Riverfront Times, January 12, 2022 by Riverfront Times

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MARCH 6-12, 2019

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In the Shadows

n a city where police kill people at an alarming rate, few cases land in the spotlight for long, if at all. Such was the killing of Cortez Bufford. The 24-year-old was shot to death one night in 2019 in the dark space between two south city houses. Maybe you heard about it at the time. Maybe you didn’t. But the official police narrative didn’t sound right to investigative journalist Alison Flowers of the Invisible Institute. In June, we published her 8,000-word piece, “The Fatal Tunnel,” that dug deep into the killing. And yet, as Alison writes, “I knew there was more to know. There always is.” For this week’s cover story, she returns to that dark gangway, armed with the tools of forensic journalism in search of what truly happened that night. It’s the kind of scrutiny that is rare in killings here. But it’s important, and it’s important to remember this: Not everyone forgets. —Doyle Murphy, editor in chief

TABLE OF CONTENTS Publisher Chris Keating Editor in Chief Doyle Murphy

E D I T O R I A L Managing Editor Daniel Hill Digital Content Editors Jaime Lees, Jenna Jones Food Editor Cheryl Baehr Staff Writer Danny Wicentowski, Ryan Krull Contributors Eric Berger, Phuong Bui, Jeannette Cooperman, Mike Fitzgerald, Eileen G’Sell, Kathy Gilsinan, Reuben Hemmer, Andy Paulissen, Justin Poole, Jack Probst, Richard Weiss, Theo Welling, Ymani Wince Columnists Thomas Chimchards, Ray Hartmann, Evan Sult Editorial Interns Madyson Dixon A R T

& P R O D U C T I O N Art Director Evan Sult Production Manager Haimanti Germain

COVER Under the Blood Moon A forensic follow-up on a police killing in south St. Louis

M U L T I M E D I A A D V E R T I S I N G Associate Publisher Colin Bell Account Managers Emily Fear, Jennifer Samuel Director of Business Development Brittany Forrest, Rachel Hoppman, Chelsea Nazaruk Social Media Coordinators Sydney Schaefer, Jamila Jackson C I R C U L A T I O N Circulation Manager Kevin G. Powers E U C L I D M E D I A G R O U P Chief Executive Officer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating Officers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner VP of Digital Services Stacy Volhein www.euclidmediagroup.com

Cover photo by

ALISON FLOWERS

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HARTMANN TroubleSpeak Is Jay Ashcroft confused or just confusing? Written by

RAY HARTMANN

n November 30, 2020, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft boldly proclaimed that when it came to voting during a pandemic, “Missouri showed the rest of the country how to do it.” We sure did. Or maybe we would have if the other 49 states had been watching. We’ll never know since none of them had the decency to express their gratitude. Ashcroft’s bodacious words had been uttered seventeen days after Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security declared the 2020 election to have been “the most secure in American history.” It is unclear why the nation needed to be shown how to run an election by the Show-Me State, but it’s all good. And it must be emphasized that Ashcroft was trash-talking at a time that the Big Lie had just been hatched as a baby fib. There hadn’t been time to develop a rationalization to prove Missouri’s superiority in the context of having been won by Trump. That might, however, be a blessing. It seems our Missouri Republicans writ large — and Ashcroft in particular — are a tad confused as to how to settle upon a narrative in which sentences flow one after another. Consider, for example, this headline from the Missouri Independent last week: “Jay Ashcroft touts integrity of Missouri’s 2020 election, but supports an audit.” Well of course he does. I mean, nothing says “we ran a clean election” like the additional comment that “we should have the damn thing audited, though.” Such is life for Republicans clumsily attempting to usher in a postdemocracy era in a state in which they’re already winning big. “We

What does Missouri Secretary of State want out of our elections? TIM BOMMEL/HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS must take steps to assure that no election is ever again stolen from Donald Trump! As for states like Missouri (which Trump won by 18 and 15 percentage points in the last two cycles), well, that just goes to show you. Something or other, la la la. You know what I mean.” The entire situation is incoherent, which does commend Ashcroft as the man for the job. Consider this bit of electoral philosophy that our secretary of state has repeatedly expressed publicly about ballot access. This is from the Missouri Times: “I think there needs to be a reevaluation of what the purpose of our elections is. We’ve focused on convenience to the point of maybe losing what we want to get out of an election,” Ashcroft continued. “We need it to be easy for every legal voter to be able to vote. But elections aren’t like picking up your groceries at the grocery store; we need to make sure that as we continue to make sure it’s easy to vote in elections, we don’t cheapen elections — that we still have faith in how it’s run, and we do it in such a way that people can still have faith. Is the purpose of an election just to elect your person or is the purpose of an election truly for legal voters to vote for who they want?” Alrighty then. I’m not sure what to make of all that beyond feeling certain that I won’t be voting at the Schnucks checkout anytime soon. And there is something unsettling about a sitting secretary of state uttering the phrase “what we want to get out of an election” in the con-

text of state law. Ashcroft is difficult to follow, to the point of confusion. The man displays intermittent bursts of integrity, like when he asked State Auditor Nicole Galloway to assist him in a 2018 investigation into whether Senator Josh Hawley, R-Kremlin, had misused state resources in his election campaign that year. (Shortly thereafter, in what might have just looked like a hostage statement, Ashcroft announced there was nothing to see here.) Similarly, Ashcroft has been downright bold in declaring that President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election. That’s pretty daring for a Republican these days, so much so that it’s premature to assume that statement won’t come walking back someday. I’d love to praise Ashcroft for the shocking burst of truth. But something tells me that those words will change if — like a chained Senator Ted Cruz last week — Ashcroft lands an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s “Have You Been a Naughty Nazi?” segment in which the host dresses down a fellow wingnut for disloyalty to Dear Leader and the mission. You see, just when you want to feel good about Good Jay for having declined to advance Trump’s Big Lie, along comes Bad Jay, who makes it known that he’s all in with the new Texas election law, one of the nation’s most blatant and corrupt voter-suppression efforts. The Brennan Center for Justice is suing Texas and its most prominent Big Lie advocate, federally indicted Attorney General Ken Pax-

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ton, over the election bill: “The bill makes it a crime for election officials to encourage eligible voters to apply to vote by mail. And it threatens poll workers with criminal prosecution if they try to stop partisan poll watchers from harassing or intimidating voters. These new penalties are one example of a troubling new trend of state laws that target election officials and poll workers.” Now if things are going so swimmingly in Missouri — remember how “we showed them” in 2020? — why would the state need to model itself after Texas, of all places? Aren’t they about ready to secede from the Union? And are Republicans having trouble getting a fair shake in Missouri? The answer is that there is no answer. In fact, there’s not even a question. Democrats just got slaughtered in the 2020 election, including in Ashcroft’s own secretary of state’s race. What’s the urgency for Republicans to overhaul the elections — to hit Vlad Putin’s 90-percent-plus numbers? Perhaps had they been savvier, Democrats might have gone full Trump nuts and started screaming about how Ashcroft stole the election from our duly elected Governor Nicole Galloway. It did work for the last guy. Trump lost fair and square in a landslide in 2020, both in the popular vote (a whopping 7-millionvote whupping) and the Electoral College (a thrashing by a 306-232 vote margin). Yet all over the nation, Republican sycophants are demanding bogus “audits” from WWE-style characters like the “Cyber Ninjas” in Arizona. And even they can’t invent the results that the former Psychopath-In-Chief is demanding. So, it’s only natural that Missouri will serve as a full partner in the next iteration of the Big Lie. And if that’s going to be the case, what better guy than Jay Ashcroft to make certain “we get what we want out of the election”? n Ray Hartmann founded the Riverfront Times in 1977. Contact him at rhar tmann1952@gmail.com or catch him on Donnybrook at 7 p.m. on Thursdays on Nine PBS and St. Louis In the Know with Ray Hartmann from 9 to 11 p.m. Monday thru Friday on KTRS (550 AM).

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NEWS Capitol Stormer Arrested in Fatal Crash

Hernandez was charged in January 2021 with five misdemeanors and allowed to remain free as her case proceeded.

Written by

DOYLE MURPHY

ily ernande , fil ed a year ago parading the shards of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s nameplate through the U.S. Capitol, was arrested in Franklin County on the anniversary of the attack on suspicion of drunkenly killing a woman in a car crash. Hernandez, 22 of Sullivan, was going the wrong way about 7 p.m. this January 6 on Interstate 44 near St. Clair, driving a Volkswagen Passat west in the eastbound lanes when she collided with a Buick Enclave, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. The Buick’s passenger, 32-year-old Victoria Wilson of St. Clair, was killed. Her husband, Ryan Wilson, 36, was injured and taken to Missouri Baptist Medical Center. Victoria Wilson was a mother of two, according to a GoFundMe page created to help the family pay for her funeral. The post says her husband would need surgery. Hernandez, who was also injured, was taken to Mercy Hospital. The highway patrol arrested her on charges of driving while intoxicated resulting in death and driving while intoxicated resulting in serious physical injury. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch first reported Hernandez’s connection to the Capitol riots. Her attorney in that case, Ethan Corlija, told the newspaper he had visited her in the hospital and that the crash was a “tragic event.” “My heart goes out to the other motorist who lost their life and family,” Corlija told the daily. Hernandez pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in the Capitol case on Monday. She was charged in January 2021 and allowed to remain free as her case proceeded, a common arrangement in the Capitol cases with low-level charges.

