Category: Community

Why was Bluffton’s police chief paid nearly $80,000 to not be in Bluffton?

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Island Packet | June 23, 2017

Bluffton police chief Joey Reynolds traveled out of town for almost five of the past 15 months, including to places like Argentina, Chile and Morocco, in his separate role as a board member of an international police organization — mostly while receiving his regular taxpayer-funded salary.

His overall travel time connected to his involvement with the FBI National Academy Associates was almost 10 months, or about 17 percent, of his nearly five-year tenure as chief, records show.

The estimated cost to Bluffton taxpayers while he was absent: $78,738, which represents the amount of town salary he was paid while he was traveling on FBI NAA business.

In addition, when the 60-year-old Reynolds, whose annual salary this year is $118,059, retires on June 30, he will be eligible for a cash payout of as much as $41,911 for his unused paid time off — money that could have been used to help offset the taxpayer cost of his travels.

Since becoming Bluffton’s chief in September 2012, Reynolds has taken 67 trips with the FBI NAA, an alumni association for the nonprofit FBI National Academy, a training organization near Washington, D.C. The FBI NAA bills itself as the “world’s strongest law enforcement leadership network,” boasting a global membership of nearly 17,000.

Reynolds, who has been involved with the Quantico, Va.-based organization since 1996, is completing his one-year term as the FBI NAA president. He was scheduled to spend parts of the weeks of June 12 and June 19 in Cambodia — his last NAA trip while the Bluffton chief.

“I’ve never heard of it before — not to this magnitude,” said John Crangle, a longtime government watchdog and government relations director for the South Carolina Progressive Network, a Columbia-based advocacy organization aimed, according to its Facebook page, at promoting “good government and healthy communities.”

“Sometimes state or local employees go off on business, go to a professional conference or something like that,” Crangle, an attorney, continued. “But here you have an unusually high number of absences to the point where it’s going to interfere with the police chief’s performance of his duties.

“How can you perform your duties when you’re gone so much from the workplace?”

Reynolds and town officials said his absences didn’t interfere with his duties as chief; all his travel expenses were paid by the FBI NAA; and the police department directly benefited from his NAA board positions.

“I’m so proud of our capabilities now,” Reynolds said in an interview earlier this month at the police department. “When I first came, I was worried when we got a major incident. Now, there’s nothing we can’t handle.”

Reynolds, town officials and members of the town council all contend the benefits of the chief’s involvement with the FBI NAA — including training opportunities and connections with other police departments — justified the cost to taxpayers.

In addition, Reynolds said his acceptance of the chief’s job was conditional in part on the town allowing him to continue his involvement, which included out-of-town travels, with the NAA.

But although his 2012 employment-offer letter acknowledged that his FBI NAA role “may cause time away from Bluffton,” it didn’t put any limits on the number of those trips. It also was silent about whether the town would pay his regular salary or require him to use his paid time off while he was gone.

A review by The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette of police and town records obtained under the S.C. Freedom of Information Act found that:

▪ Since Reynolds started as Bluffton’s chief on Sept. 17, 2012, he traveled out of town on FBI NAA business for a collective 290 days, 200 of which, or about 70 percent, were during weekdays — totaling 40 normal work weeks — and 90 days were on weekends.

▪ Of his 67 trips, 60 were to various locations throughout the U.S., while seven were to Argentina, Austria, Cambodia, Chile, Germany, Nepal and Morocco.

▪ When Reynolds traveled for FBI NAA business on weekdays, at least 93 percent of his travel was done when he was being paid his full-time salary.

▪ Although Reynolds accrued about 129 paid-time-off days over five years, he opted for the most part not to use his PTO hours on travel for FBI NAA business. Employees can use their PTO hours for sick days, vacation days and bereavement at their discretion, according to the Bluffton town handbook. In the nearly five years of his employment, he took approximately 36 PTO days as of June 7, according to deputy town manager Scott Marshall.

▪ According to town policy, PTO hours roll over and accrue year-to-year. With the 720 PTO hours, or approximately 92 PTO days Reynolds had left over as of June 7, he is entitled to receive a cash payout of $41,911.20 when he retires June 30. That’s assuming he doesn’t use any more PTO hours from June 7 to June 30.

