly after the video surfaced, Lopinto announced his office would conduct an internal probe, even though Arnold did not file a formal complaint. The report says Sgt. David Cañas, the lead investigator for the JPSO, interviewed six people: Alvarado and two colleagues, both of whom arrived on the scene after the use of force occurred, plus Arnold, her uncle and her stepfather.
Cañas’ report leans heavily on Alvarado’s account. Because Jefferson Parish deputies did not use body cameras at the time of the incident — they have since begun a limited rollout — the only video evidence of the encounter is the bystander-shot footage.
The report says the deputy responded to a melee involving roughly 20 juveniles. When he got there, it says, Alvarado was told that Arnold “had attempted to initiate a confrontation with a number of juveniles” and then fled. Arnold has said she was beaten up by the youths.
Alvarado had served Arnold with an arrest warrant a week earlier in connection with a car burglary, for which she eventually pleaded guilty. The deputy also said Arnold “is known to carry a concealed knife.”
The report says Alvarado spotted Arnold walking toward her family’s home.
He jumped out of his squad car and said, “Shantel, what’s going on?” the report says. Arnold, according to Alvarado, replied: “If you touch me, I’m going to f--- you up.”
Alvarado claims that Arnold, who is missing an eye and weighs less than 100 pounds, then put down a daiquiri cup she was holding, balled up her fists and began advancing toward him. Arnold and two witnesses told investigators she hadn’t instigated a confrontation.
Alvarado, the report says, “made the decision to accomplish two goals at once — first, to remove Shantel Arnold from the roadway for her safety by seating her on the ground until he was able to summon a medical unit, and second, to terminate her aggressive advance towards him.”
The report says the deputy tried to grab Arnold’s wrists, but they were slippery, and Arnold “was defiant and pulled away.” Alvarado claims this struggle went on for about three minutes before the video begins.
The video shows Alvarado holding Arnold by the wrist; she is lying on her back on the pavement. The deputy then grabs Arnold’s arm with his other hand and jerks her upward, lifting her entire body off the ground.
For a couple of seconds, the two disappear behind a parked car. When they come back into view, Alvarado is holding Arnold by the braids, and he appears to slam her into the pavement. He finally tugs hard, spinning her body around and flipping her onto her stomach, and he puts a knee on her back.
At that point, a second deputy, Manuel Estrada, arrived at the scene and handcuffed Arnold. They called an ambulance, and she was taken to East Jefferson General Hospital.
Citing medical records, the report says Arnold’s injuries — a busted lip and an abrasion on the arm — were minor. It blames the injuries on the juveniles who fought with her, although Arnold told investigators it was the deputy who caused her injuries. The report said that Arnold thought she had lost consciousness but that she refused a CT scan.
Alvarado has been named in at least nine lawsuits alleging excessive use of force during his tenure. That’s more than any other active JPSO deputy, according to a review by ProPublica and WWNO. Two of those suits were settled. One is still pending, and the others were dismissed.
Alvarado was demoted from sergeant to deputy in early 2020; Lopinto declined to specify why but said it was not a use-of-force issue.
While lawsuits are merely allegations, Giacalone, the former NYPD sergeant, said a pattern of such suits is a red flag. “When you have an officer with nine complaints, and then this video shows up, how long before you do something about it?” he asked.
Lopinto countered that Alvarado’s record simply reflects that he works a busy, high-crime beat. “It’s not like he’s getting a complaint every month,” the sheriff said.
It’s not a case of favoritism, Lopinto added, saying he hardly knows Alvarado.
For his investigation, Cañas went back to Richard Street in River Ridge to interview Arnold, her uncle, Tony Givens, and her stepfather, Lionel Gray, who both witnessed the incident.
Cañas wrote that Gray and Givens gave statements that “were so generalized that they possessed a ‘rehearsed’ tone.” The report adds that both “appear to purposely omit the moments prior to the onset of the video for fear that information would portray the culpable actions of Shantel Arnold.” Arnold’s lawyer said the courts should determine the credibility of witnesses.
Ultimately, the report’s conclusion that Alvarado used force in a way that was “reasonable and acceptable” is attributed to Sgt. Michael Pizzolato, the defensive tactics instructor at the JPSO’s training academy.