Emily Hernandez on January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol. | DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE She was part of the pro-Trump mob that stormed the building on January 6, 2021, as rioters sought to overturn the results of the presidential election. Members of Congress were forced into hiding for

hours as the intruders threatened to kill lawmakers, including Vice President Mike Pence and Pelosi. Footage from the scene showed Hernandez gleefully carrying Pelosi’s broken nameplate through

the Capitol after members of the mob ransacked congressional offices. Five people died in connection with the attack, and more than 700 people have been charged in the year since. Hernandez reportedly rode to the rally with her uncle, William Merry, and his friend, Paul Westover. All three were fil ed together alongside rioters. Merry and Westover have already pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges. n

BJC Cancels Elective Surgeries as COVID-19 Surges in Missouri Written by

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

verwhelmed by rising COVID-19 cases, BJC HealthCare announced last week that it was postponing all elective surgeries effective January 6. The hospital system is contending with more than 500 COVID-19 cases, leaving nurses and staff “stretched to their limits” amid a wave of infections that’s seen the St. Louis region break case records in recent days. “This is beyond anything we’ve seen thus far in the pandemic,” a hospital spokesperson said in a news release. “This decision was not made lightly and reflects our current challenge as cases continue to rise and resources continue to be strained.” The news release noted that patients with procedures scheduled “that are not considered urgent” will be contacted by a staff member about postponing. The announcement arrives as COV-

BJC staffers are “stretched to their limits,” says the hospital system. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI ID-19 cases have risen to unprecedented levels. On January 4, the day before BJC’s announcement, St. Louis area hospitals reported more than 1,000 cases. The wave is slamming into health systems across Missouri and surrounding states: Dr. Steven M. Brown, who manages more than 100 ICU patients as part of Mercy’s Virtual Care Center in Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma, tweeted that he is caring for dozens of seriously ill unvaccinated patients. “If they are conscious, most are strug-

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gling to breathe,” he wrote, urging people to be vaccinated before they are infected. “The rest are life support in drug-induced comas.” The numbers aren’t just going up in large metro areas like St. Louis and Kansas City. Saint Louis University professor Chris Prener, who tracks and analyzes COVID cases, wrote last week that the “outstate” region is starting to see an increase as well, and that the trend is “higher than it has been at any point since last January.” n

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Tracking Narcan Use in St. Louis Written by

RYAN KRULL

ew data made available to the RFT show that the St. Louis Fire Department deployed the nasal spray Narcan 10,249 times from the start of 2018 to the end of 2021. Narcan, an “opioid antagonist,” reverses an opioid overdose, bringing the overdosing person back to consciousness and stopping the potentially deadly depression of respiratory function brought on by drugs like Fentanyl. Records from the fire department, which tracks Narcan deployment by ZIP code, show that the 63111 ZIP code saw 1,016 deployments of Narcan by firefighters and EMT workers over the past four years, the most of any ZIP code where the department administered the drug.

63111 contains the Patch and Carondelet neighborhoods in the southern tip of St. Louis. The 63115 area code, containing Penrose, Mark Twain and parts of several other north city neighborhoods, had the second most deployments of Narcan in that same period with 992. More than half of the fire department’s Narcan deployments occurred in six ZIP codes in the southeast and northeast edges of the city: roughly, south of Arsenal and east of Kingshighway, and north of Page between Kingshighway and Highway 70. The fire department administered Narcan in a total of 31 zip codes, many of which are outside city limits. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, which began carrying Narcan in 2018, deployed significantly fewer doses of the drug than firefighters and EMTs. The department does not track individual Narcan deployments but does track refill requests, of which there have only been 50 in the past four years. Addressing the disparity of Narcan deployments between police and emergency services, SLMPD police spokes-

Six ZIP codes accounted for most the fire department’s Narcan calls. | THEO WELLING person Evita Caldwell explained, “patrol supervisors are using their discretion to reassign [overdose] calls to EMS when necessary” and this rerouting to EMS is “a trend that has increased over time.” The fire department’s 10,249 deploy-

The Seal of Approval

Lest one presume this is just some .jpg floating around on the county website, please be advised: It’s real, it’s official and it’s spectacular.

Written by

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

ike the dive-bombing bald eagle in its (sort of) center, the official seal of St. Francois County seems out of place in so many ways — and for days, thousands of internet strangers have delighted in cataloging them. And can you blame them? There’s the jumble of images hilariously oriented to fit (mostly) within the blue border; above it, the formatting for the text of “The Great Seal of St. Francois County” appears to be trying to lift off and escape from the rest of the seal; and just looking at the thing for more than a few seconds produces a kind of seasick nausea, because this seal is an *experience* — and that experience is chaos. And lest one presume this is just some .jpg floating around on the county website, please be advised: It’s real, it’s official and it’s spectacular. However, while the internet’s attention on the seal is new, the seal itself is not. As reported in the Park Hills Daily Journal, the seal was unveiled during a 2018 State of the County address delivered by its creator, Presiding Commissioner Harold Gallaher, who took credit for the design during his speech: “With some simple software I brought up this new one, and we’ve adopted that now as our county seal.” Three years later, St. Francois County could be getting a new seal. Gallaher, who is still Commissioner and in his 70s, addressed a St. Francois County Com-

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ments of Narcan do not include the unknown number of doses administered by librarians, social workers and coffee shop baristas who have in many cases taken it upon themselves to be trained with and carry the life-saving drug. Indeed, overdose cases can happen anywhere: In May of last year, Delanie Muenchen was at a staff meeting at Kitchen House Coffee, which at the time had a location in the Patch, when she and other coworkers noticed a man collapsed at a table outside. Muenchen, who recently completed a master’s in social work at Saint Louis University and volunteers with Tent Mission STL, ran a few blocks to her apartment, got Narcan and made it back to the barely breathing man in time to administer a life-saving dose. “I encourage everyone to carry Narcan,” Muenchen says. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been somewhere it was needed.” Narcan is currently available at Walgreens, CVS and other drug stores without a prescription, though it must be purchased from the pharmacist. n

Who needs an expensive graphic designer when the presiding commissioner has his own perfectly good computer program? | ST. FRANCOIS COUNTY mission in a regular meeting last week. He acknowledged a “fever pitch on social media about the county seal” and announced that the county is looking at ways to redesign his self-admittedly slapdash work. “It was a rush deal way back when,” he said, according to the Journal’s account of Tuesday’s meeting. “I had two days for the public to come up with a seal and my design is proof positive that I am not artistically inclined.” But while his graphic design skills may

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have lacked technical polish, the result captivated internet users who could only look at the seal, squint, and wonder — how is this real? On Reddit, the seal hit the site’s front page over the weekend. Days later, user wtf703 was kind enough to completely redesign the seal so the eagle isn’t tipping into an abyss; the redesign made the Bible/cross combo even more pronounced, because this designer is a complete pro who understands what their customer wants.

It wasn’t just Reddit getting in on the fun: On Twitter, many users responded with references to the “Graphic Design Is My Passion” meme. But no web community leaped more exuberantly into redesigning the seal than the good weirdos at Fark, where users created an array of updated seals — several involving novel interpretations of the word “seal” — that both capture the spirit of the original while also being, somehow, even worse. But if St. Francois citizens are hoping for the official redesign to turn out any better, they may have to put their hopes into yet another amateur: During Tuesday’s commission meeting, the Journal reported that Gallaher stated he didn’t want any tax money spent on the redesign — and instead, a contest will be organized in the coming weeks. “I would like it to be better than the seal we have now,” he said, “which would be a slam dunk.” n

THE BIG MAD Nothing Gold Cold comfort, a seal of improval and Missouri shows off its manhood Compiled by

DANIEL HILL

elcome back to the Big Mad, the RFT’s weekly roundup of righteous rage! Because we know your time is short and your anger is hot: WINTER SURPRISE: Every year, it gets really cold here. It happens with such regularity that we have given it a name: winter. It’s pretty hard for humans to live outside in the winter. People freeze to death. All this is well established, and yet, it seems to surprise city officials every year. We wrote before Christmas about the lack of shelter beds, even as the city sits on millions and millions of American Rescue Plan dollars to deal with such problems. Last week, St. Louis Public Radio picked up the issue and reported the lack of shelter beds, even as the city sits on millions and millions of American Rescue Plan dollars. We’re told negotiations for a safe haven are in the works, and thankfully, City of Hope St. Louis was able to partner with the city to open 65 overflow beds at Asbury United Methodist Church and the Cherokee rec center. But why does this have to be such a haphazard scramble each year? Maybe St. Louis can spare a dollar from those millions and buy a calendar? SAVE THE SEAL: For one sweet moment, everything was beautiful. Some two years into this waking nightmare we now call “life,” a Twitter user who goes by the handle @SethOvKnives brought to the attention of the entire internet the graphic design monstrosity that St. Francois County has been using as its official seal for the last few years, an Ariel font-riddled pile of clip art so laughably bad that, for a brief second, we were all united in joy and ridicule. But, as the great poet Robert Frost once opined, nothing gold can stay. Within a week, the chastened county officials decided they’d had enough of the pile-on, with Presiding Commissioner Harold Gallaher, the mastermind behind the seal, announcing that a redesign contest will be organized in the coming weeks. To this we say: Why? Why must we destroy a work that has brought happiness to so many? Why can’t we have one good (and by good we mean bad, so very bad) thing? It is so rare to find the kind of unity that

godawful mess of a design brought forth — can’t we just keep it? Sure, maybe it’s tiresome to have the entirety of the internet mercilessly making fun of you, but as we all know, an artist must sacrifice for their work — and you, Commissioner Gallaher, are an artist. It’s time to start acting like one. Defend your art. Save the seal. We need this, man, we really do. REPORT THIS: Good news, St. Louis! The honorable Republican state senators of Missouri have heard of our struggles, and they’re here to help us like a hole in the head. Their assistance arrived in a December 31 report issued by the Interim Committee on Greater St. Louis Regional Emerging Issues, which details various meetings between boards’ members and various elected leaders in and around St. Louis. That local input, however, was dutifully ignored in the report’s conclusion, which blithely accuses St. Louis’ leaders of doing nothing about crime because (checks notes) “ideological, political, and cultural diversity” are getting in the way. Ah, yes, “cultural diversity,” the thing that’s keeping crime victims too scared to come forward and racist cops too racist to testify in cases. Granted, the report never precisely defines what it means by “diversity,” as in its contention that “the intense diversity” between the city and county “prevents basic levels of cooperation” in stopping crime. Is it a dog whistle or just laziness? The committee just didn’t care, and instead went with a strategy of negging St. Louis with the lightest possible burns. Oh no, you don’t say, is St. Louis “only a regional leader from its own viewpoint,” and lacks “political will”? Oh, have mercy! You wound us! No wonder the Democratic committee members refused to sign the report. They know bullshit when they see it — and we can smell it from St. Louis. MAN UP: Whereas, Clay County Rep. Doug Richey’s 2021 House Resolution encouraging the young men of Missouri to engage in some stupid shit called the “Missouri Manhood challenge” got stuck in committee and amounted to nothing; and whereas, Republicans seem to be really pathologically obsessed with the masculine qualities of manly men lately; and whereas, a real manly man never, ever quits: Now therefore be it resolved that Richey has introduced the exact same dumb meaningless resolution again this year. Like, exactly the same. If we didn’t know any better we might think all of this state’s problems were solved long ago, what with the way these lawmakers spend their time. Hey Richey, why don’t you man up and do some actual work for a change? n

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BLOOD MOON A forensic follow-up on a police killing in south St. Louis BY ALISON FLOWERS

onths after publishing “The Fatal Tunnel,” I received a tip from an unlikely source y fi e year old son. He was talking about the phases of the moon. Like many kids his age, he is obsessed with all things lunar. Like many parents, my mind was elsewhere. “It’s a waning crescent!” he declared one day, to which I replied “uh-huh.” “It’s a waxing gibbous!” he declared another day, to which I replied “mm-hmm.” Then, it came to me. I wondered how bright the moon was on December 12, 2019, in St. Louis. That was the night a decorated police officer fired eight shots, striking 24-year-old Cortez ufford at least fi e ti es, after chasing him down in a pitch-black gangway between two homes — the fatal tunnel. “Watch, when we get to the mouth of the alley, he’s going to be running,” Bufford’s killer, Officer ucas oethlisberger, told his partner before exiting their police-issue Chevy Tahoe, according to fficer artinous alls’ interview with investigators. oethlisberger confronted ufford outside of a BP in south St. Louis’ Carondelet neighborhood because it looked like he was urinating beside the gas station, the officers said.

