One hundred percent of the sheriffs in the City of St. Louis agree: the Riverfront Times is an exciting read.
That was — more or less — the sentiment Sheriff Vernon Betts expressed at a neighborhood meeting in Bevo Mill Thursday night, where he was one of several elected officials and candidates speaking at a union hall on Delor Street. After his remarks, someone in the audience asked him about recent media coverage of a photo that showed a detainee in Betts' charge lying in his own excrement.
Betts responded thusly, "I want everyone to understand, when you get these reports and stuff from places like the Riverfront Times, those people are writing stories to get you all excited."
Damn straight, our content is exciting. No disagreement there.
However, right after Betts heaped upon us (what we're choosing to interpret as) praise, things started getting a little off the rails in the facticity department.
The original question put to Betts referred to the story of 35-year-old Lamarr Pearson, a paralyzed man who earlier this month spent the better part of a long weekend in the troubled City Justice Center lying on the floor in soiled pants.
When his attorney, Susan McGraugh, met with Pearson, she was so alarmed by his soiled state, she took a photo of him and sent it to the Riverfront Times. We ran a story about it, and other media followed suit.
But that’s when things got slightly complicated. The City Justice Center has both intake areas (controlled by Betts) and floors of cells (controlled by Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah). The city’s Department of Public Safety, which reps Clemons-Abdullah, said that Pearson's beleaguered condition wasn't their problem because he was in a holding area of the jail controlled by Betts when the photo was taken. Betts said that was a lie.
At the meeting on Thursday, Betts seemed to imply that Pearson was only his office's charge for the briefest of periods prior to the photo being taken.
He said the 35-year-old was on "the police side" of the jail all weekend until deputies brought him into the area controlled by Betts’ office Monday morning and that his deputies were taking action to help Pearson. In the window after they brought him over, but before they could get him aid, McGraugh came in and took the photo that was later published by media outlets.
Or, as Betts put a bit more excitedly: "The lawyer goes over on our side where we're getting ready to get this guy cleaned up, takes her phone out — it's illegal! She wasn't supposed to take pictures. It's illegal. That’s what we call contraband. She takes a picture and then in two hours, she, the lawyer, calls the Riverfront Times. What the hell?"
He adds, "Don't you think that was some kind of setup?"
On Friday, we checked with McGraugh just to make sure we hadn't been in cahoots with her to "set up" the sheriff. She confirmed no such plot had been hatched. In fact, she’d only taken on Pearson as a client that morning and didn’t know about his condition before laying eyes on him.
She added: “The last person I am going to be intimidated by is Vernon Betts.”
McGraugh, who in addition to being a criminal defense attorney is a professor at Saint Louis University School of Law, previously told us that when Pearson asked for something to wipe himself with, a deputy told him to use a nearby sandwich wrap. "Sometimes we have to improvise," McGraugh heard this deputy say.
McGraugh adds that Pearson was on his stomach for the entire hour she met with him that day, which pretty much belies any notion of Betts' crew taking quick action. She says that at one point, when deputies saw her alarmed reaction to the soiled state of her client, one deputy brought him an orange jumpsuit.
"The other deputy said, 'Why did you give him that? He can’t put them on.' And [the deputy] said, 'At least we can say we gave him clean clothes.'"
McGraugh tells the RFT she considered calling 911, but decided the best thing she could do would be to get him out of the jail on bond. Despite showing the photo and pleading Pearson’s case to the prosecutor and Judge Catherine Dierker, the request for bond was denied. McGraugh was, however, able to get the judge to sign an order mandating the jail provide Pearson healthcare.
She adds that a law student was with her and witnessed the scene as well.
As the Riverfront Times previously reported, in the wake of the incident, Betts tried to ban McGraugh from the area of the jail under his control. She eventually got a judge to order her to have access.
Though McGraugh needed a judge's order to get access to the holding area of the jail, it appears that the rest of us will need no such piece of paper.
Betts extended an invitation to the Bevo Mill community member whose question sparked the sheriff's response. "What I'll do for this young man, he can come Downtown tomorrow and I'll take you in the jail," Betts said. No word on whether Betts’ inquisitor took him up on it.
He then made a similar offer to everyone else present: "Come down and see me. I'll give you a tour."
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