ST. LOUIS — An all-out riot.
That’s how one employee at the City Justice Center is describing what went on inside the downtown jail on Aug. 22, during which a guard was held hostage for 2 ½ hours.
Five inmates have been charged for their role in the assault of the 73-year-old guard, but officials have said little to nothing about what led up to the violence or the damage that was done to the facility.
The employee talked to the I-Team about the situation after listening to what Jail Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah and Public Safety Director Charles Coyle told reporters following the incident. He says they downplayed the severity of the situation and didn’t take responsibility for their failure to follow policies regarding how inmates should be treated that led up to it.
“All they wanted people to know was about the hostage situation, they didn't want people to know that there was a riot,” said the employee, who asked not to be identified out of fear of losing his job. “We had an entire unit that was destroyed, and everybody in the building knew it, I don't know why she wouldn't say that.”
The Public Safety Department and Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office have not yet responded to a request for comment.
Others have criticized her administration’s handling of downtown jail affairs. Leaders of a civilian oversight board have blasted Clemons-Abdullah for shutting them out of the facility and withholding information they need to conduct investigations into complaints from inmates.
Most recently, Adolphus Pruitt and the Rev. Linden Bowie of the NAACP joined the calls for more transparency.
The mayor’s administration fired back, with a statement, which read:
“The Department of Public Safety finds that the comments in the letter from the NAACP, signed by Adolphus M. Pruitt, II and Rev. Linden Bowie, are reckless and distributed publicly without first requesting the facts. To suggest that the Detention Facilities Oversight Board has not been allowed to do their work is based on assumptions and is just not true. The Aug. 22 CJC incident is under criminal investigation. The ordinance does not allow (the) Citizens Oversight Board or DFOB to interfere with a criminal investigation.”
The employee the I-Team spoke to said the issues come down to following policies.
“Our policy says that they're supposed to get rec time every day, they shouldn't be locked down for more than 23 hours a day,” he said. “That's the policy.
“That's the standard. That's national standard. But we don't follow that.”
Public Safety Department leaders gave the following timeline of events:
6:11 a.m.: First call to 911
6:12 a.m.: The call was dispatched
6:26 a.m.: First police officer arrives on scene
7:04 a.m.: Request for SWAT is made
8:03 a.m.: SWAT arrives
8:17 a.m.: SWAT makes entry
8:28 a.m.: Correctional Officer released and treated
9:38 a.m.: All-clear given by police
The I-Team also obtained an internal police memo describing the events of Aug. 22, which stated inmates armed themselves with homemade weapons made from brooms, cords, metal from TV brackets and other items. The guard suffered a dislocated jaw, eye injury and a concussion, according to the report.
Coyle and Clemons-Abdullah characterized the guard’s injuries as “minor.”
Clemons-Abdullah also told reporters she had “adequate staff,” on the day in question, and, “it was during a normal operation or serving of the meal and they saw opportunity and they took it.”
The employee the I-Team spoke to said the guard never should have been put in a vulnerable position in the first place, and allowing inmates to help pass out meal trays is “asinine.”
“Everybody wants to say that everything went the way it was supposed to, and the inmates were just being inmates, but they shouldn't have been out,” the employee said, adding that the unit where the violence began is an administrative segregation unit. “Only one person should've been out at the time and they should have been handcuffed or shackled secured.
“Two people out at once in that unit? That's not supposed to happen. That is not procedure. That is not policy.”
The employee said the two inmates dragged the guard into a shower and stole his keys and his radio. One of them started demanding pizza in exchange for his release.
“They were just being stupid,” the employee said.
They were also being violent, he added.
“When the inmates took the keys and took over the security bubble, they were able to go over to the other unit and start letting people out,” he said. “A lot of them probably stayed in their cells, closed their doors because they were scared.
The “bubbles” allow guards to monitor two wings at a time from above.
“But at least 40 or 50 of them came out. People were assaulted on both sides from people in the opposite unit. The bubbles, the security bubbles were destroyed. They were unusable. They pulled out the fire extinguishers and were using them on the officers. And they hit sprinkler heads. They pulled down the TVs in one of the units.”
The I-Team also obtained a still image from surveillance footage inside the jail showing SWAT officers covered in the white dust from fire extinguishers.
The employee said what happened Aug. 22 reminded him of the riots that happened in 2021, in which inmates broke out windows, set fires, assaulted staff members and threw furniture out onto the sidewalk. Back then, the locks on the cell doors didn’t work, allowing inmates to compromise them with nothing more than a piece of paper to let themselves out.
“The only difference between what happened back then and what happened here is that they didn’t get to the windows,” he said.
There were no fires set during the Aug. 22 incident.
The city has spent millions to upgrade the lock systems as well as strengthen security protocols. The "bubbles" were also part of the upgrades following the 2021 riots.
The Aug. 22 incident exposed a weakness in that system that the inmates took advantage of when they stole the guard’s keys, the employee said.
“You have 80 people in one unit and just as many people in the other, you have one person watching both units, it's not supposed to happen,” he said. “I mean, that's just playing with fire. But that's what we do on a daily basis. Every time somebody goes to lunch, every time somebody goes to break, every time they are shorthanded on a certain shift.
“They designed those units when they redesigned them to let that happen, and that's what they've been doing. One person going back and forth between the two units.
“If they would have had a little bit more time, they were going to let the people out on the other floors because once you get into those security bubbles, you can get into the stairwell. And they were breaking glass on the fifth floor. They were breaking glass on the third floor. They were trying to get out of the stairwell. They were close to getting out and letting out the inmates on the other floors.”
Clemons-Abdullah said other improvements have been made since she was appointed following the 2021 riots, too.
“Instead of not allowing some to see the TV, we put them in places where they could all view the TVs,” she said. “We did a whole bunch of small things that have helped us and if you notice for the record, it has been over a couple of years since anything has occurred here.”
The employee said the administrative segregation unit has phones that don’t work, TVs are turned off, and inmates can’t have books.
The employee also said it is important for people to realize the city’s jail is strictly for people waiting for their day in court.
“We’re not designed for punishment,” he said. “This is pretrial. This is jail. This is not prison.
“When you let these guys out two at a time and they're not restrained, and these are the guys that you've been pushing and leaning on for some of them months at a time, you can't be surprised when they act out. I don't know what human wouldn’t.”