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His prediction was right. Bufford ran. But if Bufford, who had been tased and beaten by St. ouis police fi e years prior, ran because he was scared of another violent encounter, his prediction was right, too. Video footage outside the shows oethlisberger almost immediately pulling his gun. As ufford fled, he and the Tahoe collided. Bufford fell to the ground, got back to his feet and kept running northwest on Bates Street into the neighborhood. He veered into a yard and tried to clear a fence in one gangway but couldn’t. e scu ed with the officer, scratching hi , and then he ran across the street. The officer followed. Bufford’s life ended in the black hole of the gangway. “How was your vision in that?” an in estigator later asked oethlisberger. “I could see,” he answered, about a month after the shooting. hat the officer could see, he asserted, was Bufford pulling a gun from his crossbody bag and pointing it at him, causing him to fear for his life. Under the Fourth Amendment, this “reasonable fear” can give law enforce ent officers license to kill, the courts have ruled again and again. This would be dispositive of the Bufford case, unless there was a way to rebut oethlisberger’s

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gangway that night and found Roethlisberger and the slain Bufford, he said, he “could not see.” “It was very dark,” Walls said. In fact, alls had to use a flashlight. Police records indicate the shooting happened around 9:22 p.m. Walls did not enter the gangway until several critical minutes after the shooting — as 9:24 p.m. turned to 9:25 p.m. This new understanding of the timeline can be established by a time-stamped iPhone video that a resident, who did not wish to be identified, provided to the Invisible Institute. The video did not capture the shooting, but rather its aftermath. By the time Walls made it to the gangway and rolled Bufford over, he and other officers said they saw a Glock 34 underneath his stomach.

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account. Yet no one else reportedly saw what happened. And the only other person who was present — Bufford — is dead. ut what if an officer creates the situation that puts him in fear of his life ould he really ha e seen what he said he saw hat were the isibility conditions s there any way to know New Ways of Knowing An emerging mode of investigative reporting, “forensic journalism” has been taught outside of the United States for years. In Cyprus, it is offered as a “New Media” module at Eastern Mediterranean University. In India, trained forensic journalists, under the presupposition of being neutral and fact-based, can provide evidence directly to law enforcement and the courts. A pioneer in this space is British citizen journalist Eliot Higgins and his Bellingcat website, which has probed the Malaysian Airlines flight disappearance and ussia’s in ol e ent in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Likewise, in the United States, journalists are increasingly using forensic methods to challenge official narrati es. Newsrooms are adding forensics teams to their mix. The New York Times, for example, calls its unit the “Visual Investigations team.” In 2019, Nieman Lab, a journalism think tank at Harvard University, predicted that video forensic reporting would become critical “in an era where impunity is an increasing norm, and human rights seem to be falling out of favor.” Pushing the frontiers of this e ol ing field, y colleague at the investigative journalism organization the Invisible Institute a ie al en who first unco ered the truth behind the case of Laquan McDonald, the Chicago teen who now con icted fficer Jason Van Dyke shot sixteen times in 2014 — and the UK-based human rights organization Forensic Architecture presented a yearlong investigation at the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Using new forensic techniques and on-the-ground reporting, they reconstructed the police shooting death of Harith Augustus, a local barber, in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. Their investigation contested the police account that the shooting was ustified and examined the aggressive policing that produced Augustus’ death. In so doing, they extended the reach

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Cortez Bufford had been beaten by police five years before his death. | COURTESY BUFFORD FAMILY of human rights reporting and expanded what is knowable. It was in that spirit, after publishing a nearly 8,000-word story about Bufford’s death last May, that I knew there was more to know. There always is. And it weighed on me that the public ight ne er find out what really happened, as attention on Bufford’s case fi les and a backlog of others collect dust at the St. Louis ircuit Attorney’s ffice in the U.S. city with the highest rate of police killings in the country. So, with the pro bono help and guidance of a forensic expert, I followed up on the story and undertook to test the official narrative of the incident. Before We Begin The credibility of Roethlisberger’s account of killing Bufford is already poor. (Roethlisberger’s at-

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torney Jonathan Bruntrager declined on the officer’s behalf to comment on this story, citing the police department policy to “not speak on the record about such matters.”) Roethlisberger originally said he thought ufford had fired at hi first, but ufford did not fire at all. He originally said he shot Bufford from the mouth of the gangway, but bullet casings, which tend to fly to the right and behind the shooter at a 45-degree angle, indicate he was well into the middle of the gangway, moving either forward or backward as he was shooting. Roethlisberger’s story is bolstered by the account his partner gave investigators. Their narratives lined up almost identically. There was, however, one notable difference. When Walls stepped into the

Nagging Questions Jeremy Bauer, a biomechanics and shooting reconstruction expert in eattle, has testified in cases on both sides — for police departments, as well as the families of those killed by police. He reviewed photographs, the autopsy report and other records in the Bufford case at my request. The officer’s got options for cover before committing to running into an unlit gangway,” Bauer observed from photos of the scene. The options were the two houses on either side. When he saw another shot of the gangway, littered with shell casings, he pointed out that the officer was well in there.” Over several conversations, I put to Bauer my nagging questions about the case. The largest looming inquiry was that of visibility in the gangway, but the more I pored over the investigati e file, other essy details ca e to the surface. One of them was Bufford’s reported collision into the front passenger panel of the police SUV, which happened early in the foot chase. It was an important piece of the narrative to examine because this is where Walls, who was driving the Tahoe, and Roethlisberger, who was on foot, said they observed the extended magazine of Bufford’s pistol protruding from his bag when he fell to the ground — establishing “reasonable fear” well before they entered the dark gangway. It is noteworthy that Walls and oethlisberger were first interviewed about a month after the shooting and were aligned on this memory. Yet, another nearby officer who witnessed the collision and was interviewed the same

The gun police claim Bufford was carrying. | SLMPD

Evidence markers indicated Offier Roethlisberger fired from within the gangway. | SLMPD night as the shooting did not tell investigators he saw any gun when Bufford was “knocked” to the ground, got back on his feet and ran away. I found a Tahoe in Chicago to take some measurements, and I discovered that Bufford would have had to have been hit and tossed about 15.5 to 17.5 feet away from the vehicle for the driver of the Tahoe to be able to see his gun in his bag. With a Tahoe, you “don’t necessarily go on top” — you’d likely be projected in the direction the vehicle was moving. “A 15 foot projection equates to an impact of between 15 and 18 miles per hour,” Bauer said. Stranger still, Walls and Roethlisberger said that Bufford ran into the Tahoe, not the other way around. In that scenario, Bufford would not have been projected at

all, according to Bauer. He would have fallen more directly to the ground, further limiting Walls’ ability to see Bufford’s bag and the alleged gun magazine. If Walls did not see Bufford’s gun magazine, the police radio indicates one of the officers thought, or at least said aloud, that Bufford had a gun. “North, north, north! He’s got a gun … Bates, he’s running north, he’s got a handgun,” an officer’s voice calls out over the radio. Roethlisberger later told investigators he thought Bufford was carrying because of the type of “man bag” across his chest and that it looked heavy. But is the belief that someone has a gun — which Bufford, in any case, would have been legally carrying — enough to establish an officer’s reasonable fear for his life Another detail that bothered

The drink bottle was upright when police photographed it at the scene. | SLMPD me was a drink bottle that appeared in police photographs at the scene. The supplemental report noted, “By the fence, the Detectives observed an unopened sports drink.” It was the type of drink Bufford’s family knew him to buy, and he had purchased a drink at the BP gas station just before the confrontation and chase. It was hard to believe that Bufford could have run with the bottle without dropping it, throughout the encounter, including the collision with the police Tahoe. Or to understand how he would have the time or presence of mind to place the bottle neatly upright by the fence before allegedly pulling out a gun. It seems more likely that the bottle was in his pocket or his bag — and someone else took it out after the fact. But a closer analysis of Bufford’s

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black Lacoste crossbody bag raises doubt about whether he could have been carrying the gun that was allegedly found beneath him at all. The Lacoste bag was fairly small and slim. The police did not return it to the family, so we were not able to take measurements, but Bufford’s mother, Tammy, estimated the bag was 8 inches tall by 5 inches wide. A similar style of the same brand bag measures 8 inches by 5.5 inches. But by either estimation, the gun — a Glock 34, which according to the manufacturer is 8.82 inches by 5.47 inches — would have either been too wide or too tall for such a bag. So why would Bufford walk around with a bag that’s too s all for his gun A police lab report of the gun was negati e for fingerprints. t is clear from photographs of the scene that the gun changed loca-

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tions. In one photo, the bloody gun is on the ground, partially obscured by leaves. In another, it’s flipped o er and placed inside what looks like a box. Bauer has found there is little to no consistency in how scenes are docuented in instances of officer involved shootings. “This is one of the problems in handling the gun, or any evidence, in the field,” auer said. hat if there were prints on the gun? They can smear the prints and alter other evidence by handling evidence in the field. n fact, they could e en be destroying evidence that could have helped them.” Meanwhile, the clip of the gun appears to have blood on it in police photographs, calling into question how it could become bloody if it was inside the gun. And if it wasn’t in the Glock, why would Bufford reach for a pistol that had no clip in it? Bauer also reviewed the medical examiner’s report for any takeaways about Bufford’s position when the bullets hit his body. f the eight shots fired, fi e, possibly six (a graze) of them hit Bufford’s body, front and back, from his left fingertip to the right thigh and upper back. Three shots to his face and head, one in each cheek, and the fatal shot to the upper left forehead. While it is very hard to assign an order to the shots, Bauer noted that it appears Bufford was likely turned away fro ” the officer initially. Based on the description of wounds and their paths, the right side of Bufford’s right thigh and his upper back were facing the barrel of the gun. “His back is to the officer,” auer said. It also appeared to Bauer that Bufford was fairly upright when he was hit with the first two shots, then “the head and face shots were the later shots.” They appear more downward, indicating Bufford, already shot, may have been turning toward the officer when he was shot again in the right cheek, left forehead and left cheek. “He’s standing up, hit on the right, pivots to the right and puts his head down, potentially guarding, like in a hail storm,” Bauer described while studying the report. Back in the Gangway I had made a follow-up reporting trip to St. Louis the week before speaking with Bauer. In Carondelet, I found two earwitnesses I hadn’t spoken to during my re-

