ST. LOUIS — A former Pine Lawn police lieutenant described as a “loose cannon†has filed nearly a half-dozen lawsuits since being sentenced to federal prison, most recently against two women who accused him of drugging and abducting them.
Steven P. Blakeney was sentenced in 2016 to more than four years in prison on charges he conspired to illegally arrest a Pine Lawn mayoral candidate. He also pleaded guilty in 2017 to misdemeanor assault in a separate incident in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, and Pine Lawn paid out at least $1.8 million to settle multiple claims against him.
Meanwhile, Blakeney has filed a bevy of lawsuits: against the people who sued him, the law firms that represented them, his ex-wife’s divorce lawyers, and the lawyers who represented him in his criminal cases.
People are also reading…
Blakeney maintains his innocence in all of his cases. Most of his suits have been dismissed. He could not be reached for comment Tuesday, and his lawyer did not return a request last week for comment.
In the most recent lawsuit, which was transferred last week to city court from Jefferson County, Blakeney accuses the nonprofit law firm ArchCity Defenders and two women of lying when they accused him in 2016 of drugging them and, with the help of another Pine Lawn officer, taking them from a bar to Blakeney’s home in 2014.
The women said they woke up in the living room of Blakeney’s Oakville home with no memory of how they got there.
Pine Lawn settled the suit for $500,000 in 2018 and denied any wrongdoing. The city declined to comment on Tuesday.
But Blakeney claims in his lawsuit the accusations about the incident, which happened one month before Blakeney was fired from the now-dissolved Pine Lawn Police Department, were false.
“The complaint … contained numerous untrue, false and misleading statements,†says the suit, filed by Blakeney’s lawyer Christopher Levy.
Blakeney is claiming negligence, abuse of process and malicious prosecution. He cites statements in which the women admit to having several alcoholic drinks before meeting him that night.
ArchCity declined to comment on the suit. A previous lawsuit making similar claims against ArchCity was voluntarily dismissed by Blakeney, but it was unclear why.
The case that landed Blakeney in prison began on Easter in 2013, when Blakeney was on duty and ordered a Pine Lawn store owner to call 911 and falsely report that mayoral candidate Nakisha Ford had stolen a campaign poster for her rival, incumbent Mayor Sylvester Caldwell, the owner testified at trial.
Ford was taken to jail, and Blakeney returned to the store and told the owner he would have to testify in court. Blakeney also tipped off a local TV station about the arrest.
Blakeney was convicted by a federal jury of multiple civil rights offenses, as well as falsification of records and was sentenced to federal prison.
That case was one of several in Blakeney’s long legal history.
In a separate case in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, he was accused of approaching three women outside the Flamingo Bowl on Washington Avenue in September 2014 and ordering them to get into his unmarked police car because they were too drunk to drive. Their friend confronted Blakeney and demanded to see his badge. When the friend threatened to call 911, Blakeney sucker-punched him.
Blakeney denied hitting the man, and a jury deadlocked on whether to convict him. Blakeney ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of assault.
The city of Pine Lawn also settled claims Blakeney berated and threatened a woman for cutting him off on the road; burst into a woman’s Wellston residence without a warrant; assaulted a U.S. Army captain after pulling him over at gunpoint on Interstate 70; and damaged a college student’s property after pulling her over in downtown ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
At his federal sentencing in October 2016, federal prosecutor Reggie Harris called Blakeney a “loose cannon†who believed he was above the law.
Blakeney “never should have been a police officer in the first place,†Harris said at the time.
A hearing has not yet been set in the new case.