CLAYTON • St. Louis County police Lt. Patrick “Rick” Hayes was fired Monday after a nearly six-month internal investigation into whether he ordered officers to target black people in and around retail centers in south St. Louis County.
The inquiry began after Chief Tim Fitch and Lt. Col. Ken Gregory, who oversees patrol, received an anonymous letter dated Dec. 24 from a county officer alleging that Hayes had ordered officers under his command in the Fourth Precinct to focus on arresting blacks in the vicinity of the South County Center, at Lindbergh Boulevard and Lemay Ferry Road, and a Walmart at Telegraph Road and Interstate 255.
Since then, the situation has prompted a sharp reaction from local chapters of the NAACP, one of which asked the federal Department of Justice to intervene. The police department has received letters in support of the 20-year veteran. And Hayes and his attorney, Neil Bruntrager, have met with Fitch, saying that the officers making claims against him had a vendetta.
Ultimately, Fitch said his internal affairs investigators determined that Hayes violated department policies when using “inappropriate racial references,” while issuing the orders, but that no officers followed his commands. He has vowed to enlist the help of an independent research consortium to ensure his officers are impartial on duty.
“I’m very disappointed,” Fitch said. “This appears to be an anomaly and it’s not our normal way of doing business and that’s why we took the action we took.”
Hayes, through his attorney, declined to be interviewed Monday. But Bruntrager called the county’s internal investigation “flawed,” and vowed to appeal Fitch’s decision to the Board of Police Commissioners.
Bruntrager said the four officers who lodged the allegations against Hayes accused him of making statements such as “Let’s have a black day,” and “Let’s make the jail cells more colorful,” because they were mad that Hayes had taken away their take-home patrol cars and transferred them or their friends.
“He was sent there specifically to clean up the problems in the precinct, like poor productivity,” Bruntrager said. “They say he made these statements during roll call, so why would you expose yourself or make yourself vulnerable in front of these people?
“It is astonishing that they would fire a guy on information like this.”
Fitch declined to comment on the number of officers who confirmed Hayes’ orders, but said the group who confirmed the statements included “more than four officers.”
Bruntrager said his client passed two private polygraph exams and volunteered to take one with the police department as long as the department ordered the other officers involved to do the same. The department declined to negotiate.
“Why wouldn’t they put that letter writer on the box?” Bruntrager asked of the original anonymous letter writer.
Fitch said he could not comment on the department’s reluctance to agree to the deal, saying it was part of the investigation — which, he added, is not over. Other officers could face discipline as well.
“These allegations should have been brought forward immediately,” Fitch said.
Fitch said the person who wrote the anonymous letter has been identified and spoken to the department, but Fitch declined to identify the officer.
Hayes’ supervisor, Capt. James Schneider, also was interviewed during the investigation, but was never questioned about whether Hayes had reprimanded the officers making the allegations, Bruntrager said.
“At the end of the day, this department is afraid of the race card,” Bruntrager said.
Fitch met with leaders of the county’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, of which the Rev. B.T. Rice is the vice president. Rice said the local chapter conducted an investigation of its own, interviewing officers as well as South County mall patrons.
“The officers refused to carry out this order and I believe that because we didn’t hear of anyone else involved,” he said.
The city’s NAACP chapter president, Adolphus Pruitt, also serves as a state NAACP official. He asked the Department of Justice to intervene after reading about the allegations in the Post-Dispatch. Fitch met with Pruitt as well as other higher level NAACP representatives during a mediation meeting with the Department of Justice.
“We recognize that the firing of this officer only represents the first step of a multi-phase process,” Pruitt said. “And we’re prepared to see this thing through to the end and we have the expertise to do that.”
Fitch plans to enlist a team of researchers from the University of California Los Angeles’ Consortium for Policing Leadership in Equity to study the department’s arrest data to ensure racial profiling isn’t occurring. The group offers the analysis for free thanks to grant funds, according to its website.
“This is something we already provide a lot of training to prohibit,” Fitch said.
Bruntrager said that his client served as a trainer on how to avoid racial profiling at various community colleges and criminal justice classes.
Prior to joining the county police, Hayes served with the Nebraska Highway Patrol. His wife is a county police officer. He also was the county police committee chairman for the Missouri Special Olympics before his termination.


















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