The FBI raided Metropolitan Towing in August as part of its investigation into city police practices. (Post-Dispatch/Robert Cohen)

It has been a rough year for the St. Louis Police Department. Most crime is down, but homicides are up. And in too many other ways, bad news has been stacking up like cars in an impound lot.

Read the news one way, and you see a department that can’t keep its books straight; an outfit that keeps money it doesn’t own and spends the interest; a department that cuts sweetheart deals with a tow lot; a place where off-duty cops get drunk and exchange gunfire in bar parking lots and a culture that tolerates drug cops who plant evidence and rip off cash.

Read another way, it’s a department that is coming to grips with years of lousy business practices, a place that polices itself by firing rowdy cops and cracking down on cops it suspects are dirty. It’s a place that’s trying to become open and transparent, even when it comes at a heavy public price.

“With change comes conflict,” said Chief Dan Isom, who’s been on the job only since October, “and there’s going to be some bad news.”

• The FBI continues to investigate the department’s business relationship with St. Louis Metropolitan Towing Co., which provided free or deeply discounted cars to the daughter of former Chief Joe Mokwa and possibly to police personnel. The towing scandal led to Mr. Mokwa’s resignation under fire last summer.
• Missouri Auditor Susan Montee’s staff is beginning to dig through the department’s finances and business practices. Gov. Matt Blunt requested the audit after the Post-Dispatch reported that Metropolitan Towing had shortchanged the city by some $700,000 over the past two years and had kept cars that should have been returned to their owners.
• A rookie St. Louis cop who shot a man in the chest in a parking lot brawl in November in Pontoon Beach has been indicted in Madison County for aggravated battery with a firearm; two other city officers were fired in the incident, including one who was shot by a Pontoon Beach officer who responded to the scene.
• Two veteran city officers, working undercover with the department’s crack Crime Supression Unit, were indicted on federal charges last week on charges of planting evidence, stealing nearly $30,000, arresting an innocent man and dealing drugs. Apparently no one in the department was very surprised at the indictments.
• In October, U.S. District Court Judge E. Richard Webber said the Board of Police Commissioners routinely turns “a blind eye” to complaints of police abuse and mistreatment. He noted that in the previous five years, the department had received 322 complaints of physical abuse but had sustained only one.
• And on Wednesday came word that the department for years routinely had been banking money seized from crime suspects, amassing up to $6 million and spending the interest on various department needs. Under state law, funds not needed for evidence are supposed to be returned to the individual from whom they were seized, given to city schools or used to pay a suspect’s back child support.

Chief Dan Isom

Chief Isom, selected by the Board of Police Commissioners to replace Mr. Mokwa, acknowledges the problems, but argues that much of what’s happening with the department is a function of its attempt to change the way it does business.

“I want to be as transparent and open as possible,” he said, even it means airing dirty laundry in public. “I want as much confidence in our business practices and our ethics as there is in the quality of our service and our law enforcement activities.”

The chief’s boss, Police Board Chairman Chris Goodson, said, “We’re good at fighting crime, but we need better business practices.” Mr. Goodson says it has been difficult, but necessary, to confront the lax management practices that allowed the problems in the towing and asset forfeiture units to mount. “I think we’ve got good people, well-intentioned people, but our core business practices have not been good.”

Mr. Goodson said the problems with the asset forfeiture office were uncovered by an internal department audit that began almost 18 months ago. Going public with the problems is embarrassing, he said, but part of the process.

Mr. Isom noted that the department’s own officers had initiated the case against the two Crime Supression Unit officers charged last week and cooperated fully with the FBI. Complaints against officers are difficult to prove without corroborating witnesses, and in nearly every instance, such witnesses have not come forward, he said.

In cases in which the evidence is clear — as in the Pontoon Beach incident — the department acts swiftly and decisively, he said. “We’re sending a strong statement here,” he said. “Officers who don’t comport themselves well are going to be gone.”

We accept Mr. Isom and Mr. Goodson’s explanation of the department’s annus horribilis, but with this proviso: These sorts of things must stop.

The huge majority of the department’s officers do extraordinary work under difficult circumstances. The city and its citizens can’t afford dirty or crooked cops or even drunken and rowdy ones, and neither can the department. The chief and his command staff have demonstrated that they know that.

But this year’s events point strongly to the need for more independent review of complaints against police officers. In April 2006, the Police Board voted to create a Civilian Review Board; members would be nominated by the Board of Aldermen and selected by the mayor but subject to confirmation by the Police Board itself.

Such a review board, while not truly independent, would be a step in the right direction. But even though it was authorized two and a half years ago, the new review board has yet to become a reality. It is long past time for that to happen.

With Mr. Isom’s new focus on administrative procedures, citizens should expect the department’s internal business practices to be tightened and refocused. No more missing or mis-filed reports. No more excuses.
Perhaps the city’s business leaders should offer to lend the department executives who can help put in place sound business and accounting procedures.

Governor-elect Jay Nixon can help, too. Mr. Goodson’s term as board president ends in January. His replacement should be an active, engaged business leader with deep management experience in complex organizations. City police need all the help and support they can get.