Pizzolato, according to the report, said the deputy’s decision to grab Arnold by the hair was acceptable because of his belief that Arnold was intoxicated and because her skin was slippery.
“The use of her hair was considered leverage to direct Shantel Arnold to her stomach allowing Deputy Alvarado to gain control of her movements and to ultimately affix handcuffs to her wrists and subdue her actions,” the report concludes.
The unprecedented steps Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft took to verify signatures to place a marijuana legalization initiative petition on the ballot were outside the scope of his authority, attorneys for an anti-drug activist argued Thursday. Cole County Judge Cotton Walker faces a Sept. 13 deadline to decide whether an initiative petition to legalize […]
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The biggest private policing company in St. Louis is a who’s who of city police commanders, supervisors and lower-ranking officers.
Among the roughly 200 St. Louis police officers whose names appeared earlier this year on an internal list of officers who had sought and received approval from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department to moonlight for The City’s Finest were four of the six district commanders who hold the rank of captain. The list, obtained by ProPublica through a public records request, also included two of the department’s highest-ranking officers, Maj. Ryan Cousins, who oversees the department’s murder, rape and arson investigations, and Maj. Shawn Dace, who oversees South Patrol, which includes two districts. It’s not clear if all of those officers currently work for The City’s Finest.
Dace and the four captains, through the department, declined to comment.
Many of the city’s wealthier — and predominantly white — neighborhoods hire off-duty city police officers from companies like The City’s Finest to supplement patrols by the department, an arrangement that creates disparities in how the city is protected. That many top officers moonlight for a private company that exists to shore up the department’s crime-fighting shortcomings suggests deep troubles, experts said.
Peter Joy, a professor at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, said there would be less demand for The City’s Finest and other companies if the police department was more effective.
“If there was less crime in those areas, The City’s Finest would have less business,” said Joy, an expert in legal ethics and criminal justice. “So, there appears to me to be a conflict of interest.”
Seth Stoughton, a professor at the University of South Carolina’s law school who has studied moonlighting by police, said officers’ dual roles can lead to real and perceived conflicts of interest.
“If you do your job as a public officer too well, you’re going to put your security company out of business,” said Stoughton, a former police officer. “I’m not saying that’s actually going to happen. But it certainly creates this perception.
“The question in the public’s mind is: Who are you actually doing this for right now?”
Because the organizational chart at The City’s Finest is independent of the police department’s command structure, high-ranking officers on the police force sometimes must take direction from their departmental subordinates while working at The City’s Finest. The chief operating officer for The City’s Finest, for instance, is a city lieutenant, yet several higher ranking command officers are under him at the company.
“I’ve got commanders that work every day in different contract areas, and they're like some of the best officers out there,” said Charles “Rob” Betts, who owns The City’s Finest. “They do great, great work and they’re very professional. It’s a good thing, and I think it encourages the other officers that work there. When they see a commander working side by side, it builds morale.”
Betts said he likes to assign leadership roles in his company to commanders “because they’re already in a supervisory role and they understand the importance of that supervisory role.” But some lower ranking officers also have leadership positions. “I have some that I just like their work ethic and they do great work.”
Betts said he had never received a complaint about a commander working for his company.
“I haven’t seen any unethical behavior and I wouldn’t want to be part of it,” he said.
Nate Lindsey, a former official with a taxing district in the Dutchtown neighborhood in the south section of the city, said the department has a culture that views policing almost as a private enterprise.
“Private companies,” he said, “are setting the agenda for what law enforcement looks like in the city of St. Louis.”
Too many police commanders, Lindsey added, are “out there doing secondary gigs as opposed to, say, spending their evenings answering emails to people that they serve within their actual district.”
But Jay Schroeder, the president of the St. Louis Police Officers Association, the police union, said the department’s command staff was, in his mind, simply trying to supplement incomes that lag behind those at other area departments. Police captains in St. Louis earn about $88,000 a year, while police captains in neighboring St. Louis County earn about $110,000, according to published payroll data.
Unlike patrol officers and sergeants, command officers in the city are not eligible for overtime. “These guys have tuition to pay and kids in college and all that stuff,” Schroeder said, “and they’re just trying to make ends meet like everybody else.”
