Riverfront Times, September 16, 2020

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SEPTEMBER 16-22, 2020

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ALL TRACKS LEAD HERE CONTEMPORARY CUISINE CREATIVE COCKTAILS

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THE LEDE

“It would be nice if we could all walk away from here and we remember this. But it kinda seems like it doesn’t change things. I just think people need to come together. We really do. It’s just a different world. I really want there to be good things for our country and for young people today. Like, boy, sometimes things that happen really kinda knock your socks off.”

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PHOTO BY THEO WELLING

MARY COLOMBO, PHOTOGRAPHED AT A CANDLELIGHT VIGIL FOR ST. LOUIS POLICE OFFICER TAMARRIS BOHANNON AT TILLES PARK ON SEPTEMBER 4

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Road Trip

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lot of great stories begin with a long drive to somewhere you’ve never been to speak to people you’ve never met. In March, RFT staff writer Danny Wicentowski did exactly that, accepting an invitation from Chief Kenn “Grey Elk” Descombes to visit the headquarters of the Northern Cherokee Nation near the small Missouri town of Clinton. From St. Louis, it’s a nearly four-hour drive to the west. The result of that trip — and a lot of dogged reporting after — is this week’s cover story, “White Man’s Burden.” Danny reveals a fascinating portrait of Descombes, the unapologetic leader of a tribe that critics claim is little more than a profitable scheme.

Ultimately, this is a local story, too, tracing one of the many twisty ways money winds through St. Louis. I think you’ll enjoy following the journey.

— Doyle Murphy, editor in chief

TABLE OF CONTENTS CAN’T

STO P

WO N’T

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E DITIO N

Publisher Chris Keating Editor in Chief Doyle Murphy

E D I T O R I A L Digital Editor Jaime Lees Hero In A Hot Dog Suit Daniel Hill Contributors Trenton Almgren-Davis, Cheryl Baehr, Eric Berger, Jeannette Cooperman, Thomas Crone, Mike Fitzgerald, Judy Lucas, Noah MacMillan, Andy Paulissen, Justin Poole, Christian Schaeffer, Chris Ward, Theo Welling, Danny Wicentowski, Nyara Williams, Ymani Wince Columnist Ray Hartmann A R T

& P R O D U C T I O N Art Director Evan Sult Editorial Layout Haimanti Germain Production Manager Haimanti Germain M U L T I M E D I A A D V E R T I S I N G Advertising Director Colin Bell Account Managers Emily Fear, Jennifer Samuel Multimedia Account Executive Jackie Mundy

COVER

C I R C U L A T I O N Circulation Manager Kevin G. Powers

Department of Retaliation

E U C L I D M E D I A G R O U P Chief Executive Officer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating Officers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner VP of Digital Services Stacy Volhein www.euclidmediagroup.com

For those working in Missouri prisons, speaking out can be the most dangerous part of the job

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Founded by Ray Hartmann in 1977

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HARTMANN Student Leaders At Mizzou, students have stepped up while the administration’s COVID-19 response has failed

BY RAY HARTMANN

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e aren’t safe here.”

That’s your COVID-19 update for the University of Missouri-Columbia in a nutshell. The concise message was delivered August 31 by the headline on a somber editorial in The Maneater, MU’s student newspaper.

It has only gotten worse since.

I’m a proud alum of MU and a prouder one of The Maneater, but one needn’t have any affiliation with the institution to be alarmed

at what’s taking place: COVID-19 remains at or near crisis levels at MU, in Boone County and in the state of Missouri.

As of Sunday, there were 562 active cases on campus according to MU’s Show Me Renewal website which — as the newspaper noted — likely understates the total because it excludes cases reported externally. That’s up from the 415 reported in the editorial, roughly 2.1 percent of the student body.

Missouri was cited by the White House Coronavirus Task Force — which has been social distancing from the media — as the seventh worst state in virus case rates as of September 6, according to KRCG-TV in Jefferson City, which obtained the unpublished information from the Center for Public Integrity.

That was unchanged from the previous week, when the report included a recommendation for a statewide mask mandate that Missouri Governor Mike Parson ignored.

The same report listed Boone County as the state’s number one “hot spot.” It also reported that Missouri had 150 new cases per 100,000 in the past week, which would be 70 percent higher than the national average of 88 new cases per 100,000.

But in a nation poised to cross the milestone of 200,000 dead Americans from the virus, people are numbed to the numbers. Stats are either processed or rejected upon immovable political lines.

That brings us back to Columbia.

In a task force call to state and local leaders — again, not released to the public, but through a tape recording obtain by the Center for Public Integrity — Dr. Deborah Birx had the following advice to universities allowing students to return for the fall semester: “Each university not only has to do entrance testing,” Birx warned.

“What we talked to every university about is being able to do surge testing. How are you going to do 5,000 samples in one day or 10,000

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samples in one day?”

Apparently, the message either wasn’t received by the administration of Chancellor Mun Choi or, as in the case of Parson, it was simply ignored. Back to The Maneater editorial, which wasn’t referencing the task force, just offering the common sense of say, eighteen- to 21-year-olds: “In regard to testing plans, it’s no wonder Scientific American ranks university responses on a scale from MU to UIUC. “Currently, the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign is testing every student on campus twice a week for free. Students are only permitted on campus after receiving negative results which are delivered within hours via the Safer Illinois app. Those who are not up-to-date on their mandatory testing or who receive positive test results are denied access to on-campus facilities. Additionally, UIUC has a total of 17 testing sites spread across campus in order to

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increase student accessibility. “(MU) currently offers one public drive-thru testing site (and one) on-campus testing site. The latter is by appointment only.

“That’s right. Not only does MU not require students to get tested for COVID-19, it’s also failed to make on-site testing easily available for those living on campus.

Though information was released about the on-campus site, there is no information about it on MU’s COVID Testing website, making it difficult for students to figure out how and where to get tested. The inconvenience of testing on campus could very well end up the reason a symptomatic student endangers others.”

My old school newspaper dismantled the Choi administration with a surgical precision unseen when I was writing editorials in that space. From poor communication at the outset, to failing to cancel Welcome Week traditions that involved unsafe gatherings, to a defective COVID-19 tracking system and beyond, the paper laid out how the campus administration has failed miserably.

I’d call it a clown car, but The Maneater didn’t use immature language like that. In fact, the most stunning part of its takedown of the administration was how it left the distinct impression that the students are the grownups in the room in Columbia.

Consider this: It was the students writing in their newspaper who called out the administration for obsessing too much over student concerns in reporting cases: “Though the student body is entitled to its privacy, we feel that at least naming the location of an outbreak is a worthwhile safety measure.”

And there was this amazing passage that one wouldn’t necessarily expect to hear from college kids: “Despite informing the community that it would enforce disciplinary action toward students who knowingly defy COVID-19-related health and safety guidelines, MU has yet to keep its word.”

The Maneater went on to lash the administration for failing to shut down dangerous behavior in sorority and fraternity houses “to release a statement or hold any of these groups accountable for refusing to social distance. As something that many anticipated as a potential safety issue from early on, it’s difficult to believe that was not prepared to control the situation.”

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So, the students are scolding administrators for not keeping rowdy behavior under control at the university. Next up: Cats are chasing dogs in Columbia.

The scandalous nature of the situation has been fairly muted in the St. Louis media market, where we’ve been more preoccupied with Choi’s bizarre conduct in publicly demanding loyalty and silence from faculty members last July at the home of the world’s first journalism school.

Now, when I attended the university deep into the previous century, it was commonplace to stifle or mu e voices of student dissent. Faculty, not so much. But in the social-media age, Choi last week earned himself some humiliating headlines throughout the state by blocking certain students from his Twitter account.

This pathetic gesture was reported on a Tuesday and withdrawn, with tail firmly tucked between legs, just a couple days later when a First Amendment lawsuit against hoi almost filed itself.

And get this: In the very same week, it was announced on a Tuesday that students must wear masks even when walking outside by themselves. Two days later, after a collective “say what?” echoed throughout the state, that rule was rescinded.

Waiting for the next shoe to drop? It already did with a story documented by a leaked private recording from a July MU staff meeting. Here’s what Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Bill Stackman told staff — citing Choi as the source — about how dissent would be handled: “If you’re not (in agreement), we still expect you to support the decision — or if you don’t understand how we made that decision, ask. And if you don’t know what we’ve e plained, then just trust that we did the right thing.”

Who reported this? You guessed it: The Maneater just last riday.

As an old person, I don’t even feel ualified to end this column. ere’s how the clear-eyed kids summed it up, in a deck to their original headline about being unsafe.

“Following the decision to send students back to campus this fall, MU’s COVID-19 response has shown it’s only a matter of time before something terrible happens.” n Ray Hartmann founded the Riverfront Times in 1977. Contact him at rhartmann@sbcglobal.net or catch him on St. Louis In the Know With Ray Hartmann and Jay Kanzler from 9 to 11 p.m.

Monday thru Friday on KTRS (550 AM).

NEWS

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Will Police Recruiting Improve Under New Rules?