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porting for the first story, obtained a resident’s video and tracked down the original owner of the gun allegedly found beneath Bufford. (The gun owner told me that particular pistol, purchased from Mike’s Guns in St. Charles, Missouri, had been stolen from his home some years back; public records show he reported a Glock 34 stolen from his car in 2018. This ran counter to what force investigators had noted in their report, that “a computer inquiry on the Glock pistol revealed no theft.”) But the thrust of the trip was

probability. I had even arranged for a stand-in to take the place of Bufford. According to the website mooncalc.org, on December 12, 2019, the moon was almost as bright as it could be, a 99 percent full moon. When I would return on November 18, 2021, the moon would be even brighter, at 99.9 percent brightness. This would not be the only variable to control, Bauer told me. The moon’s overall position in the night sky — its altitude and azimuth (the angle of a sphere)

The author using the photometer in the gangway. | ALISON FLOWERS to examine the gangway at night with my own eyes. The experiment was thwarted by a light from a neighbor’s basement window that illuminated the grassy path of the gangway, altering the conditions from the night of the shooting. The resident did not answer his door — I knocked a lot — and the basement light stayed on that night until I gave up. I drove back to Chicago the next morning. That’s when the moon entered my thinking. I decided to go back to St. Louis when the moon would be similar in size and illumination as the night of the shooting. I planned to reconstruct the conditions of the night Bufford was killed, as best I could. Along with matching the moonlight, I would use forensic tools to measure the brightness and contrast of the gangway to calculate visibility

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would also be important factors to determine visibility. And it turns out, the moon’s position that night, approximately 44 degrees altitude and 95 degrees azimuth, was not directly in line with the gangway. “It wouldn’t have had any direct illumination,” Bauer said. Had the moon been up high and to the left the night of the shooting, it could have shone on the palecolored farmhouse next door and provided some bounce, but Bauer added “we know the moon was not there.” There were no independent light sources in the space. Beyond the gangway, police photographs show the neighbor’s porch light was illuminated the night of the shooting, but that would have only made it harder to see what was happening in the narrow

space between the houses. The porch light in the officer’s eyes would have made his eyes momentarily less sensitive to the darkness of the gangway,” Bauer said. “His eyes would have needed time to adjust to the low light levels in the gangway after being exposed to the relatively bright porch light.” But even when it’s really dark, you can sometimes make out objects and people because of the contrast with the background, Bauer reminded me. This is why I needed to reconstruct the scene and judge with my own eyes, as well as secure a set of special tools to measure luminance and illuminance. To measure brightness, I rented a lu eter, specifically a IC C700U SpectroMaster, from a camera gear shop in Chicago. Online, I also rented “one of the best hand meters on the market,” a certified calibrated onica inolta LS-110 Luminance meter, to gauge the contrast between a stand-in’s body, who would be wearing similar clothing to Bufford’s that night, and the wooden fence behind her. I would also need to test the stand-in’s “gun.” To be clear, I did not use an actual gun in this experiment. For my purposes, I instead selected an all-black can opener of similar size and thickness to a Glock, to sample against the fence. By measuring the contrast of the object (the body and the gun) against the background (the fence or the jacket or the T-shirt), it validates how strong the silhouette is, according to Bauer, to determine “threshold of detectability.” Above all, the neighbor’s basement light would need to be turned off or fully covered. I purchased a 75-square-foot roll of heavy-duty, extra-wide aluminum foil and tape. With some training and these tips, I headed back to the gangway. The Blood Moon As chance would have it, the longest lunar eclipse of this century was to take place hours after my scheduled reconstruction. In the early morning hours, the full moon would travel through the edge of the Earth’s shadow. Because of its reddish hue, it’s called a blood moon, and although it had no bearing on the experiment, the realization was chilling as I prepared to hit the road. My son wanted to know what I was up to. I explained that I was trying to find out what happened to somebody’s son who died. “What happens when we die?” he asked. He knew what my an-

swer would be. “The body dies,” I told him, as I have before. “But the soul lives on.” “What’s a soul?” “It’s a mystery.” That’s what I say when I don’t know so ething, so find yself saying it a lot when my son asks questions. “Does the soul turn into something else when the body dies?” “Maybe…” I said. “It’s a mystery.” In the Dark The stand-in wore a gold Missouri Tigers T-shirt, black sweatpants and a black puffer jacket. Underneath the jacket, we placed a black cross-body bag. A notable difference between the stand-in and Bufford was skin tone. The stand-in was fair-skinned and white, while Bufford was Black with a medium skin tone. In the dark, it would be easier to see the stand-in’s exposed head and hand than Bufford’s. If I couldn’t see a white person in the dark, definitely wouldn’t be able to see a Black person. When we arrived around 7:45 p.m. (to be in range of the matching moon azimuth), the neighbor’s basement light was on, again. I knocked on his door, again, and this time the homeowner answered. After identifying myself as an investigative journalist, and a little back and forth about what I was doing, he obliged and turned off the inside lights, leaving his porch light on. Check. I had purchased a neon yellow safety est and an orange traffic cone at a hardware store earlier in the day. But Bauer suggested I not wear the vest, to avoid bounce from any light that might alter the readings. So I placed both items on the sidewalk, as a signal to passersby that we were doing something with permission and intention. (At some point during the reconstruction, one such passerby casually took the safety vest. We did not intervene.) I started with the lux meter. I took several readings over about ten minutes, clocking the same result each time: “UNDER.” This meant the conditions were too dark to measure. I moved on to the luminance photometer. For more than half an hour, and with Bauer on speakerphone at times, I measured the stand-in’s different stances — front-facing, right side-facing, left side-facing, back-facing — in candelas per square meters. At the same time, I measured contrasting objects and backgrounds, in more than a dozen different

scenarios, such as the ratio of the stand-in’s (again, white) forehead to the fence or the ratio of the stand-in’s gun (again, it was a can opener) to the fence or the jacket. Using a simple calculation (contrast = greater value minus lesser value/greater value) and plugging it into a chart, I was able to determine the probability of detecting contrast. The results: When the stand-in was facing me, the probability of detecting contrast of the “gun” object against the fence or against the clothing varied. As the moon’s position in the sky changed and as the minutes passed, my readings went from zero percent to 30 percent to nearly 100 percent. When the stand-in’s right side was facing me, the results were also mixed. But when the stand-in’s left-side or back was facing me, there was zero percent probability of contrast detection. In other words, detecting contrast between dark objects in the gangway was spotty at best and sometimes nonexistent. Meanwhile, discerning what the objects actually were — being able to tell that the object is a person or a gun, rather than a dark blob — was a matter for human eyes. The Great Human Test My vision is 20/20, according to a recent checkup. At 8:49 p.m., recording my observations in a voice memo, I approached the gangway. The stand-in stood at the other end by the fence. In the solemnity of this experiment, I closed my eyes and pictured Bufford in the darkness. In my mind, he was alive and afraid. My mind wandered over to my own son, and I opened my eyes, so I wouldn’t have to see. “OK, here I go. Alright. The [porch] light is in my eyes. I am at the mouth of the gangway. I cannot see a person.” I walked further in, about a quarter of the way. “I can sort of see a person.” I kept walking to the halfway point. “I can see her hand move. She’s white, and so I can see her white hand. She’s wearing a black jacket. I can tell that there’s a strap across her chest, but I can’t see the bag.” I saw the whiteness of her hand against the black bag. “I can’t see if she has anything in her hand,” I told Bauer, who was on speakerphone. “Do you?” I asked her. “I do,” she said. She was holding the can opener. Continued on pg 19

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“Oh my gosh, OK. I cannot make out anything in your hand. I wouldn’t know that you’re holding an object.” Still standing halfway into the gangway, about a minute had passed since I entered it. “I mean, I can see you. I just can’t see anything in your hand other than your white hand.” Walking another quarter into the gangway, I said: “I still can’t see this object.” I stopped three-quarters of the way through the gangway. This was deeper than Roethlisberger went. My eyes had been adjusting for more than two minutes. This was far longer than the seconds the officer had before firing. ut at this stance, for the first ti e, could detect that the stand-in was holding a black object of some kind. “OK, I think that’s all.” After more than an hour of tests, we packed up. There’s always the great human test, I reminded myself, and it’s pretty agreeable with the numbers. I could not see what Roethlisberger said he saw. I could not see a person at the mouth of the gangway, where he said he was standing when he fired shots. Given the placement of the shell casings in the gangway, it is clear that Roethlisberger actually was about halfway into the gangway — but when I stood in roughly the same spot, I could only discern that there was a person, not that they were retrieving or holding any object. At the Buffords’ efore lea ing town, stopped by the ufford fa ily ho e. t was only about four minutes in the car from where their son was shot. I reali ed the uffords ust dri e by that gangway all the time. Ta y ufford, orte ’s other, greeted me at her front door. ther than finding a lawyer, there were no updates in the case, she told me. Not since the initial flurry surrounding the publication of “The Fatal Tunnel” in May 2021 in the Intercept and the Riverfront Times and a follow-up segment on St. Louis Public Radio. Four days after the story came out, ircuit Attorney i ardner’s office pro ided a state ent to the affiliate’s idday show, St. Louis on the Air, seemingly announcing that they were seeking funding to investigate policeshooting cases like ufford’s. “To this end, we have requested

Bufford with his sisters. | COURTESY BUFFORD FAMILY additional budgetary resources from the board of alderman and the Mayor to carry out these comple and difficult in estigations required in such shootings as well as services for families involved in these tragic events,” the statement read. Later in the summer, Gardner reached out to the uffords to eet the . According to the ufford family, she connected them to other families affected by police killings. She also told them she would be assigning an investigator to look into what happened, beyond what the police put on paper, Tammy ufford said. ardner e plained that she only has one investigator for these cases, but that she wants to create a unit dedicated to them, ufford said. n The atal Tunnel,” we reported that St. Louis has more than twenty unsolved police shooting cases, where authorities have not made a determination about whether the shooting was ustified.” ut after eeting with the inestigator once, the uffords ha e not heard anything more from ardner’s office. After se eral calls and emails, a spokesperson did not provide any comment beyond an acknowledgement of our inquiry, in advance of this story. er office is in sha bles,” Ta y ufford said, describing how the circuit attorney’s office lost or couldn’t find a doorbell camera video one resident turned over. nside the ufford ho e, we headed towards Tammy’s desktop computer in the front family room where she opened up some files to show e. She pointed out the blood on the

clip of the gun. Next, she played the neighbor’s 911 call off her computer speakers. I leaned in to listen. The time of the call was 9:25 p.m. DISPATCHER: St. Louis City Police, Erica. RESIDENT 1: Yeah, I live at 533 Bates. There was somebody between my house and the next house firing shots. I mean, right outside my wall. I live in a frame house. DISPATCHER: And how many shots did you hear? RESIDENT 1: One, two. [pause] One, two, three. Five shots. RESIDENT 2: [in the background] At least. DISPATCHER: OK. All right. Well, I’ll get an officer out there. RESIDENT 1: All right. DISPATCHER: Thank you. RESIDENT 1: Thank you. Bye-bye. hen Ta y ufford played the call again, she pointed out the “at least” comment from the speaker in the background. I had issed it the first ti e. What also struck me was the two clusters of shots the resident described: First there were two — “one, two” — then there were three more that he heard — “one, two, three.” This lined up with auer’s assess ent of the first two shots” and the later “face shots.” ut what was ost telling was the resident seemed to have no indication that the “someone” who

