ArchCity Defenders
Screengrab of jail surveillance video released by Arch City Defenders.
A St. Louis corrections officer recently charged in federal court with assaulting a handcuffed detainee was previously tasked with training other jail staff on the use of mace, court filings show.
Federal prosecutors announced the civil rights charges against Direll Alexander in June, alleging that three months prior, the lieutenant “assaulted and injured the detainee while he was restrained in handcuffs and while he did not pose any threat to Alexander.” Alexander pleaded not guilty at his initial appearance in court that same month.
Then, late last month, attorneys representing current and former jail detainees in an ongoing civil lawsuit against the city released a trove of depositions, reports and surveillance videos gathered as part of their suit. The class-action lawsuit against the city focuses on the overuse — and misuse — of mace in the St. Louis City Justice Center.
Corrections Officer Direll Alexander speaking at a city Public Safety Committee meeting last year.
Screen Grab from City Public Safety Committee Meeting” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”>
Corrections Officer Direll Alexander speaking at a city Public Safety Committee meeting last year.
Among those filings were portions of a deposition of Alexander taken in July 2022. At the time Alexander worked in “safety and training” at the jail, court filings show. He stated that he had conducted training on the “use of OC spray” and “riot control” as recently as the past six months.
The attorneys representing the detainees call Alexander being tasked to train corrections officers in the use of mace “egregious,” because in 2016 jail leadership suspended him “for use of OC spray against a detainee.”
“People in leadership are aware of this happening, but they’re not doing anything about it,” says Shubra Ohri, an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center and one of the lawyers representing the detainees in their suit against the city.
The city’s department of public safety confirms that Alexander is still employed as a correctional officer at the jail. A spokesperson added that the department would not comment on the indictment and that employee disciplinary records are closed.
The use of mace in the city jail has long been a source of controversy. Surveillance videos and use-of-force reports made public last month as part of the lawsuit against the city detail corrections officers using mace in seemingly every possible scenario, from the violent to the banal: a detainee swinging a chair at a guard; a detainee turning his back to an officer; a detainee refusing to shower; a detainee requesting an internal complaint form.
“There’s just sort of an understanding that they use [pepper] spray in this way that is systemic,” says Ohri. “I want to be careful here, because it’s not just about one or two officers, it’s a whole culture.”
In 2021, the RFT reported that, according to the jail’s own policies, pepper spray is only to be deployed as a last resort to stop a threat. In his deposition, Alexander was asked about jail staff using a “continuum of force,” a concept in policing and corrections that refers to officers using the appropriate level of force in any given set of circumstances and then either escalating or de-escalating as circumstances change.
Alexander answered, “A continuum, no. There’s not a continuum. Again, there is only the preferred steps, but they are just preferred. They are what people would like to see. They are not necessarily the reality.”
uk-card-body uk-card-default uk-card-small uk-margin-small” role=”presentation”>
