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St. Louis county executive
opposes creation of permanent civilian panel to investigate police
shootings
Sunday, November 30, 2003
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- This fall's
fatal shootings of two teenagers by police in St. Louis County
have raised questions about whether a permanent civilian review
board should be created to investigate the deaths.
County Executive Charlie Dooley
said he did not favor the idea but would support having a civilian
committee look into specific police shootings, and then only
when there was reason to think that official investigations were
unfair or less than thorough.
Police have said that officers
were endangered when they shot and killed Byron Harmon, 15, on
Nov. 16 and Kyle Dismukes, 17, early on Thanksgiving Day.
James Buford, president of
the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, called Dooley's proposal
for case-specific civilian review committees "very unfortunate."
Buford has been working to
create a civilian board in the city of St. Louis to review police
shootings. Mayor Francis Slay and Police Chief Joe Mokwa have
endorsed some sort of civilian oversight, but a bill to create
a board has been bogged down since May of last year in a dispute
over how members would be selected.
Buford favors electing members
to a city board and said he would favor a similar board to review
shootings by county officers and incidents involving other police
forces in the county. He said a board appointed by Dooley and
the County Council would lack credibility.
Dusmukes was fatally shot about
1:40 a.m. Thursday by a Pine Lawn police officer whom he allegedly
was dragging alongside a car. Police said Dismukes grabbed the
officer's arm through the driver's side window after being stopped
about 1:40 a.m. and then drove away.
Harmon's fatal shooting is
being investigated by the county police Internal Affairs division,
which is standard for all police shootings. It also will be investigated
by the county prosecutor's office the Board of Police Commissioners,
which consists of five citizens appointed by the county executive
overseeing police operations.
Police said they shot Harmon
when he drove a stolen car toward officers in an apparent attempt
to flee. Officers fired, county police Chief Ronald Battelle
said, because their lives were in danger.
Battelle went to the shooting
scene and called the officers' actions "justified.
He said he was comfortable
allowing anyone to investigate the actions of his department,
but from what he knows, civilian review boards do not work.
"More often than not,
these boards say police officers acted correctly," Battelle
said. "Then, when advocates of these civilian review boards
don't see officers being disciplined, they lose confidence in
the process, and it falls apart."
- 17 Year St Louis
Rapper Killed By Police
- Pine Lawn police officer
kills 17-year-old rap performer
By Bill Bryan, Post-Dispatch,
Nov, 28, 2003
Kyle Dismukes, a young rapper
from Overland, recently cut a CD aptly titled "Streets Tell
It All."
Shortly after performing songs
from the CD at the Cougars nightclub in Normandy, Dismukes was
shot to death early Thursday by a Pine Lawn police officer after
a traffic stop in the 2700 block of Kienlen Avenue.
The officer said he had stopped
Dismukes' car for a traffic violation about 1:45 a.m. but that
the youth grabbed his arm as he approached the driver's window
and sped away, with the officer clinging to the door.
The officer said he could not
break free and fired into the car with his free hand after he
was dragged for some distance, including when Dismukes, 17, made
a U-turn in the street.
The officer's name was not
disclosed.
The shooting was being investigated
Thursday by St. Louis County police, who said they found a handgun
in Dismukes' car.
Thursday's incident was the
second fatal shooting in two weeks of a St. Louis County teenager
who apparently was trying to flee from police. On Nov. 16, Byron
Harmon, 15, was fatally shot when two St. Louis County officers
fired into a car at a trailer park on St. Charles Rock Road.
The officers said they fired
because their safety was jeopardized, but a friend of Byron's
who was in the car said Byron panicked and was simply trying
to get away. The car Byron was driving turned out to be stolen.
Dismukes' mother, Cynthia Montgomery,
48, of Overland, said she wants a thorough investigation of the
shooting.
"I want to know why they
shot him. I find their account unbelievable," she said.
"I'm not satisfied."
Dismukes was the youngest of
Montgomery's six children, she said.