Written by

RILEY MACK

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or decades, people in St. Louis have argued about whether letting city cops live outside the city would be good or bad for crime.

Now that state lawmakers have intervened to grant permission, supporters are on the hook to make sure it actually makes a difference.

Early this month, the Missouri House of Representatives passed Bill No. 46, loosening restrictions on residency for St. Louis police officers and other first responders.

In a 25-to-five vote, legislators voted in favor of allowing city officers to live within an hour of St. Louis, repealing the original 1973 requirement of residency within city limits.

The bill is expected to be signed

by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson.

The five legislators who voted against the bill, most representing the St. Louis city area, say the addition of more officers will do little to battle the city’s crime rates — and they question whether widening the hiring radius will attract more officers.

In 2018, when recruiting was at a low point, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department relinquished residency requirements through a waiver program for newly hired officers.

According to St. Louis police Sgt. Keith Barrett, there was only one formal request for a residency waiver, which was denied by the director of personnel.

Still, Jimmie Edwards, director of the Public Safety Department, believes that House Bill No. 46 is critically important to strengthening the police force in St. Louis.

As for requirements for the va-

Now that it appears St. Louis police will be allowed to live outside the city, we’ll get to see if the promised crime reductions follow. | DOYLE MURPHY cant officer positions, “I’m certainly not interested [in officers] that don’t love our city, that aren’t racially and gender-sensitive to our city. I want people that want to be police officers, that love our city, that love serving and protecting, but who will be reflective and respectful of the citizens in the city of St. Louis,” Edwards says in an interview.

While noting that the recruiting process will not be easy, Edwards believes that the additional officers, whether new or transfers from different agencies, will be key to preventing crime.

Asked for the specifics on how additional officers will bring down crime rates, Edwards says, “Those officers will be able to address a deterrence issue. So, if officers are available, very few criminals will engage in criminal activity if there’s officers standing on that particular street — just the sheer number of officers will help.” While he acknowledges that more officers will not eliminate crime, he says that this “will be a very small piece, a one-component part of the enforcement and deterrence of crime in the city of St. Louis.”

The St. Louis Board of Aldermen has voted against lifting these resi-

dency restrictions in the past, citing concerns similar to those still present today. But Mayor Lyda Krewson has pushed for the change.

“Our police are being stretched by responding to violence, by trying to prevent violence, by responding to many protests,” Krewson said during a recent livestream.

She has estimated that the police department has about 140 vacancies that need to be filled.

Edwards remains hopeful that the perfect 200 officer candidates could still be out there.

“I think we’re short in every single district. I have never gone to a community meeting in the city of St. Louis where the citizens tell me that they have a sufficient amount of police officers,” he says.

Supporters of the shift argue that it will allow more applicants from the surrounding areas to fill officer positions, strengthen the public safety measures for the city and, hopefully, decrease crime.

State Rep. Rasheen Aldridge (DSt. Louis) was one legislator who voted against the bill, saying that proponents were “talking about officers that don’t culturally understand why these communities have so much anger, all the oppression that they’re currently going through.”

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In light of the Black Lives Matter movement, many opponents of the bill argue that Black residents have historically been abused by police and marginalized, creating a dynamic that ensures conflict — enhanced further by outsiders of the community.

In response to these concerns, Krewson told her Facebook audience, “You don’t all work in the town that you live in.” She added, “We’re a very transient society, so I think it’ll work fine.”

“It doesn’t matter to me whether you were born in the city of St. Louis or not; you can be a bad person or a good person either way,” Edwards says. “I just think that argument fails on its face because we all have implicit bias issues.”

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt similarly praised the bill in a Facebook post, stating that St. Louis police will finally be able to “put more boots on the ground.”

“I appreciate the legislature’s hard work in passing this important bill, and I look forward to Governor Parson signing it into law,” he wrote.

The governor proposed repealing the city’s residency rule as part of a package of measures he says will reduce the city’s crime problem. n

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Alex Furman, vice president of St. Louis’ Proud Boys chapter, was arrested in 2017 in California after crashing a plane. | NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD/RIVERSIDE COUNTY SHERIFF

Ex-Drug Smuggler Alex Furman Is a Proud Boy Running Against Cori Bush Written by

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

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n April 24, 2017, Alex Furman’s last day as a drug smuggler ended when the nose of his small plane crunched into the dirt, throwing him face-first into the controls. He’d missed the runway by about 50 feet.

Furman, who grew up in St. Louis County, had moved to California in 2015 after earning a pilot’s license and a stint as a student at Central Missouri University.

But on that Monday in April, when the square-jawed 24-yearold emerged bloodied from the cockpit of his Cessna 201, he soon found himself facing questions about the 6,200 grams of hash oil police found in a suitcase.

There was the small matter of $700,000 in cash wrapped in vacuum-sealed bags, as reported by the Press-Enterprise of Riverside, California. Police also seized two unregistered handguns from his apartment.

Despite all that, today Furman is out of prison and off probation. Less than a year after his hard landing, he pleaded guilty to a single charge of possession with intent to distribute and was released on time served. In 2018, he moved back to St. Louis — and since then, he’s picked up some new roles.

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He’s gainfully employed as a locksmith. He’s active in the St. Louis County Libertarian Party and is even running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives against Democrat Cori Bush (although, given the blue district, she’s all-but-guaranteed to win her seat come November.)

There’s one more thing: Furman is the vice president of the St. Louis chapter of the far-right Proud Boys, a frat-like group that’s gained renewed notoriety from members’ appearance in street fights and pro-Trump caravans in Portland and Seattle.

In St. Louis, however, the group appears to have few members, and in an interview, Furman echoes the group’s longstanding contention that it is not animated by racism or white nationalism, but merely a “drinking club” of like-minded boys who are proud.

On a recent afternoon, Furman is working on a component of a tricky lock that he’s extracted from the front door of a church when he’s met by this reporter. In an interview, he concedes that the Proud Boys are often seen publicly in the guise of “street militia.

He doesn’t see himself as “a Proud Boy candidate” — or, for that matter, as a particularly conservative one.

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“My theme, I call it ‘Based Libertarianism,’ it’s a hardcore antigovernment ethic, very rigid,” he explains. “The good thing about the Proud Boy platform is it’s basically anarchist. End the government, abolish prison.”

He adds, “Realistically, the Proud Boys are a fraternity, and if you go to any of our events that’s what it looks like, more than any ideological movement.”

Then again, most fraternities aren’t listed under “General Hate” on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s database of extremist groups. In 2018, the Riverfront Times profiled the St. Louis roud Boys in the aftermath of an organized boycott of a bar where the Proud Boys were meeting.

Also that summer, an “anti-fash collective” infiltrated a private Proud Boys Facebook group and published videos of “first-degree” initiates reciting the Proud Boy pledge, which goes: “I’m a Western chauvinist, and I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.”

Later that year, Furman took the vow as well.

When asked about what the phrase means to him — or what prospective voters should take from a “Western chauvinist” on the ballot — urman at first replies, ‘To put it in layman’s terms, it’s like saying, ‘I’m proud to be an American.’”

“To me, that doesn’t mean being a citizen of a government,” he continues, “it means being the son or daughter of a culture. And culture to me is not racial. It’s character, traditions, and there are better traditions than others.”

For an example of the non-racial aspect of culture, he chooses to argue from a fairly bigoted premise,

noting that, “certain Islamic traditions are objectively less moral than some western traditions.”

Furman contends that critics who see bigotry in his casual Islamophobia and ranking of human cultures are either “state propagandist liars” or simply parroting the “purposely driven narrative” spread by the likes of CNN. His response also mirrors those of the other Proud Boys interviewed previously by the RFT, whose ideas about “Western civilization” similarly relied on broad stereotypes (frequently involving Islamophobia) and arguments framed as virtuous defenses to the absurdity of liberal politics.

This kind of logic has also drawn accusations of racism and white supremacy. As Keegan Hankes, a research analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, told the RFT, the Proud Boys’ mixture of traditional conservatism and alt-right sensibilities “serve as a gateway for so many people who have gone on to other extremism.”

Indeed, Furman himself seems to acknowledge this dynamic, complaining later during the interview that he’s made guest appearances on podcasts featuring “alt-right people talking about the Jews all the time” — and yet, it’s these audiences which he believes he can convince to embrace his form of Based Libertarianism.

“I happen to think people on the right are more apt to be converted to a good, moral, ethical philosophy of government than someone who’s hardcore left,” he says.

It’s a peculiar position, but even more so in 2020. At a time when the streets are filled with protesters calling for many of his own stated goals — including the abolition of

prison and ending the drug war — Furman sees his potential supporters elsewhere, not just with podcasting anti-Semites, but in various offshoots and the far-right web, the places that attract fellow travelers who, he hopes, will follow a similar path to his vision of radical antigovernment libertarianism.

They’re the sort of folks who were likely the intended audience for September 11 tweet from Furman’s official campaign account.

That day, Cori Bush, who once lived in a car for several months after being evicted, had tweeted support for the Green New Deal and “dismantling environmental racism.”