▪ Since becoming chief, Reynolds’ annual pay increased from $98,900 to $118,059, a jump of more than 19 percent. In comparison, the average annual salary for police chiefs in the U.S. is $88,400. And the average salary for S.C. police chiefs is $59,240 — about half as much as Reynolds’ salary — according to May 2016 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Reynolds leads a department of 51 sworn officers and 12 non-sworn officers.

As Reynolds rose through the ranks on the FBI NAA Board of Executives over the past five years, his travel increased, too, records show. In 106 days as chief in 2012, he traveled six days; in 2013, he spent 26 days traveling.

But in 2016, the year he became the board president, Reynolds was gone 99 days total, including 76 weekdays. That’s about 15 five-day weeks — or nearly four work months out of the year.

It’s not required that the FBI NAA president be an active law enforcement officer, though it is required for some lower board positions, according to Steve Tidwell, the organization’s executive director. The NAA does not pay Reynolds a salary, although it does cover his travel costs, he said.

Bluffton town officials on May 31 announced that Reynolds, who spent most of his law enforcement career in North Carolina, was retiring from the department at the end of this month.

The announcement came amid open-records requests by the Packet and Gazette newspapers for documents relating to Reynolds’ travels with the FBI NAA. Police department spokeswoman Joy Nelson said recently the chief’s decision had “absolutely nothing” to do with the newspapers’ investigation.

In his interview earlier this month, Reynolds said he chose this time to leave to be closer to his family in North Carolina. He also said he found an “opportunity” in the private sector in North Carolina, though he declined to give specifics.

TOWN AWARENESS

Bluffton officials say they knew of Reynolds’ involvement with the FBI NAA when he was hired, and that he would travel in his outside role.

Reynolds’ direct supervisor is the town manager, a position held by Anthony Barrett when the chief was hired in September 2012. In an email this month to the newspapers, Barrett said he knew that Reynolds would be required to travel for the FBI NAA, noting Reynolds’ involvement with the organization was partly why he was chosen to lead Bluffton’s police department.

The town’s offer letter to Reynolds, dated Aug. 20, 2012, reads:

“…(T)he town understands and values your membership with the FBI National Academy Associates and acknowledges your executive Board participation and your rise in 2017 to its presidency which may cause time away from Bluffton.”

Although the offer letter acknowledged Reynolds’ potential travel, it did not include specifics regarding how much time Reynolds would be away from Bluffton, which is significant, according to Crangle of the S.C. Progressive Network.

“Why were the terms so vague about these absences?” Crangle said. “Why wasn’t there any specificity as to how many absences would be authorized, and whether or not he would be paid when he was absent?”

Asked whether Reynolds discussed the extent of his travel with Barrett when hired, Barrett replied: “Of course he did. Do you believe a consummate law enforcement professional and highly ethical person as he is would do otherwise?”

Barrett, who is now executive director of the Bluffton Historical Preservation Society, declined to answer further questions about Reynolds’ employment terms, though he praised the chief as one of his “finest appointments.”

Besides his current annual $118,059 salary, Reynolds receives other benefits, including a $600 monthly car allowance, $76 monthly internet reimbursement, and a bonus this year of $862, according to an email from Marshall, the deputy town manager.

Marc Orlando, Bluffton’s current town manager, told the newspapers he was aware of the extent to which Reynolds would be traveling, because he was connected to Reynolds’ online calendar. And he approved Reynolds’ trips, contending that his FBI NAA presidency “pays dividends” to the police department and the town.

“Chief Reynolds has done an amazing job as our chief of police and a leader in our community over the past five years,” Orlando said. “I believe that his police officers have benefited from his vision, his global understanding of policing, and the practices that he has put in place, including special investigations teams, a community policing platform and high-quality training for everybody in the police department.”

Orlando and Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka traveled with Reynolds to an FBI NAA conference in St. Louis in July 2016 — a trip that was paid for by the town of Bluffton — when Reynolds became president of the organization. Sulka helped swear him in.

“When he was vice president, I do remember the discussion of the length that he would be gone — not to the number of days — but the town was very aware of it,” said Sulka in a recent interview. “We were not surprised.”

Sulka added she expected Reynolds’ travel to take him away from the town more than it actually did.

Other current Town Council members contacted by the newspapers said while they were not aware of the exact number of days that Reynolds traveled, they were notified when Reynolds would be gone.

BENEFITS FOR BLUFFTON?

The question that follows: Did the town get its worth for what it invested in Reynolds and his FBI NAA involvement?