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was shooting was a police officer. He reported hearing nothing else to the dispatcher. Not “drop your gun” or “drop your weapon,” as the neighbor on the other side of the gangway said. When I asked another, very close earwitness who was ne er interviewed by police and did not want to be identified in this story if they heard the officer say anything of the kind, at any point, they said: “No, that was never said.” Ta y ufford took e up to orte ’s bedroo on the second floor of the house. he apologi ed for the mess. The grandkids like to play in there, she explained. Hanging on his bedroom door were some of his clothes, left undisturbed two years later. Back Home hen returned to hicago, walked from the garage to our back kitchen door. My son was standing there, on the other side of the glass, waiting for me. “Did the boy turn into something else?” he asked. I must have looked puzzled. “The boy who died. Did the boy’s soul turn into something else?” “It’s a mystery.” I hugged him. “Maybe,” I said, “he turned into the moon.” n Sam Stecklow contributed to the reporting for this story. Alison Flowers is the director of investigations at the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit journalism production company on the South Side of Chicago. The Invisible Institute was named a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in Audio Reporting and a winner for National Reporting in 2021.

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CAFE

Grease Under Pressure Despite pandemic challenges, Jack Nolen’s has perfected the art of the burger Written by

CHERYL BAEHR Jack Nolen’s 2501 South Ninth Street. Tues.-Sat. 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. (Closed Mondays.)

wo years ago this coming March, still basking in the afterglow of a ridiculously gooey double cheeseburger, I filed a re iew of ack olen’s like I would any other week. This time, though, something felt different. As news of the then-emerging COVID-19 threat began to get grimer with e ery passing day, it see ed tone deaf to be re iewing restaurants as if nothing was happening. hould we include ca eats in our write ups about the risk of dining out in public hould we switch to co ering takeout dining only hould we cancel reiews altogether These uestions weighed hea ily on the RFT’s editorial tea those first two weeks of ’s third onth, but they would be answered for us a week later after we decided to pull the plug on the ack olen’s re iew ery dining roo in the t. ouis area was shut down by the city and county go ern ents, and nearly all of our own staff was furloughed. ow, two years into what was then thought of as a crisis that would likely last ust a couple of months, we are again beating our collecti e heads against the wall o er how we co er food, usic, the arts and all of the other things that call us to gather together. Granted, things are much different this ti e around accines are a ailable, there is a ple to go around, and we are starting to discern so e patterns about irus wa e peaks and alleys. till, considering how highly contagious this current o icron ariant is, it again feels uncomfortable to encourage indoor dining, e en as we are fully aware that our read-

Jack Nolen’s signature item is its smashed burgers, but it also features a variety of sandwiches and appetizers. | MABEL SUEN ers do not ha e the sto achs to endure onths of co erage about curbside and deli ery options. rankly, we don’t know what to do, and neither do restaurants. For news outlets like us, shifting co erage ay be challenging, but it does not necessarily pose the e istential threat that closing up shop has this ti e around for restaurants. As ack olen’s owner i rindstaff notes, the past two years for his business ha e been filled with uncertainty, arring changes, closures of his fa ily’s two other restaurants, a dissol ed partnership with his other and brother (albeit an amicable one), and a trip to the bank he called his “walk of shame,” in which he had to put his personal finances on the line to keep his business afloat. t’s a far cry fro the situation he thought he’d be in when he, his brother and his mother decided to open ack olen’s back in ece ber of . An Air orce eteran who was looking for a business opportunity following his ser ice, Grindstaff found himself in the restaurant industry after opening a franchise location of the national wings, burgers and oysters chain efferson’s in elle ille, llinois, in 2006. When his brother

Owner Jim Grindstaff soldiers on, offering delicious burgers in a tough industry. | MABEL SUEN left the Army shortly thereafter, he joined Grindstaff and their other in running the elle ille efferson’s, opening a second franchise of the restaurant in Mascoutah, Illinois, a few years later. rindstaff instantly fell in lo e with the restaurant business and, though he lo ed running efferson’s, he always drea ed of opening an independent place that was all his fa ily’s ision. urgers were

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a particular passion of his he e en had his own burger blog, mostly to keep track of his research, and tra eled the country trying to nail down what ade the perfect ersion of his belo ed dish. Armed with that research, he was well prepared to u p when the opportunity ca e. After seeing an ad ertise ent for a bar in oulard that was for sale, he

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Fried chicken sandwich with seven ounces of hand-battered chicken breast with lettuce, pickles and mayo — available plain or spicy. | MABEL SUEN

Deviled eggs with smoked bacon and paprika. | MABEL SUEN

JACK NOLEN’S Continued from pg 21

checked out the scene and reported back to his mother and brother that it was the perfect spot for a burger restaurant. Naming the place after Grindstaff’s oldest son, Jackson, and his brother’s oldest son, Nolen, the three Grindstaffs opened Jack Nolen’s just over two years ago. The place was a hit right off the bat and was quickly embraced by the Soulard community for its outstanding burgers, comfortable atmosphere and immediate knack for making guests feel like regu-

lars. Even after having to close for two months due to the pandemic, patrons flocked back, eager to show their support in whatever ways they could. Around that time, Grindstaff bought out his brother and mother’s interest in Jack Nolen’s so he could focus on the Soulard bar and they could concentrate on Jefferson’s. Eventually, they would go on to shutter their Illinois franchises; his brother wanted out of the hospitality industry, and his mother was ready to retire (Grindstaff recently took over the Belleville Jefferson’s and converted it into a burger spot called AJ’s Smashed & Smoked), leaving Grindstaff the

only one left in the business. Through all of the ups, downs, upheaval and successes, Jack Nolen’s has relied on its winning formula of outstanding burgers to keep it going. One bite of the restaurant’s signature juicy, melt-inthe-mouth burger and it’s easy to see why. Using a blend of brisket, chuck and short rib, the patty is tender and well marbled so that when it is s ashed on a flattop, it gets a slight crispy edge but remains buttery throughout; gooey American cheese melts, not simply on top, but into the burger, seeping into every crevice. The patty is tucked into a soft potato bun and (optionally) garnished with lettuce, tomato, onion and ridge sliced pickles, making it the quintessential — and utterly outstanding — version of the cheeseburger form. The same decadent burger forms the basis of Jack Nolen’s Patti Melt, another instance of the restaurant perfecting a classic sandwich. Here, two patties are paired with Swiss and American cheese, tangy Style sauce (akin to 1000 Island) and grilled onions, and melted between two slices of buttery griddled sourdough bread. It’s like taking all that is beautiful about a cheeseburger and a grilled cheese and melding them together. Once offered only as a special, Jack Nolen’s Firecracker Burger was so popular it became a permanent addition to the menu. Here, two burger patties are cov-

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ered in pepperjack cheese, searing hot jalapeño relish and a mouth-tingling Fire Ranch sauce, making it the spicy chicken sandwich version of the cheeseburger. If you are looking for an actual spicy chicken sandwich, though, Jack Nolen’s has those too — and does them as well as it does its burgers. For this dish, a massive chicken breast is coated in crunchy, black-peppery breading, covered in tangy hot sauce and placed on a bun with lettuce, pickles and onions that cool down the spice. The same sandwich is available without the heat; this version makes it obvious how excellent the breading is: a thick, crispy coating akin to country-friedsteak batter. It’s a contender for the best classic chicken sandwich in town. Jack Nolen’s offers a variety of French-fry options, including a deeply savory brown-gravy-andblue-cheese-covered Bluetine, the mozzarella-cheese-and-Italianseasoning-topped Scattered, and an outstanding take on a cheese fry, called Style, that pairs the fries with melted American cheese and the restaurant’s zesty Style sauce. For those not into fries, the potato salad, laden with creamy mayo and relish, is so classically picnic in form it should come with a redand-white-checkered tablecloth. All of these offerings are available through a seamless carry-out system, which is how I felt the most comfortable experiencing the restaurant. Jack Nolen’s employs the user-friendly system SpotOn, which makes enjoying its offerings in the comfort and safety of your own home an easy option. Even after traveling from the restaurant’s location in Soulard to my house about twenty minutes away, the food was still warm and delicious. Like most restaurants at this point in this dreadful scourge, Jack Nolen’s can’t afford to close its doors. Government assistance is no longer an option, revenue reserves are dried up, and, frankly, there isn’t the public tolerance for shutdown measures. So, like all of us, they carry on as best as they can, making the decisions they feel are right for their own circumstances, asking for grace and — as each and every one of us is on a daily basis — hoping and praying (but not holding our breath) that this is the last time we have to stress about where and how we can eat.

Jack Nolen’s Double cheeseburger ................................. $9 Fried chicken sandwich ........................... $10 Bluetine........................................................$6

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SHORT ORDERS “We are constantly thinking about it and wanting to improve on it, because I don’t think it is ever perfect, and it’s worth improving what is already a good thing.”

