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ST. LOUIS — For six years, the ºüÀêÊÓƵ Metropolitan Police Department has been sitting on a secret: A unit created to investigate police shootings did such shoddy work that its reports were often late, missing key information or not filed at all.

The failures were detailed in a 2018 audit of the Force Investigative Unit, describing delays, errors and incomplete police work.

The city has been fighting to keep the audit out of public view ever since it was finished.

The administration of Mayor Tishaura O. Jones has denied the Post-Dispatch’s Sunshine Law request for the report and blocked its release in two federal court cases. But the Post-Dispatch recently obtained key elements of the report from a law enforcement source. Multiple other sources have confirmed its authenticity.

The 2018 audit was ordered by Michael Sack, then a police major. Sack would later become a lieutenant colonel and was a finalist for the chief job that went to Robert Tracy.

In the audit, police officials largely blame the unit’s former director, Lt. Roger Engelhardt, who was fired in 2021. The audit, Sack has said in court testimony, led to an internal investigation of Engelhardt and morphed into a criminal investigation, with the audit’s contents referred to the FBI. Engelhardt has not been charged with a crime.

The report alleges Engelhardt was double-dipping — being paid by private employers as he was supposed to investigate police shootings.

One of those incidents was the 2017 shooting of police Officer Milton Green by fellow Officer Christopher Tanner. Green, while off duty, responded near his home in north ºüÀêÊÓƵ to help with a police chase.

Green is suing the city over the shooting. But his attorneys, Javad Khazaeli and Jack Waldron, didn’t obtain the audit of the Force Investigative Unit as part of the case’s discovery, when government bodies typically share such documents. They only found out about the audit during a deposition of Engelhardt, who has unsuccessfully sought a copy himself. The city later turned over the audit but insisted in court that it remain sealed from public view.

The Post-Dispatch intervened in that case, asking a judge to make the report public. The judge declined.

When the Post-Dispatch had sought the report last year, the city claimed it fell under the “personnel� exemption of the Sunshine Law.

The city has made clear, in multiple actions to deny access to the audit, that it doesn’t want the public to read it.

So why is the city keeping the document secret? Police officials and Jones’ office initially refused to comment.

After this column was published online, the police department said in an email that the Force Investigative Unit audit wasn’t provided to the Post-Dispatch because it is a “personnel� record.

“While we typically do not comment on internal personnel matters, I can confirm that personnel changes were made within the Force Investigation Unit after the above internal investigation,� said Sgt. Charles Wall.

The Force Investigative Unit is still operating, now under the supervision of Lt. Billy March.

Conflicts and errors

The unit was created in 2013, when Sam Dotson was police chief and Francis Slay was mayor. At the time, Dotson said the unit would have four detectives to investigate use of deadly force incidents and would be led by Engelhardt. The unit was separate from the homicide and internal affairs divisions.

Sack, then a police major, has said in court testimony that the 2018 audit was spurred by an officer-involved shooting in which the Force Investigative Unit was ordered by a judge to produce a report. That led to questions about whether the unit was functioning properly, according to Sack.

The audit cites errors or omissions in each of the 50 investigations the unit conducted by that time. It outlines other deficiencies as well:

• In the Green shooting, Engelhardt appointed Steven Burle as an investigator on the case. Burle’s son was the partner of the accused shooter.
• Interviews with officers or witnesses were delayed in several cases for weeks or months. Also, search warrants were delayed a week or longer in some investigations.
• A report on a 2015 shooting was supplemented months later with 146 corrections.
• In another 2015 police shooting, the audit says, “No narrative is found in this report.â€�
• In a 2016 police shooting, the audit says, “Engelhardt only interviews police officer that discharged his firearm, no other officers interviewed.â€�
• In another 2016 shooting, a suspect and officers were not interviewed for more than a week after the incident.
• Engelhardt would commonly “not view a report assigned to his unit for months, or even years,â€� the audit says.

It is not clear if investigators reopened any cases after they found deficiencies.

John Chasnoff, a longtime activist for police transparency in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, says there have long been questions about the Force Investigative Unit, and he doesn’t understand why the city would hide the audit.

“These police shootings are too important to be left in this kind of limbo,� says Chasnoff, a member of the Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression. “A report like that is definitely in the public interest and should be made public. ... I know individual families that have been devastated that they can’t get progress in their cases because the FIU reports were so delayed and incomplete.�

Engelhardt believes he knows why the city has been keeping the report from the public. In court documents, he’s outlined what he says are flaws in the audit and argues that it’s mostly an effort to list violations of department regulations so he could be fired.