Reynolds says yes.

Part of that value, he said, comes in the form of training.

“Two Bluffton police officers have been sent to the FBI National Academy at very little cost to the town,” Reynolds said. “I mean, if I had to pay per diem for somebody to go to that academy for ten weeks, I couldn’t afford it.”

The academy offers its 10-week training sessions to police officers free of charge, said Kurt Crawford, a media representative for the FBI’s training division. Local police departments are required to pay the officers’ salaries while they are at the training, and they may opt to pay for transportation as well, he said.

Reynolds said he also used his clout in the FBI NAA to enable the Bluffton Police Department to host training sessions without the cost of paying for the instructor — 52 sessions last year — and town police officers were allowed to participate.

In addition, Reynolds said he made connections with other police departments, both nationally and internationally, through the NAA. He said that has allowed him to communicate with other police chiefs about best practices for various challenges, such as handling Hurricane Matthew last fall or developing a K-9 unit.

For instance, after Hurricane Matthew hit the Lowcountry, Reynolds said he utilized the FBI NAA’s partnership with the Christian humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse, which helped community members with post-hurricane cleanup for two months.

Reynolds said his connections could help with investigations that span across state and even national lines.

“If I’ve got a bad guy that’s in Michigan, I’ve got a contact in Michigan that we can call… (and we can) work together,” Reynolds said.

Another major plus was spreading the word about Bluffton, Reynolds and others said.

“Just because the chief wasn’t here in his community, he was still representing Bluffton and basically exposing Bluffton to so many people who had never heard about the town on a national and international level,” said Nelson, the Bluffton police spokeswoman.

Experts contacted by the newspapers were divided about the benefits and drawbacks of having a police chief so deeply involved in a professional organization.

Reynolds’ association with the FBI NAA can help put “your department, your city on the map. It’s a very well-respected organization,” said Adam Dobrin, associate professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University.

“It’s not uncommon for a police chief to be involved in professional organizations,” said Stan Stojkovic, professor of criminal justice and dean of the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

But he added: “We don’t expect them (police chiefs) to be gone for long periods of time. People who are citizens have an expectation of your presence. Your presence provides the face of legitimacy.”

PUNCHING THE TIME CLOCK

Bluffton town payroll records obtained by the newspapers show that Reynolds’ paycheck is calculated on a 39-hour work week. But the chief said he routinely puts in far more hours.

“If you want to talk about time, I work weekends; I work nights,” Reynolds said. “I don’t work a 39-hour week. I never have, and I’ve been involved in law enforcement for 40 years.”

“The chief of police is on duty 24/7,” said Arthur Baylor, who served as president of the FBI NAA in 2009 while serving as the police chief in Montgomery, Alabama.

Still, although Reynolds is a salaried employee of the town, he has received overtime pay – which, under town policy, he is eligible to receive only for emergency situations – most notably last Oct. 20 when he received $16,216 for 195 hours of overtime, payroll records show. Town officials said that pay covered the time when Reynolds worked during Hurricane Matthew.

In recent years, Maj. Joseph Manning, the town’s deputy chief who was hired in September 2013, often was named acting chief when Reynolds was away on FBI NAA business, according to memos from Reynolds to department staff. On June 7 – a week after town officials confirmed Reynolds’ planned retirement to the newspapers – town manager Orlando announced that he had hired Manning as Reynolds’ permanent replacement, effective July 1.

Reynolds said even when he was out of town on FBI NAA trips, he was in regular communication with the police department. While away, he said he checked in with Manning at least twice a day, plus answered emails, phone calls and text messages regarding department business throughout the day.

“I made calls to (Reynolds) when he was away, and he still answered the phone,” said town council member Larry Toomer – a sentiment echoed by Sulka and other council members. “He was always available, even when he was out of town.”

PTO PAYOUT

Even so, though, Reynolds’ time spent traveling with the FBI NAA far exceeded the one or two weeks a year that other professionals or public officials might typically spend at conferences.

And because he usually was paid his regular town salary during his travels instead of using his PTO hours, he is entitled to receive a cash payout for accrued PTO hours when he retires, Orlando said.

The newspapers’ calculation puts that figure at $41,911, assuming Reynolds doesn’t use any more PTO before he leaves at the end of next week.

“It’s important that he has the same rights and privileges and allowances that every other employee has that has worked for the town of Bluffton,” Orlando said, referring to the PTO payout.