[FOOD NEWS]

Winner Winner Juniper launches ‘all you care to eat’ fried-chicken Sunday suppers Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

ohn Perkins knows that, right now, people need all the comfort they can get. That’s why he and his team have decided to up the ante at their already soul-warming restaurant, Juniper (4101 Laclede Avenue, 314-329-7696), by offering a new Sunday dining package that is sure to please. “I think the idea of sitting around a pile of fried chicken and drinking a pitcher of cocktails is the kind of comfort people want right now,” Perkins says. In that spirit, Perkins, executive chef Matt Daughaday and the Juniper team are excited to launch their new Sunday Suppers, a weekly event that will feature all-you-care-to-eat platters of either its regular or hot fried chicken, family-style sides and cornbread for the all-inclusive price of $24.99 per person. Pitchers of batch cocktails, which roughly contain four drinks, will be offered for $19.99, shots of bourbon and tequila are available at $1.99 a piece, and Busch beer will cost you a mere 99 cents. The regularly occurring event will run from 5 until 9 p.m. and began last Sunday. As Perkins explains, the idea for Sunday Suppers harkens back to a popular dinner series called Monday Night Meat and Three offered at Juniper’s original Boyle Avenue location. When he moved the restaurant to its new corner spot on Laclede Avenue in 2018, he discontinued the series because he felt it didn’t uite fit for what he was doing there, though he always had it in the back of his mind that he might try it again. Perkins does not mince words about why the

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You now can eat as much of this fried chicken as your heart desires on Sundays. | LUCAS PETERSON timing seems right to do so at this particular moment. “On a very practical level, we need to find ways to dri e re enue without overextending ourselves on the labor front,” Perkins explains. “We’re currently open fi e days a week, and within that time frame, we wanted to see what areas we could get more business. Lunches are not really an option right now, and the only service we aren’t doing on a day we are open is Sunday night. We started batting ideas around, and this just made sense because chicken has always been our calling card.” Fried chicken is not simply a revenue stream for Perkins, however. Though he has been frying up crispy bird for the past eight years, Perkins insists he is not tired of it and considers the

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dish to be a labor of love. He believes this is why Juniper’s fried chicken has occupied — and continues to occupy — such a special place in the hearts of St. Louis diners. “This is going to sound super cheesy, but it’s true: I really love fried chicken,” Perkins says. “I actually really love it and have never gotten tired of it. Maybe chefs at different times have gotten tired of it, but I haven’t, and I think that matters on some level. I think it’s easy for highminded chefs to have a resentment toward it because it seems too lowbrow, but Matt [Daughaday] doesn’t have that approach. He gets it and really understands that there is still a lot of art in making really good fried chicken, as well as intention and thought that goes into it. He

cares about making sure that it’s the best version possible when it goes out of our kitchen.” To that end, Perkins and Daughady are not content simply following the usual recipe and sticking with how they have always made their famous dish. Instead, they are always driven to make it better, and take opportunities to tweak and perfect the recipe rather than making it from rote memory. “We are constantly thinking about it and wanting to improve on it, because I don’t think it is ever perfect, and it’s worth improving what is already a good thing,” Perkins says. “When you are always trying to make it better, I think you end up with a product that people really enjoy and love to eat.” Perkins plans on continuing Sunday Suppers for as long as there is demand. He suspects it to be a popular event, though he is not taking reservations; the dinners will be walk-in only. In addition to the chicken, side and drink specials, he plans to also offer comfort-food-driven desserts for an additional fee, with items like a cast-iron skillet brownie on the horizon. He believes that, coupled with the shockingly cheap booze, will create the sort of end-ofweekend outing people need. “I was joking with our staff at our meeting last week that we can finally be the truck stop we’ e always wanted to be now that we’ve adopted the 99-cent pricing model,” Perkins laughs. n

[FIRST LOOK]

Root Beer Schlafly Highland Square brings craft beer and pub fare to Highland, Illinois Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

hen the chlafly fa ily made their way to the United States from Switzerland in the mid-1800s, they put down roots in Highland, Illinois. That’s why the brewery’s new brewpub location, chlafly ighland uare, feels like a homecoming. or the chlaflys, this is where they immigrated when they came from Switzerland, and some of the first chlaflys in the nited States] are buried in Highland,” says Wil Rogers, director of marketing for chlafly eer. Their ancestors are buried here. Those roots are what brings us back here, which is really cool.” chlafly opened its ighland location on December 22. This is the fourth brewpub for the brand and came just days before the brewery celebrated its 30th anniversary on December 26. In keeping with the spirit of the three other locations, the new pub has a distinctive chlafly feel while being uni uely tailored to the community. The Highland vibe is noticeable even before you walk into the building. Situated directly on the small town’s popular square, the new restaurant resides in a former bank, which dates back to the early s. The chlafly team made sure that the new spot would flow directly into that pedestrian area by creating a patio and grassy outdoor green space that looks out over the square. Inside, they maintained the architectural integrity of the former bank’s art deco style by refurbishing much of the original structure, including columns, molding and light fi tures. The indoor space is painted in the same cream, mauve and mint green as the renovators believe the original colors to have been. Even the bank’s safe has

“Thighs and Pies” is one of the Swiss-inflected dishes now available at the new Schlafly Highland Square. | CHERYL BAEHR

A safe behind the bar reminds guests of the building’s history as a bank. | CHERYL BAEHR been preserved, occupying a position of prominence behind the wooden bar. chlafly has catered the ighland brewpub’s menu to the town’s historic Swiss roots as well. Though the offerings include the burgers, salads and flatbreads found at the brand’s other locations, the Highland location has ore of a wiss er an inflection. Dishes that underscore this theme include the Proper Fondue for Two, a dip made from molten goat and Alpine cheese and proper

cider served with smoked sausage, apples and bread for dipping. Other ighland specific dishes include jagerschnitzel, which is a pork cutlet, served with mushroom-bacon sauce and mashed potatoes; kasespaetzle, a baked spaetzle with ham, Swiss cheese, caramelized onions, chives and breadcrumbs; and Thighs and Pies, a dish of two buttermilk fried-chicken thighs served alongside a spinach and sweet potato hand pie and covered in white gravy. “This is a very historic Swiss

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town, and there is this smallertown vibe, so a lot of that comes out in the menu,” Rogers says. “The menu is always a great avenue to give each place a little bit of its own fingerprint.” To that end, director of pub operations Andy White is making an effort to include area vendors as much as possible on the menu. From Marcoot Creamery cheese, which is located nearby, to Ski Soda, Frosty’s Root Beer and produce from Illinois farmers, the Highland location will showcase the bounty available in the area. In the future, Rogers says that the Highland location will have its own beer brewed specifically for it. Called the Highland Lager, the forthcoming beer will be a light, approachable American-style lager, which will cater to drinkers who may be intimidated or turned off by the idea of craft beer. ogers also says that the chlafly team is open to doing special events in conjunction with the city and hopes to participate in whatever happenings are taking place in this vibrant community. “Highland loves their town square, so there is always something going on here,” Rogers says. “Much more than the other three, this place really feels ingrained into the community.” n

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[PIZZA NEWS]

Slice of the Pie Pizza Head is now under new ownership, will expand vegan offerings Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

izza Head (3196 South Grand Boulevard, 314-266-5400), the irre erent, punk rock inflected pizzeria known for its vegetarian New York style pies, has a new captain of its ship — two of them. The restaurant announced last week that it is now under new ownership. Scott Sandler, the restaurant’s founder, has sold the restaurant to Dylan Dodson and Sam Driemeier, who Sandler promises “will take it to the next level.” In a January 4 Facebook post announcing the sale, Sandler thanked Pizza Head’s supporters and noted that he would be “taking an extended vacation after 8 successful years of 24/7 work.” He did not give reason for the sale and said he would not be leaving the industry but will transition to consulting work. “I’ll still be demoing and lecturing at the Pizza Expo in March,” Sandler’s post reads. “I will also

[FOOD NEWS]

Fruit for All Eckert’s in Belleville to begin accepting SNAP benefits Written by

JENNA JONES

hris Eckert, the president of Eckert’s Inc., says community is at the heart of everything they do at the farm. That’s why the company recently announced that they will begin accepting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments, known as SNAP, through EBT cards, allowing visitors another means to get fresh fruits and vegetables when they visit the Belleville location (951 S Green Mt Road, 618-310-2758). “From the very beginning, we’ve always strived to put more farm-grown

Pizza Head’s new owners promise the same great pizza and even more vegan offerings. | MABEL SUEN be consulting new and current owners in the finer points of aintaining a high profit argin while keeping wages high, as well as how to expand vegan options.” As for what’s in store for Pizza Head, Dodson and Driemeier insist that the restaurant’s fans can rest assured that they will not be making any changes to the pizza they’ve come to know and love. “We are thrilled to continue to serve you the delicious New York style pizza that you’ve come to love for the last 4 1/2 years,” their produce and local foods in the hands of our community where it matters most,” Eckert says in a press release announcing the program. “We now have the opportunity to provide fresh and healthy food straight from the source to those who may have limited access otherwise.” The press release details that the move comes after a successful partnership between Operation Food Search and Eckert’s that helped the nonprofit organization’s more than 200 food pantries throughout the bi-state region. The acceptance of SNAP payments allows shoppers at the country stores to purchase fresh produce, meat, fish, bread and dairy products. In addition to the country stores, people can also use the SNAP payments on the “pick your own” produce. However, guests still must purchase admission for field access. Eckert’s Garden Center will also accept SNAP benefits to purchase seeds to grow fruits and vegetables at home. Both Missouri and Illinois residents are eligible. The farm hopes to extend the benefits to its other locations in the future. n

post on Pizza Head’s Facebook page reads. “We do not plan on taking anything off of the menu, but there are plans for some great (vegan) additions to the menu.” Sandler founded Pizza Head in 2017 as a casual, punk-rock answer to his more serious freshman effort, Pizzeoli, which he opened in Soulard in 2014. A former mortgage investor turned Neapolitan-pizza obsessive, he became known for his exacting approach to the quintessential southern Italian pie form, as well

as his ability to make vegetarian and vegan options appealing to even the most devout meat-onpizza eaters. Dodson and Driemeier plan to carry on that philosophy, promising new vegan offerings as well as expanded hours and dine-in service when they feel it is safe to do so. They also look forward to relaunching Pizza Head’s charitable initiative, Pay It Forward, and are currently working with area nonprofits to sketch out the details. n

SNAP Benefits will now be accepted at Eckert’s Farms. | COURTESY ECKERT’S FARMS

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RIVERFRONT TIMES

ST. LOUIS STANDARDS

[ S T. L O U I S S TA N D A R D S ]

Same Old Song Even as the Loop evolves, Meshuggah retains the unique character that makes it special Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

f you want to know the special place Meshuggah Café holds in the hearts of its longtime regulars, consider the term owner Jen Kaslow uses when she recounts its history. “I do know the lore … is ‘lore’ the right word?” Kaslow laughs. As owner and steward of the University City Loop institution for the past six and a half years — and a regular for roughly two decades prior to that — Kaslow is well versed in the history of Meshuggah. Founded in 1992 by two Washington University students named Jonathan and Nick, Café Chaos, as it was then called, was established on Melville Avenue as a place to gather, smoke and watch soccer. “They were two dreaded-up hippies — free spirits who just wanted a place to congregate, smoke freely and drink coffee,” Kaslow says. “It had this really dark vibe, and people would go in there late at night to smoke cigarettes, play chess and drink really strong coffee from an espresso machine, which, at that time, hadn’t yet become a thing. It was the place in the neighborhood where all the artists and intellectuals came.” After a few years, the original owners had a falling out; one left the partnership and the other renamed the coffeehouse Meshuggah, running it business as usual until he sold it to then-regular Patrick Liberto in 1997. Under Liberto’s watch, Meshuggah remained the subversive, dark hub for poets, writers, philosophers, chess players, clove cigarette smokers and other grunge-era characters that frequented the bohemian neighborhood. At first, he ade no changes to the place, keeping the

