ST. LOUIS – According to an internal police email that FOX 2 was able to obtain, the St. Louis Justice Center has once more stopped accepting new inmates.
The warning went out at 6:57 a.m. Thursday, saying, “Prisoner processing is not accepting new arrestees until further notice. Please convey any new arrestees to the area stations for booking.”
“I mean, it’s just bizarre,” Alderman Rasheen Aldridge said.
For the second time this week, the St. Louis Department of Public Safety (DPS) issued a directive for officers to use police stations to hold arrestees. South Patrol is reportedly the only location with space.
“We’re making it harder for law enforcement to have to travel further to south St. Louis to put somebody. It takes them away from actually doing,” Aldridge said. “Then what’s going to happen when South Patrol gets full?”
It’s not a capacity issue. The jail can hold 1,067 inmates; city records indicate the Justice Center has 739 confined persons as of August 1. That means there’s room for 328.
FOX 2 reported on a closure of prisoner processing earlier in the week. DPS Director Charles Coyle gave two reasons at the time.
“We have an HVAC guy coming in to do some work to make sure the AC is working well,” Coyle said on Monday.
He also mentioned a July 24 incident in which four people were sent to the hospital following a reported fight at the jail.
Coyle said staff was trying to make sure gang rivals were being housed separately.
“It doesn’t do us any good to take new detainees if we don’t know where to put them,” he said.
That’s a huge concern to mother Arnitrus Davis, because she says she has not heard from her incarcerated son since mid-July.
“Today is August 1. I still haven’t heard from my child. I came back down here again to see if he was ok,” she said.
Still no word from him, she says. And no word from DPS about this second prisoner processing closure this week. DPS spokesperson Monte Chambers called FOX 2 after we broke the story Monday to say our report was no longer relevant because prisoner processing had reopened. Now that we’ve learned it’s changed again, DPS is not answering.
We went in person to DPS headquarters at St. Louis City Hall, where no one would let us in. Spokesman Monte Chambers opened the door slightly – saying only, “We’re not doing this.”
Alderman Aldridge said the public needs more answers than that.
“It almost seems like a coverup and not just clear answers,” he said.