Reynolds justified receiving his regular town salary during his travels with the FBI NAA, contending it was “standard” practice.

But “there’s no clear answer” when it comes to whether public officials should receive their regular salary or PTO when traveling for a professional organization, said Gene Brewer, a University of Georgia professor who specializes in human resources issues in public administration.

“It depends partly on how closely that secondary duty is related to the primary duty,” Brewer said.

In other words, whether Reynolds should have been paid his regular town salary for working with the FBI NAA depends on how much work he did related to Bluffton’s police department while traveling — a figure that’s difficult to quantify.

Diane Scanga, director of public safety programs at Jefferson College in Missouri and who was president of the FBI NAA in 2012, said her time traveling for the organization was split between PTO and regular paid time. She said she took nine trips related to the NAA, along with a few other trips to police conferences, during her presidency; in comparison, Reynolds took 26 trips during his presidency, records show.

But Scanga said the role of the NAA president is tied up with the role of police chief.

“There’s the value of what contacts he’s making, and value in what information he’s getting,” she said.

Barrett, who hired Reynolds; Orlando; and current and former Town Council members contacted by the newspapers shared Scanga’s view, offering both approval and praise of the police chief.

For his part, in the final days of his tenure, Reynolds stands by his decision to work for the police department and the FBI NAA at the same time.

“I’m proud of what we’ve done here in this community,” he said.

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The place where no one has a name

Vox Magazine | 4 May 2016

Missouri’s stretch of Interstate 70 is a lonely one. I often make this drive to get from Columbia to Kansas City and take the time to ruminate on my life. Sometimes, a car passes me, and I look over, curious about whether that driver is also lost in thought about his or her own life: regrets, work deadlines, past loves. Two anonymous lives, strangers confined within our cars, passing by on the interstate.

Tonight, I’m headed somewhere else, a strip club marked by a neon fuchsia XXX sign. From the outside, the building looks like a small warehouse with pink walls. One semi-truck and a few cars are parked in the lot. I walk inside through a small, empty entryway. One door leads to a shop with aisles of porn. Another door opens to the strip club.

Before I walk inside the club, a second door opens. A short man with a ponytail, whom I recognize as the bartender, welcomes me inside. I’ve been here before, identifying myself as a journalist working on a story about I-70. The bartender wouldn’t give me his full name then, and he doesn’t now. He won’t tell me the dancer’s name either. The establishment refuses to reveal true identities. Secrets dwell here.

He recognizes me, too, and informs me that though I am a reporter, I am not welcome to take notes or recordings. The bartender offers me a drink — non-alcoholic, as Missouri strip clubs are banned by law from serving booze.

The dancer is wearing lacy pink underwear, a matching bra and a long necklace that hangs between her breasts. She sways her body, her feet in transparent platform shoes, to Marcy Playground’s 1997 “Sex and Candy” in a dark room lit by dim disco lights.

Five men sit around the stage where she dances. One is a middle-aged man who stares as if he could burn himself into her body, as if she just might secretly know the answers to all of his problems.

The dancer shimmies off her bra, and her breasts are fully exposed. She leans down to the first man and pulls his head to her chest. She giggles, turns to the next man, pulls him from his seat and spanks him.

The men throw bills onto stage. The dancer controls their attention. They control her income.

She slips off her boyshorts, but underneath, she wears a black thong. The same law that bans alcohol also prohibits fully nude dancers.

Six years ago, the state legislature passed a law imposing several restrictions to sexually oriented businesses, including strip clubs. But the law doesn’t just prevent nudity and booze. It also requires strip clubs to close from midnight to 6 a.m., dictates that the stage is six feet from patrons and forbids strippers from touching customers.

Aside from not serving alcohol and closing at midnight, this strip club isn’t a stickler for the rules.

The nudity rule isn’t simple, either. The dancer wears heels, a thong and a necklace. But the Missouri lawdefines nudity as “the showing of … the female breast with less than a fully opaque covering of any part of the nipple or areola.” The dancer’s breasts are fully exposed.

I’ve called state agencies without success to find out how strip clubs are regulated. Representatives from the Missouri State Highway Patrol and state and local divisions of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services could not answer my questions. The Missouri Department of Tobacco and Alcohol Controlchecks that strip clubs follow the no-booze rule but doesn’t enforce other parts of the law.