Furman retweeted her, adding, “Shut the fuck up you homeless communist.”

Furman’s campaign account has also shared hashtags associated with Q-Anon and the “Boogaloo Bois,” another loosely organized far-right group that is obsessed

A sample of Furman’s campaign tweets as he runs against Cori Bush. | TWITTER SCREEN GRAB

with preparing for the “Boogaloo,” a kind of second American Revolutionary War that will overthrow a government corrupted by tyranny.

Still, in our interview, Fur-

man insists he isn’t looking to start a confrontation with the government — at least, not yet.

He says he’s planning a “heavily armed mask burning in front

Stenger’s Moneyman Wants Out of Prison Written by

DOYLE MURPHY

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ohn Rallo, who is serving time for bribing former St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger, says he fears catching COVID-19 for a second time in a federal prison.

The 54-year-old businessman sent U.S. District Judge Richard Webber a handwritten letter, railing against media coverage and begging to be released to house arrest.

“All I am trying to do is serve my time, but would like to do it in an environment that doesn’t put my life at risk,” he writes.

Rallo has already had the coronavirus once, and his bunkmate at the U.S. penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, died of the virus last month. The inmate, 39-year-old Taiwan Davis, who was serving 84 months in a drug case, tested positive on July 29 and died a week later, on August 5, according to the federal Bureau of Prisons.

In a previous letter, Rallo had told the judge that Davis “didn’t need to” die and “should have been removed from the unhealthy situation weeks before his death.”

Rallo says he began to feel sick the same day that Davis tested positive and within 24 hours developed “severe chills, nausea and shortness of breath that made it very difficult” to breathe.

Even after the chills and nausea subsided, he struggled to breathe, he writes.

“At times it felt as though I were having a heart attack,” Rallo writes. “Very scary to say the least.”

John Rallo, photographed leaving federal court in 2019, says he’s at risk in prison. | DOYLE MURPHY Rallo is serving seventeen months after pleading guilty to mail fraud for his role in a years-long bribery scheme. He routinely donated money to Stenger’s campaign and recruited other donors.

In exchange, the corrupt politico hooked him up with a do-nothing consulting contract through the St. Louis County Port Authority and real estate deals. Stenger tried but failed multiple times to steer a contract to manage county employees’ benefits to Rallo’s insurance company.

When the scheme unraveled it took down both Rallo and Stenger, as well as the county executive’s former chief of staff Bill Miller and former St. Louis Economic Development Partnership CEO Sheila Sweeney, all of whom pleaded guilty to federal crimes.

Even before reporting to Marion, Rallo began pleading to have his prison sentence converted to house arrest in his new home in Salt Lake City. He has thyroid cancer and a blood disorder that compromises his immune system and makes him more susceptible to COVID-19, he and his lawyers have argued.

Federal prosecutors have opposed letting Rallo out of prison. In a filing last month, Assistant U.S. Attorney Hal Goldsmith cited medical records from the prison in which Rallo claimed he was feeling fine and symptom free during ten days of medically ordered isolation after he tested positive.

“The medical staff determined that defendant’s COVID-19 virus was resolved and, per CDC guidelines, defendant was

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of the Health Department” as a campaign event scheduled for October 3.

“It’s getting weird out there, with the mask mandates, all the stuff that we’ve just never seen before in a country that’s supposed to be free,” he says, arguing that COVID-19 is “completely survivable” and that “it shouldn’t be controversial to say the government is cooking the numbers” of infections and death. In part, that’s why he’s sticking with the far right and the Proud Boys.

They’re his sort of people.

“They’re more reachable,” he says. “In order to be a libertarian, to believe you have what it takes to live in a free world, you have to have quite a bit of self-esteem, because there’s no one looking out for you,” he says. “I find that people on the right, the far right, whatever dumb things they believe, they usually aren’t lacking for selfconfidence and self-esteem.” n released from isolation back to his normal housing,” writes Goldsmith, who led the prosecution against Stenger and the others.

In his letter, Rallo writes that the media has been a “mouth piece” for prosecutors and “they often mishandle the truth.”

He claims he and other inmates hid their symptoms from nurses before testing positive in hopes of avoiding a stay in isolation. When he first arrived at the prison in June, he spent 24 days in isolation as part of the medical protocols designed to keep new inmates from bringing in the virus. Rallo says he was kept in a seven-bynine-foot room without air conditioning.

“No way I was ever going back there!” he writes. “I figured it was just as easy to be sick in the dorm at the camp, in more comfort, with air conditioning and not being trapped in a small room.”

At the time, COVID-19 was spreading through the prison.

According to Bureau of Prison records, 135 inmates have tested positive in Marion and two have died. Most of the cases came during a spike in early August, but that has apparently subsided. There are now three active cases among the 1,166 inmates, according to the most recent numbers.

Rallo says he worries about a second wave. There have been some reports of reinfection among people who’ve already had COVID-19.

“Your honor, my biggest fear is that there will be another outbreak, especially with the BOP now bringing in new inmates,” Rallo writes. “If this does occur, I have a significant fear for my health & potentially my life. Having COVID was a horrible experience that I don’t want to have to go thru again. I have a loving family that needs me ... I don’t deserve a death sentence.” n

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Screw Up, Move Up

On July 12, 2018, April Hudgens, a corrections officer at Southeast orrectional enter in harleston, issouri, was in one of SE ’s housing units when the inmate she was writing up for a conduct violation violently attacked her. As another corrections officer at the prison made a copy of udgens’ report, the inmate sprinted at her and started beating her. e hit her once on the side of her face and she immediately fell to the ground.

It took 0 seconds for the other officer to pull the inmate off. udgens needed to have the wound between her ear and the back of her head glued shut. The incident left her with post-traumatic stress. ut when udgens uit the issouri epartment of orrections this une, after si years on the job, it wasn’t because of the assault. She’d been working through that with the help of therapy. She says she uit because of the way her bosses made her life “hell” after she brought a se ual harassment complaint against a lieutenant corrections officer.

That’s not surprising, say current and former corrections employees. Across issouri’s prison system, allegations of disturbing misconduct — and retaliation — are pervasive. etails of the accusations occasionally leak out through lawsuits and increasingly through anonymous Twitter accounts run by e -guards and family of inmates. uring the past two months, the Riverfront Times has interviewed fifteen O O staff members and e -staff members about the culture and conditions within the system of ,000 employees spread across 0 sites.

They describe a department plagued by cronyism, in which employees in the good graces of administration can get away with serious misconduct whereas

those who speak out against it are the ones likely to be punished.

One corrections officer talked about being mocked and ha ed because of a speech impediment, at one time put in a chokehold by his coworkers. ultiple people attested to wardens fi ing promotion procedures to ensure romantic partners moved up the ranks. Time and again people interviewed used the phrase “screw up, move up” as a shorthand to describe the department’s practice of promoting employees accused of misconduct to new positions in hopes they would do better there. The fifteen current and former employees stated this is all common knowledge in the department, but it is e ually well known among O O employees that to file complaints with supervisors or otherwise speak out is perilous business. They described the majority of the corrections officers and other O O employees as upstanding but say the inability to remove the wellconnected bad ones, particularly in management, makes the job at times unbearable.

After Hudgens was attacked by the inmate, she stayed dedicated to the job, earning a promotion in 20 . ot long after, a lieutenant began commenting on how se y she looked, she says.

“One day he said that it was a good thing I don’t wear street clothes to work because he’d seen me in my street clothes and I looked se y,” udgens says in an interview. Later this lieutenant said something similar to udgens about her eating a pickle she’d brought as part of her lunch.

She laughed off the comments at first and tried to forget about them. Then, she says, the lieutenant unlocked a bathroom for her one day and made as if he was going to follow her in. udgens says she filed a complaint with the

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prison’s warden, ason Lewis.

A few weeks later, Hudgens received an email from Lewis saying he had spoken to the lieutenant who had apologi ed and wouldn’t joke around like that again. ut udgens says she felt her claims hadn’t been taken seriously.

A week later, according to public records, the lieutenant was promoted to captain.

“It wasn’t fair. It was a slap in the face for me,” udgens says.

“That’s what it was.”

At SE , udgens worked the overnight shift in the segregation unit, an area often referred to as a “prison within a prison” where offenders spend all but one hour every other day in solitary confinement. The inmates in the segregation unit knew udgens had been attacked and several of them mocked her for it. It was re-traumati ing. Then O I moved her children’s school online, her husband got a new job working overnights, and what had been a rough shift became impossible with her family’s new schedule. udgens says she went to Lewis and asked for a different assignment. She took a voluntary demotion in ay to try to make it easier to get out of the late nights in the segregation unit. One night, as her shift was starting, she made a direct appeal to the warden “ on’t put me in seg. It’s really messing with me.”

The ne t morning she received a message stating she’d been approved for a “new” position overnights in the segregation unit. udgens says that her supervisors made it difficult for her to leave segregation in retaliation for her complaining about the se ual harassment. She vented her frustration in an email to her state representative, which led to a oom meeting with Anne recythe, the director of corrections in Missouri,

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harassment claim not being taken seriously, then took no action. Nothing changed in SE .