"He was a very loving
person who was kind and intellectual," she said. "My
son was very smart and a very good person."
Dismukes had been a rap performer
since he was a little boy, his mother said.
He attended an alternative
high school operated by the Ombudsman program and affiliated
with Normandy High School.
One of Dismukes' sisters, Tamika
Dismukes, 27, said she, too, wanted a better explanation from
the police.
"We're getting the runaround
from the police," she said. "They've been very vague."
County police isssued a news
release describing the shooting but refused to comment further
on Thursday, citing the Thanksgiving holiday.
Several of Dismukes' friends
gathered in the street Thursday in the 6200 block of Bailey Place
in Hillsdale where Dismukes often stayed. Bailey is just a few
blocks from the shooting scene.
One close friend of the slain
teen locked herself in an SUV with her head buried in her hands
as she listened to the blaring music of Dismukes' CD.
Friends of Dismukes said he
had been driving a 2001 Mercedes that belonged to a friend when
he was shot, and some suggested that the fact that the car was
a luxury vehicle may have been the reason the officer stopped
it.
One man who would not give
his name said he had been driving behind the police car and witnessed
the incident. He said the officer fired almost immediately when
Dismukes drove away, with the officer clinging to the door.
"The officer grabbed the
door and Kyle hit the gas pedal, and the car came to a stop a
short distance away," said the man, indicating a distance
of perhaps 30 yards. The man said he didn't hear any gunfire
but added that "the cop must have shot him right away"
because of where the car stopped.
Friend of teen killed
by police was wounded hours later in drive-by
By JEREMY KOHLER, Nov. 28
2003
Just 18 hours after a Pine
Lawn police officer fatally shot 17-year-old Kyle Dismukes on
Thursday, tragedy struck again: A friend of the young rap artist
was wounded in a drive-by shooting two houses down from Dismukes'
home.
Labaron Bass, 24, a rap artist
who recorded music with Dismukes, was shot in the back by someone
in a pickup about 8 p.m. Thursday, police said. He had been walking
with a few friends on the 6200 block of Bailey Place in Hillsdale.
He was recovering Friday at a hospital.
Hillsdale police Detective
Sgt. Robert Kelly, who is investigating the shooting of Bass,
said the shootings appeared to be unrelated. Enraged friends
and relatives of Dismukes and Bass insisted on a connection.
Bass's girlfriend, Nicole Taylor,
said she thinks Bass' shooting was in retaliation because a group
of men had attacked a police officer after Dismukes' shooting.
The attack could not be verified Friday.
"I just think whoever
it was knew exactly what he was doing," said Bass' sister
Tammy Stewart, 22, who lives a block away on the 6200 block of
Greer in Pine Lawn. About Kelly, she said: "He seems nice.
He said he was going to find out who did this."
Stewart pointed to two seemingly
intractable problems in her neighborhood, which straddles the
tiny, mostly low-income cities of Hillsdale and Pine Lawn: Too
many people in the area are involved in crime. And, to her, police
seem to believe that everyone who lives there is involved in
crime. It adds up to mistrust between people and police, she
said.
Police in Pine Lawn and St.
Louis County refused Friday to discuss Dismukes' shooting or
identify the shooter. Each department said the other was responsible
for releasing the name. St. Louis County police historically
review homicides and police shootings in several smaller municipalities.
The officer said he had stopped
Kyle Dismukes' car for a traffic violation about 1:45 a.m. Thursday
but that Dismukes, 17, grabbed his arm as he approached the driver's
window and sped away, with the officer clinging to the door.
The officer said he could not break free and fired into the car
with his free hand after he was dragged for some distance, including
when Dismukes made a U-turn. Police said they found a handgun
in Dismukes' car.
Dismukes' sister Bridget Torrence,
31, said Friday that she often worried about her brother.
"But I never would have
guessed police killed him," she said. "I always figured
it was going to be the kids he was with."
Reporter Jeremy Kohler E-mail:
jkohler@post-dispatch.com Phone: 314-241-9435
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