For the men and the dancer, the law doesn’t mean much. For her, it’s a job. And for them, an escape.

I watch the dancer lean down and speak to an older man. I can’t quite hear what they are saying, but she’s laughing, and though his cratered face looks as if he has seen fair share of unhappiness, he’s smiling now.

She is a savior of sorts. He doesn’t know her real name. She likely doesn’t know his.

They are strangers, just passing by one another.

A decade later, Katrina survivors say New Orleans is still in recovery

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Columbia Missourian | Aug 29, 2015

COLUMBIA — Idella Anderson Casby arrived in Mexico, Missouri, on Sept. 3, 2005, after water crashed through the levees and flooded her hometown of New Orleans.

After her kitchen roof caved in and she waited three days in vain for electricity to return to her home and the government to come to her rescue.

After she guided her 72-year-old father, who needed a walker, for 15 hours on the journey from Louisiana to Missouri.

Mexico seemed strange, Idella recalled.

Almost no traffic. No one out on the street.

“And they didn’t have very many streetlights,” Idella said. “I had never seen a place this peaceful and quiet.”

Idella traveled to Mexico, a town of 11,500 northwest of Columbia, to be near her son. She wasn’t the only one in the family to head for Missouri. Nearly 40 more made the trip.

Most eventually went back to New Orleans. But 10 years after Katrina became one of the deadliest hurricanes ever recorded, Idella and her husband, Terry, will not return to Louisiana.

The city, they say, is still crippled from Katrina. And Mexico is home.

The storm hits

Terry and Idella Casby were not getting along on Aug. 29, 2005, the day the levees broke. In fact, they had separated.

Idella, then 46, stayed at home to care for her father. She lived in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans on the west bank of the Mississippi. The house was four blocks away from the levees meant to protect her family.

When the storm hit, Idella expected the power to come back within a day. She lit a candle and waited.

After three days, she saw her neighbors evacuate and leave the streets empty. She grabbed a few things — a box of crackers, some clothing for her and her father, Raymond — and stuffed them in a garbage bag.

They planned to leave New Orleans, but as she recalled later, the lines were long and disorganized. Since her father was ill, she approached a group of police to ask for directions. But when she tried, they pulled out their guns.

“Nine guns were pulled out on me,” Idella recalled. “The National Guard. All I seen was four over there (on the left), four over there (on the right), and one in the middle with a bigger gun. They said, ‘Go back! Go back!’ So I just walked slowly.”

She’s still not sure why the police officers drew their weapons. It probably had something to do with the confusion that followed the storm. Police were normally meant to keep order, but the circumstances were far from normal.

Stores and houses were empty, and residents without power grabbed whatever was abandoned. Some neighborhoods were submerged in water. No one knows how many Louisianans were killed by the storm, but government estimates total about 1,500.

Both Idella and Terry saw bodies on the street.

“It was kind of horrific, actually,” said Terry, who was staying at his son’s house two miles north. “There was an old folks home across the street, and they had a couple of bodies, floating there. Why they didn’t get those people out, I don’t know.”

After that, he fixed his mind on one thing — making sure his family stayed alive. His son had an infant at the time, and Terry set off to find food and other supplies.

“It wasn’t like I was stealing nothing, but a cop said, ‘The city is closed down’,” Terry recalled. “I said, ‘What do you mean, the city is closed down?’ He said, ‘If you got children, you better go up to that store and get you some Pampers and milk.'”

After three days with no sign of the power returning and no indication of law and order, Idella and Terry set out for Texas in their neighbor’s van. After arriving in Houston, they traveled north on buses to be with their other son, who lived in Missouri.

It was a tough trip, Idella remembered. She helped her father switch three different buses, assisted him with the restroom, fed him.

But her only thought was, “I got my daddy.”

Safe haven in Missouri

Idella made the journey first, with her father and her sister, while Terry stayed behind in a Salvation Army shelter in Texas.

When they arrived in Mexico, they stayed in her son’s home for a few days. It was full. More than 10 people were sharing the three-bedroom house. Idella slept on the sofa.

She soon discovered that her in-laws had arrived from New Orleans. They settled into a few homes, including the one belonging to Birdell Owens, the family matriarch known as “Birdie.”

Eugenia Owens, her daughter-in-law, remembers the house packed to the brim with brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews. Community members donated food, and she said she cooked enough okra gumbo to feed the 40 family members who had fled Katrina.