Well, almost nothing.

In May, Jason Lewis, the warden, was promoted to deputy division director, a position that oversees the management of multiple prisons.

Hudgens says it was

was allowing inmates to call him “ r. ” when they struggled to pronounce his Francophone last name. ovreau says that the real reason for his termination was a complaint he filed against his supervisor. The “over familiarity” infraction, employees say, is what supervisors resort to when they want to fire someone

Joni Light made no secret of what she thought about her employers when she talked to Fox 2’s hris ayes in 20 . She’d been with the MODOC for twenty years when she went on the record with the TV reporter about the hostile work environment she was experiencing as a unit manager at

Eric reitens, who said at the time, “Missouri’s Department of Corrections is broken, and … our corrections officers struggle in a culture of harassment and neglect, in a department with low morale and shockingly high turnover.”

The day Precythe was officially made O O ’s director she appeared before a committee of state representatives who had been investigating allegations of harassment in the department. Precythe promised “a new day,” “a new direction” and “a new culture.”

Soon thereafter she issued a memo outlining a zero tolerance policy for employee harassment.

“Any allegations of improper behavior in the workplace will be swiftly investigated and appropriate sanctions will be administered to true wrongdoers,” she wrote.

The Zoom call wasn’t udgens’ first time meeting Precythe. In 2019, Hudgens says the director came to SE

“devastating” to see the man who had harassed her and the boss who had swept it under the rug move up in the department. To her, it was just two more examples of “screw up, move up.” The following month she quit.

er first official day on the job, recythe said she wanted to shake up the ways that employees moved up through the department’s ranks. When it came to promotions, she wanted less emphasis on seniority, stating, “I do not subscribe to the next-inline promotional opportunity … I am all about taking a two-year employee over an eighteen-year employee all day long.”

The following year, overnor ike arson signed into law S 00 , which made state workers “at will” employees, giving MODOC and other state agency administrators more freedom in promotion, hiring and firing.

who hasn’t done anything wrong. Another current corrections officer says that he recently picked up a violation for “over familiarity” for handing an inmate official documents related to offender work duties. Prior to 2018, employees like ovreau could file a grievance and, however slim, had a chance for redress and to get their jobs back. ue to S 00 , that is now gone.

Tim Cutt, the executive director of the Missouri orrections Officers Association, a union, said that S 00 also gutted the grievance system for MOO employees. “As of August 2018, there is no process to redress employee grievances,” he says. “It’s a horrible situation. etaliation has always been an issue, but the grievance process kept it in check.

Now it’s running rampant and employees can’t do anything about it, except call this hotline.”

The hotline Cutt refers to is the 2 -hour “ .L.E.A. .” line, another of Precythe’s initiatives, created as a

Farmington Correctional Center. When the piece aired, Light says, the department retaliated. A back and forth played out over months, but the end result was that in March 2020 Farmington’s warden issued an order that Light, demoted to a corrections officer, was now “prohibited entry into Farmington Correctional Center and entering all department premises.”

Light says that as far as she knows she’s the only person to be banned from all Missouri prisons (she wonders what would happen if she were to be sentenced to hard time), and this is something of a point of pride for her. The warden’s notice banning her hangs on her fridge.

A lack of faith in official channels (and, as Light’s story shows, a reason to be leery of official media has led to unorthodox ways of whistle blowing taking root among the ranks of the MODOC. Since at least 20 , the anonymously published Hard Facts Newsletter:

for a town hall with employees. She remembers Precythe saying that there wasn’t any “good old boys” system in her DOC. Hudgens also remembers one of her coworkers politely challenged the director on this point. Hudgens says

Employees say that even before the new law, many MODOC wardens wrote up inconvenient employees for violations seemingly concocted from thin air then used those blemishes on their records as reasons for dismissal. erry ovreau, a former employee

way for employees to report workplace issues and misconduct.

MODOC spokesperson aren ojmann says the hotline is totally anonymous and that “all complaints are addressed by trained human relations officers and resolved

MO DOC Underground Publication has arrived regularly in the mailboxes of an unknown number of staff. The newsletters, several editions of which have been obtained by the RFT, report on rigged promotions, covered-up harassment

that coworker was later written up with a violation for doing so.

On that Zoom call, Precythe and Norman listened politely to Hudgens’ concerns about her

at Bonne Terre, says he was written up and later fired for “over familiarity” with inmates. Paperwork viewed by the RFT showed that one of ovreau’s specific infractions

through conversation, mediation or investigations.”

However, according to Cutt, “Wardens use it as surveillance, a way to know who is talking bad about them.”

complaints and staffing shortages unacknowledged by department leadership.

Sherry ish, who left the department in March after 32 years and now

CORRECTIONS Continued from pg 13

and Precythe’s secondin-command, Division of Adult Services irector Jeff Norman.

Precythe took charge of the 11,000-employee department in 2016, appointed by then-governor

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The underground complaint system

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works for the Missouri orrections Officers Association, says the workplace culture in the state’s prisons has only gotten worse since Precythe became director.

Officers with the right relationships who are accused of misconduct get off scotfree after a cursory investigation, and the officers

ment with serious widespread problems. However, under Precythe’s tenure, ojmann says, “the department has made significant and unmistakable progress toward its goal of fundamentally transforming the culture of corrections in Missouri, in part through deliberate and systematic

bringing allegations are the ones more likely to be punished, Fish says. In other instances when connected officers are found to be guilty of misconduct they are “punished” by being transferred to a different facility, sometimes with an accompanying promotion.

Fish says that when she was still a corrections officer at the Eastern eception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre she reported a lieutenant who was sleeping with an employee under his direct supervision and who had rigged a promotion in her favor. Fish’s complaint was ignored — and she was pulled from her post. A major also erroneously accused her of assaulting a fellow officer. ish says video of the alleged assault, which showed her handing a set of keys to a coworker, ultimately absolved her, but that she still had to endure four months of being under investigation.

One day, not long before she left the department, Fish says she was in an outdoor area of the prison

approaches to combatting discrimination, harassment, retaliation and unprofessional conduct. Eliminating all unprofessional conduct within a workforce of more than 10,500 people distributed throughout Missouri might take time, but our movement toward this goal is yielding positive results, including declines in employee conduct complaints and civil rights complaints [as well as] marked increases in reports of employee satisfaction.” aroline iammanco worked for two and a half years as a teacher in the South entral orrectional Center in Licking, Missouri. Later, she self-published a memoir, Inside the Death Fences, about her e periences. She says that cronyism in MODOC is enabled in part by the fact that many of Missouri’s prisons are in rural areas, where corrections work is the only work in town.

“These are like mining towns, in a lot of cases,” she says. “If there’s a power structure set up with nepotism and cronyism, even if you don’t fit

near some inmates when she slipped on a patch of ice and fell. “I’m laying there surrounded by offenders,” she says. “And a captain who was nearby radioed someone on the other side [of the prison] for help, but he just kept walking.” etaliation against corrections officers who call

into it, you start turning a blind eye because if you speak up you could lose your job. If you lose your job then you have to move your family out of the town that might be your hometown.”

She adds, “The resources that should go into rehabilitating inmates, pre-

attention to misconduct is common, Fish says. “That’s the DOC way.” ojmann, the O O spokesperson, says Precythe inherited a depart-

paring them to re-enter into society, instead go into these employees being paranoid that someone is going to stab them

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CORRECTIONS Continued from pg 15

in the back.”

Given how vulnerable MODOC employees become when they speak out against misconduct, it’s no surprise how perilous it is for inmates to do the same.

In 2014, Teri Dean entered an Alford plea, conceding that there was enough evidence a jury might convict her for her role in the murder of a Southwest Missouri man, as part of an agreement with state prosecutors that her sentence would not be greater than 23 years.

Incarcerated at the Chillicothe Correctional Center for women northeast of Kansas City, she claims in a lawsuit she endured repeated sexual assault at the hands of four male corrections officers.

Dean’s lawsuit outlines dozens of instances of the four corrections officers rubbing up against her in out-of-the-way areas of the prison, rubbing their faces between her breasts, groping her, digitally penetrating her and subjecting her to unnecessarily thorough pat-downs.

Dean’s suit says that after Chillicothe staff got wind that she was contemplating legal action, she had legal mail confiscated from her and on numerous occasions was arbitrarily put into solitary confinement. While she was in solitary, a calendar on which she kept track of the dates of her assaults was taken from her and destroyed. She was pulled away from a visit with her son because staff told her she had an “appointment.” The medication she takes for Crohn’s disease was withheld from her.

One of the officers named in Dean’s lawsuit, Edward Bearden, had been accused of sexual assault by four other inmates prior to Dean. Those four other women waited until they had been released from prison to make their allegations, saying that inmates who brought such complaints were put in solitary confinement.

Precythe is listed as a co-defendant in Dean’s lawsuit, which claims she knew of the accusations against Bearden and allowed him to continue working in a women’s prison. Bearden left MODOC in August 2018, at least seven months after John Amman, an attorney representing Dean, says the department was made aware of the allegations against him.