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Meshuggah has been a Loop neighborhood gathering place for 30 years. | ANDY PAULISSEN coffee strong and catering to the late-night crowd of workers from Blueberry Hill and Vintage Vinyl until one day, there was a new policy he simply had to institute. “He just couldn’t take the cigarette smoke anymore, so one day, he put an ashtray out front and made the place nonsmoking,” Kaslow recalls. “He lost a lot of business, but he stuck to his guns and kept the vibe the same otherwise. It was still a gathering place for people to exchange ideas and hang out lowkey.” In 2003, Liberto made a change even bigger than the smoke-free policy when an opportunity arose for him to move Meshuggah from its small, off-the-beaten-path spot on Melville to a storefront directly on Delmar Boulevard. He took the chance despite protests from longtime Meshuggah loyalists who feared the more visible location would change the essential character of the coffeehouse from a counterculture gathering place to a watered-down version of itself. Though the new digs were certainly brighter by default — the large windows in the front of the cafe simply let in more daylight — the place retained its indie vibe while broadening its appeal. In 2015, Liberto decided to sell Meshuggah in order to move back

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Jen Kaslow is now the owner and steward of the beloved coffeehouse. | ANDY PAULISSEN to his home state of Louisiana. On the day he made that announcement, Kaslow happened to stop in the shop, as she did nearly every day on her way to work, and heard the news that would change the trajectory of her life. “I just had this feeling that someone had to buy this place, because it was such an institution at that point,” Kaslow says. “It was part of the fabric of the community and where everyone came together in the Loop. I wanted to main-

tain that spot for everybody, so I bought it on an impulse of wanting to keep this place that was so important to the Loop going.” When Kaslow walked in the door to shadow iberto on her first day as owner of Meshuggah, she had never pulled a shot of espresso in her life. What she lacked in coffeemaking skills, however, she made up for in institutional knowledge of the place, dating back more than twenty years. Not long after Liberto had bought the coffee shop from

Bacon, egg and cheese on a toasted everything bagel with a Cortado to drink. | ANDY PAULISSEN

Barista Nick Henke has been coming to the cafe since he was a kid. | ANDY PAULISSEN its original owners, Kaslow started frequenting the place after walking in one day hoping to make a sale on a new product she had developed. A serious rock climber, Kaslow had come up with an idea for a coffee mug with a handle that could open and close like a carabiner. After designing and manufacturing the mug, she went door to door trying to sell it to businesses, and tried her luck with Liberto and Meshuggah. Though Liberto wasn’t able to purchase her mugs at the time, he and Kaslow developed a friendship and she fell in love with the place, frequenting it as her business grew and even after she moved into her teaching career. Kaslow had no intention of leaving her job in education, but the thought of Meshuggah simply ceasing to exist was enough to make her upend her life and take matters into her own hands. Since

taking over the cafe, she has done her best to serve as a steward of its legacy, maintaining the character of the place that had developed naturally over the years, but giving it a polish it so desperately needed. “A lot of people have come back and said it’s retained its core vibe but it’s cleaner,” Kaslow laughs. “There are so many people who have ties to this place — people who got engaged here twenty years ago, or people who come back here to celebrate anniversaries. Nothing makes me happier than when they say the vibe is still the same.” Kaslow understands that what those longtime regulars feel when they come back is an intangible feeling that goes way beyond the fact that they are sitting at the same tables and drinking the same house Americano out of the same mugs as they did all those years

The loft includes furniture from the original Meshuggah on Melville Avenue. | ANDY PAULISSEN ago. There is a connection to the cafe that they can feel radiating from every corner of the building, and in the faces of every person they recognize, that links them to whatever special moment in time the place triggers within them. “There is a table I recognize from the Melville location, and I remember the artist who decoupaged it,” Kaslow says. “There is an intangible energy that comes from something that embedded. People feel that. Also — Patrick did it and I do this, too — I run it like it’s my home. When you are comfortable in a spot and your employees feel that way too, it generates from the kitchen out. I think this, and the fact that there are so many regulars that come in, give it that feeling. Eighty percent of the people that come in on a daily basis, I recognize their names and faces. They recognize each other too, and that gives everyone a sense of belonging.” Now, just shy of seven years into running Meshuggah, Kaslow is looking to pass on the torch. Unwilling to sell the cafe to just anyone, she has committed to staying on until the right person comes along — someone who, like her, intends to honor the spirit of the coffeehouse and keep things as similar to the original feel as they can. She feels this is important not only for Meshuggah’s legacy, but for the Loop in general, which she sees as being in a transition period. definitely saw it change fro people with mohawks and army fatigues sitting on the Streetside Records wall and having it be this

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place where parents were leery of you going to a place where everyone was leaving,” Kaslow says. “Now they are coming back. It was hipster, then empty, and now it’s being repopulated.” Kaslow believes that the Loop’s transition can be attributed to the growth of other artsy and entertainment areas cropping up in St. Louis over the years — Cherokee Street and the Grove, for instance. She also notes that Washington University’s increasing presence in the area has ushered in a great deal of change, though she doesn’t see that as a bad thing. Instead, she feels that the students bring with them an energy, and are just as interested in having the area stay interesting and eclectic because they, too, want to be a part of something unique. She believes these changes are why it’s so important for places like Meshuggah to continue to exist, and that no matter how much transformation the Loop sees, there will always be a place for a quirky cafe that fosters community. “This is going to sound really cheesy, but I was thinking about old music that you hear and you think you are discovering it for the first ti e,” aslow says. eshuggah is like an old song that people think they are discovering for the first ti e. don’t know what that is, but my employees will tell me that they hear all these Wash U students saying ‘I found this really good place’ when they are talking about Meshuggah. I love people feeling like they are discovering it for the first ti e.” n

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REEFERFRONT TIMES An hour and a half in I realized I was up and around and cleaning my house, which all of those with whom I share a home will attest is not my usual behavior. I was also chatty and chipper, relaxed but not stoned.

[REVIEW]

Tommy Chims Drinks Some Weed Soda Written by

THOMAS CHIMCHARDS

t’s not uncommon, when perusing the wares at a dispensary, to get the good old-fashioned upsell from your budtender. “Oh you like X?” they’ll say. “You have to try Y. I have some of this myself and it’s the best!” They are salesmen, after all. Usually, as with most upsell situations, I politely wave away the suggestion. But on a recent trip to igh rofile in unset ills to pick up so e flower, got a tip fro the store’s employee that was too good to pass up. The man in question asked if I’d tried any of the Keef brand cannabis-infused sodas commonly found in most dispensaries. “Yeah, I’ve had the root beer kind,” I replied dismissively. “No, but have you tried this one specifically ” he asked, gesturing to a can of Purple Passion grape soda. I admitted that I had not, and that’s when he let me in on a little secret. You see, the regular Keef sodas (as opposed to the large ones) normally come in at about 25 milligrams of THC, and that’s the amount advertised on most dispensary websites. But by government regulation, the manufacturer must put a little sticker on the front of the can that reveals its actual THC content — and the latest batch of Purple Passion that High rofile got clocked in at a considerably higher 32 milligrams per can. “When I saw that I bought four four-packs just for myself,” my budtender told me, his excitement palpable. o, ne er one to pass up a deal, I opted to give a can of Purple Passion a go. At $14 before tax, it was

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Keef’s cannabis-infused sodas are a tasty way to elevate your day. | TOMMY CHIMS among the most expensive sodas I’d ever purchased, while simultaneously being one of the cheapest things I’ve ever bought at a dispensary. Now, as mentioned, I’d tried a eef soda before or y ery first dispensary review, I bought one of their large, 100 milligram root beers and ade a root beer float out of it. As I recall, I downed the whole thing in about fi e inutes, having wildly overestimated my tolerance for edibles, and wound up having to lie down for a while. But 32 milligrams seemed to me like it might be the sweet spot. Keef somewhat recently rolled out new resealing mechanisms for their cans, to help with dosing and to allow consumers to save

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any beverage they don’t immediately need for next time. This comes in the form of a little plastic piece that you pop and slide open. I didn’t need such a device for this sampling, as I fully intended to drink the whole thing in one go, but especially for their 100 milligram offerings I can see it being quite handy. With the top of my pop popped, I took a pull. The taste was damn delicious, a really good grape soda fla or, super sweet and refreshing, with a noticeable weedy aftertaste. I sipped on it leisurely over the course of a half hour or so, and would have gladly done so even if it weren’t infused with THC — it’s a tasty soda. The high began to kick in after

about a half hour. Keef uses all hybrid strains to manufacture its sodas, in order to offer balanced effects and a smidge of consistency fro fla or to fla or. The drinks are named after the strain that the THC was extracted from; in keeping, I did my research and knew my beverage was made using an indica leaning hybrid. urprisingly, though, I found myself quite energetic after drinking it — an hour and a half in I realized I was up and around and cleaning my house, which all of those with whom I share a home will attest is not my usual behavior. I was also chatty and chipper, relaxed but not stoned, and, as I put it in my notes, “pretty in the zone.” This stuff would be great for a party. All told, the high lasted about two or three hours, leaving me with a powerful hunger by the end (or maybe I just worked up an appetite with all that cleaning). I found it to be a delightful experience fro start to finish, sweet and sugary in all the right ways, and phenomenal in effects. A sincere thanks to that igh rofile budtender on a successful upsell — damn good looking out, sir. And while can’t say definitively what difference those extra seven milligrams of THC might have made, I can say one thing for sure ’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for the number on those little stickers going forward. n

Black people have been disproportionately likely to be arrested for cannabis possession. | SHUTTERSTOCK

[ W E E D L AW S ]

End the War Cannabis decriminalization reduces racial disparity in arrests for possession Written by

LEE DEVITO

he failed war on drugs is racist: Black people have been disproportionately more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession, despite a similar rate of cannabis use as white people. Decriminalizing cannabis has been argued as a way to reduce this racial disparity, and it appears to be working. Research shows cannabis decriminalization efforts in the U.S. have reduced the racial disparity in arrests for possession over the past twenty years. That’s according to a recent peerreviewed study published by the academic journal Social Sciences & Medicine. Researchers at the University of California San Diego analyzed statistics from the FBI Uniform Crime Report from 2000 to 2019 using data from 37 states, including eleven that decriminalized cannabis. The researchers found that the eleven states saw a 70 percent reduction in total adult cannabis arrests after decriminalization and a 40 percent reduction in cannabis arrests among young people. The racial disparity in arrests of Black and white adults decreased significantly, dropping by 17 percent after cannabis decriminalization. “Cannabis decriminalization seemed to be particularly beneficial to Blacks, who were suffering the most from the adverse consequences of criminal penalties,” the researchers wrote in the report.

