ST. LOUIS — The city’s judges are looking to hire their own bailiffs because staffing issues in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ Sheriff’s Department are leaving courtrooms unattended and staff vulnerable, they say.
“We will be adding these positions to the court’s budget,†ºüÀêÊÓƵ Circuit Court Presiding Judge Elizabeth Hogan wrote in a letter this week to Sheriff Vernon Betts.
The change would deliver a blow to a sheriff’s department that has struggled in recent years with staffing to provide security in the two ºüÀêÊÓƵ courthouses as well as fulfill its duties of transporting inmates from the city jail, issuing concealed carry permits and serving court papers and eviction notices.
The court hopes to hire 36 bailiffs to provide security to courtrooms, jurors, juvenile courtrooms and treatment court. Sheriff’s deputies would continue to staff the security desks at courthouse entrances.
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The move marks the latest dust-up between Betts and the courts. In August, judges blocked 16 courthouse hires after Betts failed to get permission from judges, as required by state law. Betts said at the time he was trying to get a head start replenishing a staff that had recently lost multiple people to other, higher-paying law enforcement jobs.
Betts said Thursday that while he is understaffed, he believes the bailiff change is part of an effort by the judges to “take over the sheriff’s department.â€
“If they can take over the bailiffs, that’s getting their feet in the door,†he said. “The judges want to run the whole show. As long as I’m living in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, that’s not going to happen.â€
Hogan, through a spokesman, declined comment Thursday.
In 2012 the city’s judges supported a push in the state legislature to make the ºüÀêÊÓƵ circuit clerk an appointed instead of publicly elected office. Officials argued the move saved the city more than $750,000 annually.
Three years later, state lawmakers proposed a bill to make the sheriff appointed by the judges. Court officials supported the move, saying that while they didn’t have an issue with Betts’ predecessor, Jim Murphy, they needed “a professional in that office, as opposed to an elected political figure making patronage hires.â€
Betts said he believed the judges were trying to make the same push now.
“What they don’t understand is all of us aren’t stupid,†he said.
Still, staffing woes at the department have been a chronic problem.
In July, Betts wrote a letter to Hogan asking for her to advocate for increased deputy pay. He said he had lost several people who got higher salaries elsewhere, and, on any given day only 80 of his 170 budgeted deputies were available for work due to vacancies, medical leave and other absences.
He told Hogan that he may have to move deputies from their posts in empty courtrooms to elsewhere in the courthouse or to a judge holding hearings or trials.
“We can no longer afford for deputies to idly sit in vacant courtrooms while other judges may need them,†he wrote.
Hogan responded that judges had been asking since 2019 to staff all courtrooms during business hours, even when judges weren’t holding court, because clerks and other staff are still working and may need protection.
“There have been a number of security breaches resulting in theft, vandalism and physical disruption,†when courts were not in session, she said.
In early August 2022, a woman was charged after being caught swiping a laptop and recording equipment from behind a judge’s bench in an unguarded courtroom. She was later found outside hiding in a trash can. Court officials have also reported recent instances of people harassing clerks and one person bringing a knife into the courthouse.
Betts met with Hogan and two other judges in recent weeks about “ongoing security concerns,†according to Hogan’s letter, sent Tuesday.
Betts called the judges’ plan “malarkey†and suggested that the court instead add more positions to his budget and give his deputies a raise.
That aside, he said, plenty of safeguards already exist to protect judges and clerks in empty courtrooms, including a “panic button†under the judges’ desks and locks on the doors. He said he and law enforcement agencies across the country have struggled to keep staff because of low starting pay, and he wondered where the judges would find people to work as bailiffs.
“I don’t think it’s the most efficient and effective way to run the courts,†he said. “That’s not what the citizens of ºüÀêÊÓƵ want ... haphazardly using resources unnecessarily.â€
The court’s fiscal year 2025 budget will be submitted to the city for approval next year.
Editor’s note: This story previously misidentified a former court spokesman.