Bearden’s departure came less than two weeks after he turned 62, the age when most of the state’s retirement plans kick in for normal

Lynda Miller was working as a corrections officer in Bonne Terre in 2016 when an inmate attacked her. | COURTESY LYNDA MILLER pensions.

The scandal-marred prison guard was a two-time state employee. Prior to being hired in the prison system in 2008, he had worked for eighteen years with the Missouri Department of Transportation. The exact circumstances under which Bearden left the MODOC are unknown, and there are different plans that govern retirement benefits, but it appears he likely walked away with a bigger pension by being allowed to stay through his 62nd birthday than he would have had he been forced out one pay period earlier.

When asked about earden, MODOC spokesperson Pojman stated, “The department does not decide when a staff member retires; the staff member makes that decision. Proximity to retirement age has no bearing on disciplinary decisions.”

The “DOC way” costs taxpayers millions As the Missouri Department of Corrections defends itself against Dean’s lawsuit as well as the others stemming from allegations against Bearden, the department is also contending with a host of suits brought by its own staff for harassment, retaliation and discrimination.

The suits are different in their specifics, but each fits the pattern of retaliation that Sherry Fish calls the “DOC way.”

Sana MacClugage is a Pakistani

Missouri Department of Corrections Director Anne Precythe. | OFFICIAL PORTRAIT American who became a naturalized citizen in 2013 and began working at the Jefferson City Correctional Facility the following year. She alleges in a lawsuit that a coworker regularly called her a “terrorist” and a “Pakistani motherfucker,” and after Donald Trump’s election told her “she had better pack her bags because she was going to be ‘kicked out of America.’” ac lugage filed a complaint against the coworker and, according to her suit, soon thereafter her supervisor began shouting at her in front of other corrections officers and offenders. The suit also states she was directed to do tasks that were beneath her position,

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including collecting prisoners’ laundry, which is usually work done by an inmate.

When ac lugage’s complaint fell on deaf ears, she filed a charge of discrimination with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights in September 2018. Since then, according to public records, the coworker accused of calling her a terrorist has been promoted twice. The supervisor who MacClugage says retaliated against her has been promoted as well.

Wendy ashner worked for MODOC for 23 years before leaving in 2019. A lawsuit she’s brought against the department claims that prior to her departure ashner filed an age discrimination complaint and then was soon transferred to work in the same unit as a coworker her bosses were aware was stalking her.

Kimi Moore, a probation and parole officer in the ape irardeau area, also complained to her supervisors about age discrimination and later, according to her lawsuit, when she helped a police officer detain an unruly suspect, it was Moore who was terminated for having a firearm with her during the incident. Moore has a concealed carry permit and has the authority to carry a gun as part of her job.

Paula Reed is also suing the department. She was a deputy warden at SECC, the same prison where Hudgens worked, in 20 when she filed a complaint

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CORRECTIONS Continued from pg 17

against a coworker who she says consistently harassed her. The coworker was subsequently promoted, whereas Reed, despite being a deputy warden, says she was relegated to secretarial duties.

According to Pojmann, the MODOC spokesperson, “The majority of these types of suits filed or litigated in recent years stem from alleged events that began under a different administration. … In the last five years, 5 percent of the allegations pre-date Director Precythe’s administration. Even among the current active cases, 42 percent involve allegations from before the current administration. ost suits reflect neither the department leadership now in place nor our evolving programs, processes and initiatives.”

When asked, ojmann clarified that a lawsuit alleging harassment that occurred before and during Precythe’s time in charge would be categorized in the above statistic as something that occurred “before the current administration.”

The RFT requested the database of lawsuits brought against MODOC but hasn’t received it. Most of the individuals whose stories appear here — including MacClugage, Light, Dashner, Moore, Reed, Hudgens and Fish — worked at MODOC, at least in part, after Precythe became the director.

And the litigation seems to only increase. Last month, a former Jefferson City probation and parole worker named Stephen Benaimah filed a discrimination lawsuit saying that he was consistently ridiculed by his supervisor on the basis of his being from Liberia. The suit also alleges one of Ben-Naimah’s coworkers “regularly called him a mass murderer” and attempted to sabotage his citizenship application. Ben-Naimah’s suit says he filed complaints that went unheeded and was retaliated against for doing so by having an application to a different position discarded and his request for a transfer to St. Louis denied.

For years, lawsuits against MODOC have been costly to Missouri taxpayers, with the state paying out $9.8 million in settlements from the general revenue fund in 2018 and 2019, according to the Kansas City Star. This January the state paid out $2 million to Richard Dixson, a white intake officer who said he faced racial discrimination.

The state attorney general recently announced his office had been more aggressively litigating cases in order to keep the state’s

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Joni Light went public with accusations of a hostile work environment at MODOC. | RYAN KRULL

Light keeps a printout of the order banning her from state prisons. | COURTESY JONI LIGHT payouts as low as possible. However, with the state of Missouri’s coffers in uncertain shape due to the coronavirus pandemic, it has been suggested that departments start paying their own legal liabilities.

If implemented, this change would be an expensive one for MODOC. Among its potential liabilities is a $114 million judgment — about a fifth of the department’s annual budget — awarded to thousands of employees who sued over unpaid wages. The jury attached a 9 percent interest to the judgment, meaning that for every month the suit stays in appeals, MODOC potentially adds another 50,000 of

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red ink to its books.

Unending Consequences

Given the hostile work environment, dangerous nature of the job and the fact that Missouri has the lowest paid state workers in the country, it’s no surprise the MODOC is struggling with staff shortages. Multiple employees who have worked at the department for more than a decade say that when they began it was the norm to be surrounded by coworkers with twenty years on the job. Now, one current employee at Bonne Terre says that he’d guess the average new hire stays for about two months.

In April, COVID-19 began spreading through Missouri’s prisons, and as of early September, the department had recorded nearly 1,300 total cases among inmates and staff. The prison in Bonne Terre accounts for more than a third of those cases. Employees say that at Bonne Terre the pandemic has caused staff shortages to turn dire. One current corrections officer there says that “industry” employees who manage inmates at their manufacturing jobs are doing the jobs of corrections officers, as are “rec officers.” I asked who “rec officers” were and was told, “They’re PE teachers basically.”

If you didn’t think too much about this, you might assume that all these staffing issues would be good for inmates. You’d be wrong.

Staff shortages jeopardize inmates’ access to recreation and communication with the outside and can severely delay the delivery of medical care and food.

In understaffed prisons, inmates have reported not being let out of their cells until early afternoon and being allowed infrequent showers. Inmate safety also becomes more precarious. A corrections officer currently working at Bonne Terre says that this summer one inmate committed thirteen sexual assaults in one week but no action was taken against him other than altering his meals.

Giammanco, the former prison teacher turned author, says that when it comes to prison reform, she refers to herself as a “hybrid” in the sense that she has worked in prisons but she also has a spouse who is incarcerated.

“It’s important to fight for better conditions for employees,” she says. “Because better conditions for employees makes for better conditions for inmates.” ecause corrections officers spend as many as twelve hours a day in the same facility where offenders spend all day and all night, their fates are intertwined.

Especially during a pandemic.

These past few months, offenders’ families have complained that inmates who tested positive for the virus were not being properly quarantined. They say that inmates who required health care were unable to see doctors or get their prescriptions. Likewise, corrections officers say they didn’t have proper personal protective equipment, and coronavirus protocols they received were often confused or not followed thoroughly.

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These past few months, offenders’ families have complained that inmates who tested positive for the virus were not being properly quarantined. Likewise, corrections officers say they didn’t have proper PPE, and coronavirus protocols they received were often confused or not followed thoroughly.

CORRECTIONS Continued from pg 18

from one facility to another. One inmate in Boonville says that facility recently had four or five O I positive inmates transferred there from Fulton.

“They got them all mixed in with us,” he says. “They’re not quarantined. It’s not possible for us to be even really uarantined, to be really social distanced, because we’re so close together. We’re packed like sardines. This is an open-based camp, so we’re like one foot away from each other. I can reach my arm out and touch the next [guy].”

Many similar complaints have surfaced anonymously on Twitter, which has become the preferred whistleblowing method in Missouri prisons. However, unlike the Hard Facts Newsletter, the Twitter accounts serve as outlets for both corrections officers and offenders’ families, the former fearing reprisal if they attach their names to complaints and the latter worried about public criticism being traced back to their locked-up loved ones. aily, sometimes hourly, the Twitter account @MissouriPrison reports information sent to it by inmates and staff. Oftentimes, MOO will release an official statement only to have @MissouriPrison tweet information in direct contradiction. After the O O employees began getting in touch with her to tell her about what was going on in their places of work, the woman behind the account began posting that information as well.

“I’m overwhelmed because I never thought this would get as big as it’s gotten, that I’d get so many followers and have so many people sending me information,” she says in an interview. “I think right now, in terms of who’s following this, it’s about an even number of family members who have someone incarcerated and epartment of orrections staff members.” espite the O O ’s stated purpose to “foster rehabilitation,” all this dysfunction makes

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it more likely that people leaving the institutions will be changed for the worse. Several studies have shown that offenders released from prison suffer TS at rates far higher than average. The woman who operates @MissouriPrison says that her incarcerated loved one has TS from his time locked up. “He has dealt with so much in life that he doesn’t get easily shaken,” she says. “But this virus spreading through the facilities and the way the department is handling it is getting to him.”