“Everybody was upset because they had to leave their homes, of course, and they didn’t know if they could go back,” Eugenia said.

Still, she said, a general feeling of comfort settled in, as the family found itself in something of reunion.

Churches helped, as did the American Red Cross and the Mexico Housing Authority. But more than anything else, Idella remembers the kindness of locals who donated everything from living room furniture to coats for the Missouri winters.

“We really saw love, we saw love,” Terry said. “The people saved the people.”

He arrived Sept. 15, after spending two weeks in and out of shelters in Texas. Given a $2,500 voucher by the Red Cross, he bought a plane ticket and flew to Missouri before a second hurricane, Rita, hit the Gulf.

When Terry got to Mexico, he and his wife reconciled.

The two still quarrel, trying to best each other to prove their points. Idella calls Katrina a tragedy; Terry prefers the word catastrophe.

But, Terry said, the hurricane ultimately healed their hearts.

“It really brought me and her back together, really,” Terry said. “I checked on her after the storm hit. I said I was checking on her old man, but I was worried about her.”

Ten Years Later

Idella and Terry returned to New Orleans a month after Katrina to grab their last few possessions.

They recovered the family photographs and high school diplomas that now hang on their walls. Idella also framed a portrait of her father, who died five years after he left New Orleans.

These days, the Casbys are not happy with the way Katrina is remembered, or the way their city is regarded.

In May, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu announced that the city is “no longer recovering, no longer rebuilding.”

Instead, he said, “We are creating.”

To the Casbys, who visited New Orleans in July, this is only true for some.

“In some areas, excuse me, but high-class areas, they probably think it’s back,” Idella said. “But it will never be back to the way it was before.”

That’s one reason Idella says she will not return.

Another reason is that the Casbys could not possibly afford it: “The rent is sky high, and the houses are not built the way they should be built,” Idella said. She also said there’s too much crime for her to feel safe.

In contrast, almost everyone else in her family did leave Missouri and return to New Orleans. One family moved to St. Louis. Only a few stayed in Mexico.

Even Birdie, who died in 2009, returned to New Orleans, where she was buried in McDonoghville Cemetery.

Columbia rally for Michael Brown aims civil rights message at new generation

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Columbia Missourian | Aug 22, 2014

COLUMBIA — In 1977, Princeton graduate student C.W. Dawson Jr. was pulled over in Trenton, N.J. The police officer told him that he matched the description of a robbery suspect. Dawson said that next thing he knew, he was thrown into the back of the police vehicle.

“I got stopped for D.W.B.,” Dawson said. “Driving while black.”

Fast-forward to 2010. Graduate student Dawson had earned a doctoral degree and was lecturing on social and political issues in philosophy at a conference in New York City.

“I get stopped, and I’m still fitting a description,” said Dawson, currently a minister with Dawson Journeys Ministry. “The point? It still goes on.”

On Thursday evening, Dawson was one of several speakers at an NAACP-sponsored rally outside the Boone County Courthouse. Nearly two weeks after Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, people came together to demand justice, to assert their place in the decadeslong battle for civil rights and to show support for Brown’s family.

Rallygoers convened at 6 p.m. as volunteers passed out water bottles to battle the 90-degree heat. The diverse audience of several hundred filled up the amphitheater outside the courthouse, spilling onto the grass and surrounding ledges. College students stood with their bikes, and children climbed on statues. Many attendees held signs reading “End police brutality now” and “Cameras see more than color.” Police were absent from the scene.

The evening began with chants of “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!” and what has become a common rally cry for Ferguson protesters: “Hands up, don’t shoot!”

Speakers demanded more transparency from St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch into the investigation of Brown’s shooting. They also demanded that the officer who shot Brown be held responsible.

“Why are they doing this behind closed doors? Because when you do it in front of a grand jury, you don’t get to see anything,” said David Tyson Smith, attorney at Smith & Parnell LLC. “This officer should be arrested. There should be a public hearing.”

Speakers also called for McCulloch to step aside in favor of a special prosecutor.

Mary Ratliff, the NAACP Missouri State Conference president, compared the rally to protests during the 1960s.

“We are training our young people,” Ratliff said. “Many times, young people didn’t realize we had to fight for them to sit at the restaurant, fight for them to be able to go to the restrooms. This has let them know that the fight must go on. Every generation must fight.”