In an interview, he argued the audit should be made public, saying, “I have nothing to hide.�

Engelhardt, a 30-year veteran of the department who was involved in the Guns ‘N Hoses boxing fundraiser between cops and firefighters, is now waging two legal battles against the city. One is over whether he qualifies for unemployment after his firing, and the other is a civil service process seeking reinstatement to his position.

‘Employee Misconduct Report’

According to court testimony, the investigation of Engelhardt and the Force Investigative Unit was known as “Project 747,� referring to the room number at police headquarters where Sack and various officers met.

The question of what Project 747 actually was — a criminal investigation, a personnel investigation or an audit — is significant to Engelhardt. There are specific rules on police investigations of employees, and criminal and personnel investigations are meant to be conducted separately, without information being shared.

In the case of personnel investigations, ºüÀêÊÓƵ officers are supposed to receive an “Employee Misconduct Reportâ€� that outlines their alleged violations of department policy. In documents in his unemployment case, Engelhardt says he didn’t receive such a report until May 2020, even though the investigation started two years earlier.

The report, dated March 7, 2018, is signed by Sack, using his title of lieutenant colonel. But in March 2018, Sack was still a major. He wasn’t promoted to his current rank until the next year.

Engelhardt is raising the issue in his court fights, suggesting the report was backdated. In one court filing, he accuses the city of relying on “forged and falsified documents.�

Sack’s audit was eventually forwarded to the U.S. attorney’s office. According to court records, Engelhardt in 2019 and again in 2020 was offered a plea deal by prosecutors for his alleged double-dipping. He declined both offers. He was fired in 2021, three years after the date listed on his Employee Misconduct Report. He was never charged.

The Post-Dispatch filed a Sunshine Law request for any reports related to a criminal investigation into Engelhardt. The city said no such records exist.

Shortly after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014, the Force Investigative Unit made three of its reports public. That was the point of the unit, both Dotson and Engelhardt said then — to help increase transparency and build trust with the community.

The three reports were on high-profile shootings in the city. One was the 2015 death of Mansur Ball-Bey, in which questions were raised about the veracity of the police shooting, including by then-Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce. The other reports were on the shooting death of Kajieme Powell, a 25-year-old killed during a mental health incident in which he waved a knife at police officers; and the death of Vonderitt Myers Jr., 18, who was shot and killed by an officer in October 2014.

No officers were charged after those investigations.

No other Force Investigative Unit reports have been made public.

‘Outrageous’ delays

This month, a federal judge added her name to the chorus of critics about the lack of transparency for the unit.

On Jan. 10, two attorneys for the city counselor’s office threw themselves “at the mercy of the court� in a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Shirley P. Mensah. At issue was the city’s failure to disclose documents to the attorneys for Dennis Ball-Bey, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city and officer Kyle Chandler over the death of his son, Mansur.

In court filings, and in argument before the judge, city attorneys blamed a former employee for miscommunication over whether the documents had been turned over.

Many of those documents related to the Force Investigative Unit audit conducted in 2018. In October of last year, the judge ordered city attorneys to provide more documents to Ball-Bey’s attorneys: Khazaeli, Waldron and Jermaine Wooten. When the documents still weren’t provided, the attorneys pushed to look at the entire audit and related background information — six boxes in all.

The city counselor’s office failed to even examine the full audit to see if there were documents related to Ball-Bey’s case. The judge called that “outrageous.�

Mensah ordered the city to pay Khazaeli and Waldron’s fees for their work trying to get the documents, and to make all of the audit documents available for them to inspect. City attorneys, though, insisted that the documents remain sealed, to be seen only by the lawyers. The judge granted the request.

It marked the second case, in addition to Green’s, in which the city has legally fought to keep the audit hidden from public view — even though the unit was created to improve trust between the community and police.

Khazaeli says any privacy concerns with the audit can be easily resolved. And its release, he argues, can provide the public with a full accounting.

“There is no reason that the documents can’t be slightly redacted to protect victims while still being shared with the taxpayers,� Khazaeli says. “The city consistently argues that it does not have a custom of failing to investigate and discipline its officers but fights tooth-and-nail to hide documents that prove such a pattern exists.