And then there are people like Lynda Miller, who came to the prison in Bonne Terre for the reliable paycheck. In une 20 , while working her shift as a correction officer, she says, an inmate used her “like a punching bag.” While she was in the emergency room she got a “a hundred and fifty” missed calls and text messages from people worried about her. Instead of replying to each one, she says, she posted two photos of herself with a note about what happened. “I just took some pictures and sent it out and said, ‘This is me, this is what’s going on.’” iller says her bosses perceived the social media post as her trying “to take the shine” off the department. A few weeks later Miller was scheduled to have a surgery, and it was around that time she got an ultimatum: “They said that if I’m not coming to work the ne t day I need to come in and sign resignation paperwork.” That was the end of her O O career and she’s struggled to pay for the medical care she needs ever since.

Today as a result of the beating Miller has headaches, rapidly deteriorating eyesight and depression. She worries she’ll be blind by the time she turns 0.

Then there’s the anger, too.

“I’ve got some really bad anger issues,” she says. “I don’t like it. There’s nothing I can do about it.” n Ryan Krull is a freelance journalist and assistant teaching professor in the department of communication and media at University of Missouri-St. Louis.

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[SIDE DISH]

Soldier On Polite Society’s Daniel Sammons believes independent restaurants are worth fighting for Written b y

CHERYL BAEHR

D

aniel Sammons remembers the moment he braced for the impact COVID-19 was about to have on Polite Society (1923 Park Avenue, 314-325-2553). Sitting in the back office with another manager, he listened to news of the first case hitting St. Louis back in March and knew they were going to be in for a ride.

“I remember sitting there chatting about it, and we looked at each other and said, What’s our plan ’” Sammons recalls. “We talked about taking away the toothpicks and things we leave in the bathrooms for guests to use. I remember asking, o you think we need to take salt and pepper shakers off the tables ’ Two days later, we were closed.”

Sammons, who is olite Society’s e ecutive chef, describes the disorientation that he and his restaurant colleagues felt at the swiftness with which everything changed. Within 2 hours, he went from being able to stay out after work and have drinks with friends to being on full lockdown. He describes feeling as if things were operating in slow motion, but he also feels that sense of speed.

“You blinked, and everything was gone,” Sammons says.

Since arch, Sammons and his team at olite Society and its sister restaurant, the ellwether, have been trying their best to figure out how to take care of both their employees and guests at a time when what that means feels different. He admits that the low point was in the early days, when he had to lay off his crew — something he found especially difficult considering these were the people he worked with in the trenches, day in and day out. owever, as the months have gone on and the restaurants

Daniel Sammons, executive chef at Polite Society, says restaurants have had to adopt an “adapt and overcome” mentality. | JEN WEST have reopened, he’s been able to bring back some of his employees and move forward with curbside, delivery, dine-in and even a ghost kitchen sandwich delivery service, Sub Division.

As for the guests, Sammons says that the most palpable change has been the lack of interaction. Hellos and goodbyes are a little more awkward and there are times when he might be busy with togo orders, even though the dining room is empty. It’s an eerie feeling, but he’s hopeful it will pass, so long as people realize how important independent restaurants are.

“While chains have their place in the world, there are things that independent restaurants can do that chains can’t,” Sammons says.

“This gives us a way to e press ourselves, and as long as there are chefs and servers and bartenders willing to fight for that, it’s not going anywhere. There’s just such a sense of normalcy that going out to dinner gives you. To lose that — I don’t even want to think about it.”

Sammons took a break from the kitchen to share his thoughts on what it’s like to be in his position in the industry right now, whether he thinks the changes ushered in by the pandemic will be permanent and what gives him hope in the midst of such a fraught time.

As a hospitality professional,

what do people need to know about what you are going through?

I think people need to be aware of how much COVID-19 is affecting the restaurant industry in terms of restaurant closures or some places just not able to reopen. It’s sad to see. Also, people refusing to wear masks that come in who might be symptomatic can close a restaurant, causing us to lose all shifts for up to two weeks. e mindful of the service industry.

What do you miss most about the way things were at your job before COVID-19? eing busy in the restaurant every day. I also miss being able to shake hands with people and give hugs to friends.

What do you miss least?

I think I just try not to think about how things were before everything. You just don’t mess with that.

What is one thing you make sure you do every day to maintain a sense of normalcy?

My daily routine has never changed. Even on the days that I didn’t have anything going on, maintaining that sense of normalcy helps me get through the day.

What have you been stress-eating/drinking lately?

I’m a big fan of peanut butter.

What are the three things you’ve made sure you don’t want to run out of, other than toilet paper?

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eanut butter, herbs and books to read.

You have to be quarantined with three people. Who would you pick?

It’s actually kind of a tough question. If you were to say alive or dead, or past or present people, I would definitely say obin Williams would be one of them.

Once you feel comfortable going back out and about, what’s the first thing you’ll do?

I’d love to go to a movie.

What do you think the biggest change to the hospitality industry will be once people are allowed to return to normal activity levels?

Masking and gloves are going to be more involved in our future than we want. I think we’re going to be more prepared for other pandemics if things were to come up or if there are other outbreaks of COVID-19.

What is one thing that gives you hope during this crisis?

That even in the face of adversity, most restaurants are refusing to surrender. Also seeing other restaurants being successful gives me hope. Finding other ways to be successful, whether that’s opening a ghost kitchen or doing more curbside and delivery from places that never did curbside or delivery. I think there’s an “adapt and overcome” mentality. There are a lot of great shops in St. Louis. Nothing’s going to beat us down n

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Boogyz Donuts serves doughnuts, bagels and vegan specialties. | COURTESY JAMIL JABBAR

Boogyz Donuts Finds Success with Vegan Options in U City Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

F

or the last couple of years, Jamil Jabbar has been planning to open a bagel and doughnut shop with the idea of having both a storefront and robust distribution business. Now that it’s happened, he can’t do anything but laugh at his timing.

“I didn’t know we were going to be in a pandemic the first month of opening,” Jabbar says. “If I knew, I definitely would have waited a year.”

Jabbar opened his shop, Boogyz Donuts (6951 Olive Boulevard, University City; 314-354-8553) on January 31 in a small strip mall on the eastern side of University City. As he explains, the idea for getting into the business came to him while managing his brother’s gas station, where he saw customers clamoring for doughnuts its convenience store stocked daily. He figured that if he could make doughnuts and sell them to local gas stations and convenience stores, he’d be able to capitalize on that demand.

The decision to become a doughnutmaker was not that much of a stretch for Jabbar. Four years ago, while vacationing in New York, he fell in love with the city’s bagels and decided to learn how to make them. That journey took him to New York twice, where he perfected the art and made plans to bring his knowledge to St. Louis to begin making bagels.

He began selling the bagels at the gas station where he worked, but he noticed that doughnuts outsold them four-to-one.

Seeing how popular they were, he shifted his focus to doughnuts, learning the craft

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from the owners of the Florissant shop, Kelly’s Donuts. Once he perfected his technique and recipes, he figured it was time to strike out on his own.

Not one to let adversity stop him, Jabbar has had to get creative during the downturn caused by the pandemic.

With distribution business virtually nonexistent, he’s begun to focus on creating specialty products to draw in customers to his shop, such as vegan doughnuts, which he makes every Tuesday. As he explains, he didn’t know whether or not the idea would fly, so he’s been amazed with the success he’s seen.

“I didn’t know if vegan doughnuts were going to work, because I didn’t know the community was that large,” Jabbar says.

“The first day I did them, I was just shook.

I was busier that day than I was on my grand opening. I felt like, ‘Wow, people are coming from left and right.’ It’s a blessing.”

With Boogyz closed on Mondays, Jabbar is able to ensure that there is no cross-contamination between his vegan and non-vegan offerings on Tuesdays, thus guaranteeing that his plant-based customers have the security of a truly vegan product. Unlike most doughnut shops, he drains and throws away his used oil every Sunday, so that when he comes in on Tuesday, he has a fresh product. Plus, he is careful about sourcing everything from sugar to icing ingredients to make sure his doughnuts are completely vegan.

Emboldened by his success with his vegan offerings, Jabbar has a few other creative ideas he’s working on to differentiate himself from the competition.

Soon, he will be carrying a line of vegan cheese and crackers, and he’s launching a line of dog doughnuts this week.

“I’m having good days and bad days just like everyone else in the business,” Jabbar says. “But I am always wanting to grow and try something different.”

Boogyz Donuts is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Sundays from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. n

Stick and Move With no end to COVID-19 in sight, St. Louis restaurants find new ways to succeed Written by

MATT WOODS

B

ennie Parr Jr. brings in more revenue to his restaurant today than he did before the COVID-19 pandemic began ravaging the industry in March. His pizza-by-the-slice concept stopped working well so he began to sell a hot ticket item: toilet paper.