Like many ’60s-era protests, attendees joined together in song a few times during the course of the evening.

Near the beginning of the rally, Columbia resident Lucretia Murray led the crowd in the singing of the civil rights era hymn “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round.”

“It was one that was sung hundreds and hundreds of times during the civil rights movement,” Murray said. “We’re fighting for some of the same things, and I was just talking to my children last night, and they were saying, ‘Well, didn’t Poppy and Grandma fight for these things already?’ Well, yes, and the fact of the matter is that it might be an ongoing battle for the rest of our lives.”

Timothy Gist, a senior at Columbia College and member of the MU NAACP, was one of many from the younger generation who attended the rally.

Gist, who is originally from St. Louis, believes that strength comes in numbers.

“I feel like if the people of Columbia apply the right amount of pressure on the people who have political power, you are able to add more pressure to law enforcement, to the prosecuting attorney,”  Gist said.

Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis NAACP, has spoken to members of the Brown family on multiple occasions and said they were overwhelmed and thankful for the displays of support that have occurred nationwide over the past couple of weeks.

“They thought it was amazing that the rest of the country and these folks from all over the world are sympathizing to support their cause for justice in finding out what happened to their son,” Pruitt said. “They hope that this will prevent this happening to any other child in the future.”

Dawson found hope in the show of solidarity that brought different races, genders, religions and sexual orientations together in support of a common goal.

“We will put our hands up,” Dawson said. “Because it used to mean that we surrender. We hold our hands up to signify that we’re still here. We hold our hands up to let the world know that we are somebody, because you can imprison us, you can shoot at us, you can kill somebody; we hold our hands up to say no more.”

Hispanic ministry celebrating 15 years in Jefferson City

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Jefferson City News Tribune | Oct 25, 2014

Divine inspiration can appear in strange places.

Sister Peggy Bonnot found hers in a hair salon in 1998. Her hairdresser shared how she had found a Hispanic girl about 3 years old outside her office the previous day. The child was wandering alone on the sidewalk.

The lost child could not speak English, so with the Spanish the hairdresser could remember from living in San Diego, she helped the girl find her home and mother.

As Bonnot listened to the hairdresser’s story, she came to a realization: a Hispanic community was sprouting in Jefferson City.

A few months later, Monsignor Don Lammers, then a priest at St. Peter Catholic Church, announced the parish would be ordering Spanish ritual books for Spanish-language masses.

“I told him I was interested in that because the foundation of my community was from San Antonio, Texas, and we have a whole province of sisters in Mexico,” Bonnot said. “I felt like that was a direct call to our community. So I talked to two more sisters … and the three of us got together, and we wrote a grant. And the rest is pretty much history.”

Bonnot and two other Sisters of the Charity of the Incarnate Word founded El Puente in 1999. Today, the ministry will celebrate 15 years of service.

El Puente, the Spanish word for “bridge,” is an apt name. It aims to help 700-800 Spanish-speaking families bridge the gap between the two worlds of Latin America and the United States, said Bonnot, who is now executive director of the ministry.

When El Puente began, it offered Spanish Masses to a modest 100 families in Jefferson City and California, Missouri. Families immigrated to Missouri from numerous countries, including Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala. According to Bonnot, they left home countries with a dearth of opportunity but, often, an excess of violence.

“When I was studying Spanish in Mexico, at that time the median age was 19. And so they needed a million new jobs every year to provide for their citizens. So the opportunity was just not there in many instances,” said Bonnot, who studied with a language immersion program in Guadalajara in 2000.

Immigrants came to Missouri to find peace and calm, and El Puente was happy to help.

Within the first year, the organization not only facilitated Spanish Masses, but it responded to calls to help immigrants with medical and legal appointments. Soon enough, El Puente offered services in immigration work, language tutoring, mentoring, helping with social and economic needs, and sponsoring traditional celebrations.

These days, El Puente has a staff of six and several volunteers. They’ve moved into a renovated house on McCarty Street, decorated with Peruvian paintings and portraits Our Lady of Guadalupe sitting atop the fireplaces.

In August, El Puente officially added “Hispanic Ministry” to the end of its name and became a registered non-profit with the state of Missouri.

“I want El Puente to continue to be that bridge for people, to help people to grow to independence, so they can navigate on their own, and so they can fulfill their dreams,” Bonnot said.