Heather Taylor, the city’s deputy director of public safety, was making about $74,000 when she retired in 2020 as a sergeant after 20 years with the department. She makes about $99,000 in her new role, which she said she needed to shoulder heavy health care costs for her family.
“I couldn’t imagine right now being a sergeant and dealing with issues that I’m dealing with now with the pay that I was being paid,” she said. “I think that the story that probably will be missed within this story is why would any officers need to work secondaries as much as our officers work?”
The city declined to comment otherwise on the prevalence of police commanders working for private policing companies.
Some of the department’s highest-ranking officers sometimes spend their off hours performing tasks that their subordinates would typically do at their day jobs, essentially providing white-glove service to paying customers.
Documents obtained by ProPublica through an open records request show that Cousins sent emails to coordinate The City’s Finest’s response to such issues as a car abandoned on the street and a golf cart theft, trivial matters compared with the sorts of crimes he tries to solve for the police department.
At the time of the emails, Cousins was commander of South Patrol, an area that includes two of the city’s six police districts but does not include Soulard, where he worked for The City’s Finest as a project manager. It’s not clear who Cousins was on the clock for when he sent the emails. The department would not release data showing when he was working for the city.
Cousins said in an email that the department allowed him to work for a second employer and that his responsibilities for the company included scheduling officers for patrol, patrolling himself, attending Soulard meetings and advising officers for the company and the police department about ongoing crime issues.
He said that it was important to address even the smallest concerns residents bring because if they are left unaddressed they can lead to bigger problems. “Should I have allowed those concerns to languish and wait for someone to later address the issues instead of providing a timely response because it’s not as important as a robbery or a homicide?” he asked.
Capt. Michael Mueller served for more than four years as the commander of the department’s Fifth District, which straddles the Delmar Boulevard divide to include the upscale Central West End and several higher-crime neighborhoods to the north. That means he was responsible for making decisions about how to deploy resources across an area with massive disparities in wealth.
At the same time, he walked a foot patrol in the Central West End for The City’s Finest.
The Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis (Michael Thomas for ProPublica)The neighborhood official who has managed Mueller’s patrols for The City’s Finest said that he doesn’t see any conflict. “He’s not working secondary for us because he’s the captain of a district,” said Jim Whyte, a retired city police officer who is executive director of the Central West End Neighborhood Security Initiative, which oversees The City’s Finest patrols. “We don’t care if we’re hiring a patrolman or a colonel; we’re hiring a police officer that has the powers of arrest that can enforce statutes and ordinances.”
On one occasion, in February 2020, Whyte — who is not a police department employee — suggested in an email that Mueller make an arrest in a trespassing case. A man had repeatedly gone into a cosmetics store in the Central West End where an employee had a restraining order against him. In an email to a police officer copied to Mueller, Whyte wrote: “I will pass that along to the secondary officers. Actually Captain Mueller will likely apprehend him quicker than anyone else.”
Whyte said that protecting the business and its employee from the trespassing suspect was important to the health of the neighborhood and “we don’t get the police response on trespassing.”
Mueller was recently transferred to another police district; he did not respond to a request for comment.
Stoughton, the law professor who has studied police moonlighting, said that a police officer who works as a privately hired officer in the same district where he is in command could have divided loyalties. As a commander, he might want to commit more of the police department’s resources to the area where he draws a second paycheck. But he also might want to hold back resources because his private employer’s business depends on a need for more policing there.
Campbell Security and Service Group, a smaller private policing company that competes with The City’s Finest for contracts, also employs senior command staff from the city. It works in a handful of neighborhoods.
Among the 60 city officers who have sought and been granted permission to work for Campbell are Interim Chief Michael Sack, Bureau of Professional Standards commander Maj. Eric Larson and three district commanders. One of those district commanders, Capt. Christi Marks, said she had not worked for Campbell in about five years. The others, through the police department, declined to comment.
Corby Campbell, the company’s owner, said senior department officials on his payroll worked both as private patrol officers and as consultants. “It can be anything from just a simple question to an idea, like, ‘What do you think?’” he said. “There are no time frames, it could be nothing for a month or two and I might have something I want to run by them.”
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