Parr branched out from his usual business model at his restaurant, Bennie’s Pizza Pub (618-416-0019; 124 E. Main St., Belleville, Illinois), just to give customers a reason to stop by. He sold the toilet paper at cost during a time when shelves were bare.

That type of creativity has led to an increased number of sales for Parr in 2020. He opened Bennie’s Pizza Pub in 2018 based on a dine-in concept but changed operations to fit the state’s O ID-19 guidelines in a way that still showed dollar signs. Parr says it has become extremely stressful, but he keeps his mind on what motivates him.

“I put everything I have into this business, so that makes me work harder,” Parr says, “because I’m passionate about the product I put out. I’m passionate about my customers’ need. That’s why I got into it. I just love people.”

He went beyond selling basic household products by collaborating with other local businesses.

A local movie theater and an ice cream shop put some of their stock in Parr’s restaurant to still have the chance to sell their products.

Parr says the combination was a perfect fit.

“You can watch etfli [with] a pizza, popcorn and ice cream,” he says. “It was an easy solution for dinner and a movie.”

Parr serves up massive slices of pizza such as the Hawaiian Hog, the restaurant’s No. 1 selling pizza. Its base is Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce and it’s topped with pulled pork, pineapple, Canadian bacon, jalapeños, bacon and red onions.

Bennie’s Pizza Pub also offers a variety of mixed drinks and sal-

Bennie Parr Jr. has had to get creative during the pandemic. | STEVEN DUONG

Curtis McCann opened Juanita’s Creole Soul Cafe in August in Dutchtown. | CHRYSTOPHER ads. When his customers couldn’t visit as much during the first wave of shutdowns, they helped out by buying thousands of dollars’ worth of gift certificates.

Brandon McGraw, a friend of Parr’s and owner of Signature Tap House (618-589-9393; 51 Lincoln Highway, Fairview Heights, Illinois) did not have as much time to build a client base before the

March shutdown. He opened on February 1, giving him little more than a month to introduce the atmosphere of his business to the area.

McGraw teamed up with Belleville East High School’s marching band to promote curbside pickup on Tuesdays. The word spread on social media quickly.

“We were helping them as much

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they were helping us,” McGraw says. “And that’s how we kind of got through like two months.”

McGraw wants to open two more Signature Tap House locations in west and south St. Louis County once operations are back to 100 percent. His Fairview Heights location currently offers about 60 craft beers, specialty drinks and Americana food that’s all made fresh in-house. McGraw has used some of his guests to taste new items to see which ones work for the menu. That’s one way he uses the current times to his advantage, he says.

Parr and McGraw both make an effort to keep the experience of going to their restaurants an authentic one.

The drinks at Signature Tap House, McGraw says, are best experienced at the restaurant. He described it as a hangout as well as a place to enjoy food and drinks.

For Parr, the experience lies three-quarters of a block from the kitchen, where his pizza shop has expanded outdoor seating. Parr says he co-books bands for the weekends with fellow local eatery Copper Fire.

The new seating comes at a cost to Parr’s business. In addition to the $1,500 monthly rent for an outdoor tent, his staff has to walk farther to tend to customers. A waitress’s iPhone tracked ten miles of walking in a five-hour shift the first day of the e panded outdoor seating.

Sitting outside has been the only option thus far at Juanita’s Creole Soul Cafe (636-389-0738, 3301 Meramec Street) in south St. Louis’ Dutchtown neighborhood. New restaurant owner Curtis McCann opened on August 1, months after restrictions started taking effect for local businesses.

McCann says he hopes the colorful chairs on the patio will attract people to try his blend of southern and St. Louis cuisine. He’s upbeat about the first month of business.

“They love the food and the customer service,” McCann says.

McCann, born and raised in St. Louis, learned his cooking skills from his southern family. He serves gumbo and sweet potato curry, but maintains his St. Louis roots with gooey butter cake.

He says sales have been consistent despite not being able to allow customers to dine inside.

Parr stresses the help from his customers during 2020 on how he maintains profit.

“We couldn’t do it without the customer base and the community coming in to support us,” he says. n

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9 1 0 w estpor

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tport PL A Z A d r iv e • sai n t lo u i s , m i s s o u ri • 31 4.5 4 8 . 2876 • W E S T P O R T S O C I A L - S T L . C O

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CULTURE

Tonina is a local gem, but the rest of the world is quickly catching on. | UMBERTO LOPEZ

[CALENDAR]

Things to Do Our recommendations for the best events in St. Louis — and online! — this week Written by

DANIEL HILL

I

n the hellish nightmare that is 2020 in America, it can be something of a challenge to find ways to spend time outside of your home without putting yourself or those around you in danger of catching a potentially deadly virus. And while we’re half-inclined to suggest that the safest event is no event at all, we also know that sounds a whole lot like abstinenceonly se -ed, and you guys are probably gonna fuck anyway no matter what we say.

So consider these recommendations your condoms They aren’t foolproof, but they’re safer than just throwing caution to the wind. We will only recommend events that

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are taking precautions — that includes masks, social distancing, reduced capacities and the like — but ultimately you’re in charge of your own health, so proceed with care.

We’ll also be listing live-streamed events, which are surely the safest of them all, though admittedly not the same. Live-streamed events are basically the masturbation of events in this way, because — ah, you know what, we’re gonna go ahead and abandon this metaphor before we get in over our heads.

NIGHT AT THE ZOO 5 p.m. Thursday, September 17.

Saint Louis Zoo, 1 Government Drive. $25 to $30. 314-781-0900.

There is but one set of animals at the oo that are wholly unacceptable, and which make a trip there a recipe for a bad time human children. Shrieking little banshees whining about everything, snot-nosed vectors of disease, persistent roadblocks between you and the front of the line at the Ice ream Oasis — who even likes these things, anyway Luckily the good people at the Saint Louis oo share your open disdain for children, and they’ve organi ed a

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night off from the screaming hellspawn this week. ight at the oo is for the adults, with no one under 2 allowed, meaning you can finally enjoy the area’s premier animal jail the way it was intended — sans kids. The adults-only festivities kick off at 5 p.m., and tickets are 25 for members and 0 for non-members. Sure, the oo is usually free, but when you consider what you’re getting here — a night amongst the animals devoid of pint-si ed hellions set on ruining your good time — 0 bucks is a bargain. lus, each ticket comes with e tras, including a free animal-themed face mask, two drink tickets and discounts on food and gift shop items. On top of all that, special attractions, including the train, the sea lion show and the stingrays, are free on this night.

There will also be a limited number of charcuterie bo es for two that you can pick up at the Lakeside afe, presumably so you can taunt hungry animals with your grownup Lunchables. In all, it amounts to a damn fine deal — but frankly, they had us at “no kids.”

Don’t Sneeze on the Animals: The Saint Louis oo’s O I restrictions remain in effect for this event, meaning you’ll need to

purchase your tickets in advance at stl oo.org no tickets will be sold at the door and plan to wear a mask covering your mouth and nose throughout your visit. The festivities end at 0 p.m., offering you three and a half hours of child-free bliss. ake ’em count

TONINA 8 p.m. Friday, September 18 and Saturday, September 19. Old Rock House, 1200 South Seventh Street. $30 to $40. 314-588-0505.

Live music returns to the Old ock ouse with a reduced-capacity, socially distanced Listening oom series featuring a slate of musicians from the St. Louis area. This week’s offering is the estimable Tonina, one of St. Louis’ mostbu ed-about musicians in recent years one who even memorably got a nod from former resident arack Obama, the last president we had who wasn’t a complete and irredeemable asshole , performing two nights in a row. Tonina’s soulful voice combines with folk and ja sensibilities and more than a dash of Latin flavor to make for a whole that is far greater than the sum of its parts — seriously, she’s a stunningly talented musician who must be heard to be believed. This pair of shows — for which Old ock ouse is only operating at 0 percent of its normal

Janet Evra. | HOLLY BARBER

read more about the safety guidelines at thesheldon.org.

It’ll be just you, other grownups and the animals at adults-only Night at the Zoo. | DOYLE MURPHY capacity, meaning only 50 tickets will be sold — mark an increasingly rare opportunity to catch her live in an intimate setting as her star continues to rise.

Safe in Sound? Old ock ouse’s Listening oom series features a slew of precautions set in place to help slow the spread of O I - .

While we’re compelled to stress that no amount of precautions can guarantee that you’ll not encounter the disease when gathered in a crowd — especially within a building — it seems as though the team behind the venue has at least thought the matter through. In addition to operating at a dramatically reduced capacity, the venue has spaced out its tables si feet apart will re uire masks for all staff and any guests who are not seated at their tables will employ fre uent saniti ation efforts and will be taking the temperature of everyone before they walk in the door. asically, this show will fall somewhere between the safety of attending no show at all and the absurd recklessness of attending one at a venue that has chosen to ignore the fact that a pandemic is happening at present. Adjust your comfort level accordingly.

JANET EVRA 7:30 p.m. Saturday, September 19.

Steward Family Plaza at the Shel-

don, 3648 Washington Boulevard. $20 to $40. 314-533-9900. ount the Sheldon oncert all as another local venue that is beginning to play host to live music again after darkening its stage for months during the pandemic. nlike Old ock ouse, though, the Sheldon’s stage is staying dark for now, and instead artists will perform in the Steward amily la a just outside the venue. This weekend will see St. Louis’ anet Evra playing the uni uely modern mi of beach-pop, bossa nova, samba and Latin ja that has made her a favorite on stages from St. Louis to Europe. A 20 -2020 Artist in esidence at the ran berg Arts oundation, Evra’s tireless work ethic has seen her release two singles during this hell year — ay’s “ loating on Life” and uly’s “Summer Love Song,” the latter featuring fellow St. Louis artists rady Lewis, al ascale and ustin a. With most opportunities to perform live dried up due to the pandemic, it’s good to see one of the city’s more celebrated artists keeping busy.

Out and About: The Sheldon’s outdoor concert series will feature pandemic precautions including tables spaced si feet apart, a small number of guests in this case, only 2 and a mask re uirement for those not seated at their table. Tickets must be purchased in advance you can buy those and

PERFUME GENIUS: LIVE FROM THE PALACE THEATER 4 p.m. Saturday, September 19.

Live-streamed event. $15. Perfumegenius.veeps.com.

In an age of endless live-streamed events, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd. It seems like damn near everyone with an Instagram account is popping into our feeds with an acoustic guitar in their hand nowadays, encouraging people to drop some money into the digital tip jar posted in the comments. This is decidedly not the live music event we crave. ut art-rock indie-pop artist erfume enius has found a way to make your money count, teaming up with a si -piece band and a string uartet for a performance to be live-streamed from Los Angeles’ alace Theater. erfume enius mastermind and darling of the Pitchfork set ike adreas will perform several songs from his latest, ebruary’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, alongside the group, marking the first time that many of the songs have been performed live at all. The show will be followed by an acoustic solo performance naturally for an additional 5, and the stream will be available for viewing through a.m. Sunday, September 20.

Outer and Abouter: Spend your

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Perfume Genius. | CAMILLE VIVIER

money proudly — this performance will support Immigration E uality, an American L T immigrant rights organi ation that adreas, himself a gay man, has fre uently championed through his work. n

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SAVAGE LOVE NO CHOKE

BY DAN SAVAGE Hey, Dan: I’m a 29-year-old straight woman in Pennsylvania. My question is to do with choking and consent. I’ve had two experiences in the past six months or so where someone has tried to choke me without my consent. The first time this happened, I coughed immediately, but he tried multiple times during sex. I was caught so off-guard that I didn’t say anything until the next morning.

I told him I wasn’t okay with that and that it was too much. The second time, I shook my head as soon as he put his hand on my throat and he stopped immediately. I told him, “That scared the shit out of me.” He apologized for startling me and said he wouldn’t do it again.

My question is: Why is this a thing? The fact that this has happened to me more than once in a short period of time kind of shocked me. And what is the appropriate thing to do when this happens? What should I do with the person who does this?

Concerned Hetero Over Kinky Entitled Dumbasses “I would also love to know why choking has become a thing,” said Dr. Debby Herbenick. “And it is a thing, especially among young adults.”

Herbenick is a professor at the Indiana University School of Public Health and the author of numerous books on sexuality and sexual pleasure. She’s also the lead author of a study published earlier this year in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, CHOKED, a study that looked at the sort of behavior you’ve been encountering recently: people engaging in spanking, choking, face fucking, etc. Though some of this is no doubt consensual, much of it is not.

“We found that 21 percent of women had been choked during sex as had 11 percent of men,” said Herbenick. “We also found that 20 percent of men and 12 percent of women had choked a partner. But choking during sex was much more common among 18-to-29-year-olds — almost 40 percent of whom had choked or been choked — leading us to believe that choking has really changed in the U.S., over probably the last ten to twenty years.”

Men who choked women were the biggest single group of chokers, followed by men choking men, women choking women, and trans and gender nonbinary individuals choking and being choked. Straight cisgender men, perhaps unsurprisingly, were the least likely to report that partners choked them during sex. Trans and gender nonbinary participants in Herbenick’s research more often reported that their partners established consent prior to choking, but across the board there was still a great deal of nonconsensual choking going on.

How did we get here?

“Probably porn,” said Herbenick.

“We found that many people into choking remember growing up and watching porn with choking in it — and in a country where porn stands in for sex education and family conversations about sex, some young people do what they see in porn.”

And some people — mostly male people — do it because they think the other person wants or expects it. This was dramatized in an episode of Euphoria, the terrific O show about a group of high school students, when a boy suddenly starts choking a girl during their first hookup at a party. The girl is scared and confused — she thought the boy liked her — and the boy tells her he does like her; he grabbed her throat because he thought she would like it, not to harm or scare her. Although shaken, she makes it clear she e pects him to ask first.

It is scary to be suddenly choked by a sex partner. When asked if something scary had ever happened to them during sex, numerous women Herbenick surveyed for a different study cited someone choking them without asking. Even if you were into being choked, CHOKED, which you’re not, suddenly being choked by a new sex partner would still be scary. Because if someone chokes you without asking first, they’re essentially saying — they’re clearly saying — that they have extremely shitty judgment (and didn’t think to obtain your consent) or that they’re an extremely shitty person (and didn’t care to obtain your consent).

“Now I’m not one of those people who says explicit verbal consent is needed for every hug or kiss or breast/chest touch,” said Herbenick.

“I’m well aware that sex often involves verbal, nonverbal and other shades of asking for something. But

no one should choke another person without their explicit verbal consent.”

That goes double triple infinity for aggressive and/or high-risk kinks, not just choking.

“And choking is really risky,” added Herbenick. “Even though people call it choking, external pressure on the neck — like from hands or a cord or necktie — is technically strangulation. In rare cases, choking/strangulation causes people to pass out, leading to probable mild traumatic brain injury. And choking/strangulation sometimes kills people. Even if the person who was choked consented to it, even if they asked to be choked, the person who did the choking is often legally responsible in the event of injury or death.”

I’ve interviewed professional Dominants who will literally stick needles through men’s testicles — sterilized needles, consenting testicles — but who refuse to choke clients or engage in other forms of breath play. These professionals aren’t refusing to choke clients because it’s too extreme (remember the needles?), but because it’s too dangerous.

“There is truly no safe way to choke someone,” said Herbenick.

“As part of my research, I’ve sought advice from several kink-positive physician colleagues, none of whom feels confident in a safe’ way of choking as there is too much that can go wrong — from seizures to neck injury to death.”

So what do you do the next time some dude grabs your throat? (And there will, sadly, most likely be a next time.) You immediately tell them to stop. Don’t cough, don’t deflect, don’t prioriti e their feelings in the moment or worry about ruining the mood and derailing the sex. Use your words: “Don’t choke me, I don’t like that, it’s not sexy to me and it’s not safe, and you should’ve asked.” If they apologize and don’t try it again, great. Maybe you can keep fucking. But if they pout or act annoyed or insist you might like it after you’ve just finished telling them you definitely don’t like it, get up and leave. And if someone tried to choke you during sex and you shut it down and they pivoted to mutually enjoyable sex acts, CHOKED, be sure to raise the subject up after sex. Make sure they understand you don’t want that to happen again and that you

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expect them to be more conscientious about consent the next time — if there is a next time.

And considering that this has happened to you twice recently, CHOKED, and considering how popular busting out this particular move seems to have become, you might wanna consider saying something about choking to a new sex partner before you have sex for the first time.

“I would be very up front about it from the get-go,” said Herbenick.

“When you’re first talking with someone or moving things forward, say something like, I’m not into choking, so don’t try it,’ or, Whatever you do, don’t choke me.’

If you can both share your hard limits, you’ll be better prepped for good, fun, exciting, pleasurable sex — not scary stuff like nonconsensual choking.

“And for everyone reading this, seriously: Stop choking people without first talking or asking about it. Just stop.”

Follow Dr. Debby Herbenick on Twitter @DebbyHerbenick.

Hey, Dan: I hope you’re getting a lot of mail from people uncomfortable with your response to DISCORD, the woman whose cheating husband blew up when a man she was merely chatting with forwarded their correspondence to her husband. Seeing as DISCORD’s husband has already established that she will put up with his tantrums, withholding of sexual intimacy, strangulation, lying, and affairs, it’s also possible that he’s engineered her financial dependence.

I would advise her to at least talk to a professional who could paint an objective picture of her financial options. She might also benefit from the advice of an advocate for domestic violence survivors. Strangulation is usually not an isolated violent act.

Rarely Disappointed Reader Thank you for writing, RDR — thank to everyone who wrote. I’ve reached out to DISCORD privately and will forward your emails on to her. I should’ve pushed back when DISCORD ruled out divorce as an option. Here’s hoping DISCORD takes your advice over mine. mail@savagelove.net @FakeDanSavage on Twitter www.savagelovecast.com

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