Researchers found that eleven states saw a 70 percent reduction in total adult cannabis arrests after decriminalization and a 40 percent reduction in cannabis arrents among young people. “Taken together, we recommend that lawmakers and public health researchers reconsider cannabis decriminalization as an option of cannabis liberalization, particularly in states concerning the unintended consequences and implementation costs of medical and recreational cannabis legalization.” The data did not show a significant reduction in the racial disparity in arrests of Black people younger than eighteen years old, however. “These findings suggested that cannabis decriminalization had its intended consequence of reducing arrests and may have potential to reduce racial disparity in arrests at least among adults,” the researchers wrote. The researchers said empirical evidence in support of the claim that decriminalization would reduce the racial disparity in arrests had been “almost non-existent.” n

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RIVERFRONT TIMES

CULTURE

[FILM]

Extra Extra Filmmaker invites St. Louisans to appear in movie about AIDS Crisis Written by

JENNA JONES

ilmmaker Dan Steadman has worked with actresses such as Octavia Spencer and Jennifer Coolidge, but after moving to St. Louis, he found a love in working with local talent. His next movie, Million Dollar Razzle Dazzle, is being fil ed across issouri, and he’s inviting St. Louisans to appear in it, whether or not they have an extensive acting background. Million Dollar Razzle Dazzle is an anthology fil and friendship tale that takes place in St. Louis in the late 1980s during the height of the AIDS crisis. The story follows a man who has just found out one of his friends is HIV positive — a death sentence that, back then, usually meant the person had about twelve months to live, Steadman explains. The main character goes on a game show in order to raise money for a car to dri e his friend to e ico where he can receive a popular, but later proven ineffective, treatment for the virus. Steadman already shot a scene in Grafton, Illinois, on New Year’s e, with fifteen to twenty people in the local queer community playing the lead characters’ support system as they all celebrate New Year’s Eve in 1987. The director says he’s open to actors of all types. Age, gender and race don’t matter. “It’s important for me that LGBTQ actors, or even just people who wanna do it for fun, they’re playing the friend group around our lead characters. They’re their support system,” Steadman says. “They’re referred to as family because back then, sometimes the only family you had were your friends. And I think that’s a big theme of the movie.” For Steadman, a gay man, this fil is in line with his ission to make progressive movies in the idwest about arginali ed co -

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A still from Million Dollar Razzle Dazzle, an upcoming film by St. Louisan Dan Steadman. | COURTESY DAN STEADMAN munities. He’s created nine movies around issouri and llinois, including fil s about underrepresented people in the LGBTQ community, women and men over the age of 50 and those who don’t look like the conventional movie star. Ultimately, the movies he makes are the ones he would want to watch. While Steadman doesn’t usually like to watch AIDS dramas as they hit “too close to the bone,” the fil also ser es as a re inder to the public about HIV and AIDS during a different pandemic. “During the past two years of this pandemic that we’ve been in, people talk about ‘This is the worst pandemic of our lifetime.’ And as a gay man, I think ‘Not really,’” Steadman says. “I was young when in the ’80s, I was a teenager. So I mean, I wasn’t part of it. I’m not trying to pretend like I was part of that, but I came of age right after it. It’s not like it’s gone away, but I came of age in the ’90s when it was still terrifying.” Steadman says during the AIDS epide ic, specifically the late ’ s, life was really hard for those who came before him because everyone was scared when another

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person coughed, much like COVID-19. So he decided to juxtapose that real fear with the fakest thing in the world: a game show. Recreating the feel of the ’80s — both the terrifying and fun aspects of it — as well as producing a glit y ga e show to center the fil around is a key part of aking his movie. Shoulder pads, a cassette player, big hair and grounding yourself before you turned on a computer so you didn’t get an electric shock are just some of the pieces of the movie Steadman has made sure to include to transport his audience back in time. “I’m loving the wardrobe, I’m loving the hair, the makeup,” Steadman says, “and just that general like super optimistic vibe that so many people had in the late ‘80s where they just thought everything was going great and nothing bad was ever gonna happen again in the world. But the fact that this culture was going on, as my culture was dying by the thousands, you know, that’s the cra y thing.” hen the fil is a ailable to watch, Steadman hopes the audience will see the evolution of time. People think everything right now

is bad, Steadman explains, but we don’t give enough credit to the progress that’s been made in the past. People say that this is the worst time in American history, Steadman says, but he disagrees, saying this is the best time — although, it could be better and hopefully, will become better. At its heart, Steadman says Million Dollar Razzle Dazzle aims to compare time periods and tell a story of friendship — one that reflects genuine relationships Steadman has had over the years, forming a community or family that someone chooses, and steers away from the stereotype people hold of the LGBTQ community being all about sex and camp. “Everybody knows going in and coming out of the holidays, you choose to build the life and family you need,” Steadman says. “That is really what this movie is about. I would say it touches other stories, but it really is that you create the family you need to get through this challenging life.” If you’d like to be involved in the fil ing of illion ollar a le a le, e ail an tead an at circa fil s g ail.co . n

[COMICS]

Heroic Efforts St. Louis’ David Gorden brings superheroes to life with 4 Sight Studio Written by

JACK PROBST

avid Gorden is possibly the most ambitious comic creator in St. Louis. From podcasts to publishing to custom art, the 49-year-old has his hands in multiple forms of media through his production company, 4 Sight Studio, with a knack for telling compelling stories and an artistic style that lends itself to the fantastic tales he weaves. It makes sense that he’d be so passionate about the form: Gorden’s been interested in making comics and being a storyteller since he was a kid. “I’ve been doing comics in some way, shape, or form since I was eight or nine,” Gorden tells RFT. “That’s been my primary way of telling stories. Now, professionally, I would probably say since the mid-’90s. Once you get one job, [when] somebody pays you for it, at that point, you’re a professional. That’s all it took, that was that.” When Gorden’s position was downsized at his job in 2016, he decided to buckle down and make a character he created in 2002, Kwame Hightower, the focus of his next comic. He spent all his downtime writing and drawing Kwame Hightower and the Man with No Name, which he originally released via print-ondemand in 2018. Kwame Hightower is a typical twelveyear-old boy from St. Louis, too cool for his own good. He winds up moving to London, England, with his mother after his father passes away. On a tour of Buckingham Palace, Kwame finds he’s worthy of pulling Excalibur from the sacred stone and ends up the new King of England. Pursued by the titular Man with No Name, Kwame teams up with MI6’s Roundtable Division as he learns to handle his new responsibility and the power that comes with it. In Kwame Hightower, Gorden mixes fantasy, history and science, telling an exciting and engaging tale that will appeal to comic fans of all ages. When you read his work, his biggest influences clearly shine through. Gorden grew up like any kid in the ’80s, falling for science fiction, action movies and fantasy stories — those specifically,

Some of 4 Sight’s releases come in the form of coloring books, allowing for an interactive experience. | COURTESY DAVID GORDEN

David Gorden poses with a selection of comics he’s released to date. | JACK PROBST he points out, showing on HBO during the early days of cable television. “As much as I love comics, I was actually more influenced by old cartoons and old movies at the time,” Gorden says. “Hannah-Barbara would be one of the big starter influences, and then as you get older, you get into different things. You’ve got Spielberg, you’ve got Lucas, you’ve got Spike Lee. Eddie Murphy. Then you go into comics, guys like Dwayne McDuffie, artists like Jim Lee and Brain Stelfreeze. Japanese manga, you’ve got Kenichi Sanada. Guys that made things that changed my mind.” When COVID-19 came along, Gorden suddenly found himself with even more downtime. That’s when he decided to fully immerse himself in the Hightower uni-

verse — and to take on the new challenge of launching his own publishing company. “The pandemic hits, and I get fully laid off,” Gorden explains. “I’ve got freelance [work], but I’m like, ‘Well, what else can I do?’ I started laying out plans around July 2020 to go into publishing full-time.” For Gorden, physical media is still essential, and 4 Sight Studio has dived into a medium you don’t see many artists in the industry use: coloring books. For instance, Kwame’s story continues in Kwame Hightower and the New Knights, a world-building adventure that the reader can color themselves as they read along with the story. It takes place outside of the main Kwame story, but continues to build the world that the Kwame adventures take place in.

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“We wanted people to be interactive, and what’s more interactive than coloring?” Gorden says. “We create the story, we create the art, but you add the color and the special effects. Now people can feel like they’re a part of it; they can personalize it a little bit more. You have to think of ways to get people to hold on to your characters. Maybe the characters grab you, maybe they don’t, but my thing is if you’re coloring the characters, then you’re rereading it, [they] will stick with you more.” When Gorden isn’t building his characters and expanding the worlds they inhabit, he sometimes works with the charitable cause the Superhero Project. The organization, out of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, interviews kids with significant illnesses and special needs, asking who their comic book alter ego would be, helping them craft a story about their powers, their costumes and what their impact on the world might look like. Artists then donate their time and talent to create superhero comic covers from these descriptions, to the delight of the kids and their families. Gorden has worked on several covers for the Superhero Project. His process for one of the covers was filmed and edited into a short titled “The Perfect Comic Book Cover,” available to view on the 4 Sight Studio website. The film is heartwarming, as Gorden walks you through his process of connecting with the project and creating the cover, and it ends with the special moment when this little superhero gets to see her cover for the first time. “Working with the Superhero Project itself was dope because these kids were really enjoying these covers,” Gorden says. “I haven’t gotten to see [them], but they’ve exhibited the work a couple of times, so a couple of my works have ended up on display there in Ohio. I’m like, ‘Wow, it’s kind of become its own thing.’” The ever-industrious Gorden is prepping to release at least four or five more adventure coloring books this year, and hopes to put out Kwame Hightower and the Exiles of Kalatheaa before the end of 2022. For those aspiring comic artists and writers who dream to follow the path of self-publishing he has, Gorden has some advice: “Focus on one project at a time and get it done. Don’t worry about anything else. Get it done. If you don’t do nothing else, get it done,” he says. “And don’t worry about how [you’re] going to go and get it out on the shelf at your local comic book store. Put it out on the internet and go from there. Use your tools. Use what you got to get what you want.” Check out all of David Gorden’s work and purchase his books at www.4sightstudio. com. For more on the Superhero Project, visit www.superheroprojectkids.org. n

JANUARY 12-18, 2022

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JANUARY 12-18, 2022

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SAVAGE LOVE Hard for the Money BY DAN SAVAGE Hey, Dan: I’m a gay man in his forties. I very much love my husband, but two years ago we acknowledged that our desire for each other sexually just wasn’t there anymore. Thanks in part to reading your column for many years, we were able to have a calm conversation about whether we wanted to remain together in a companionate marriage or split up. We decided to stay together and I’m glad we did. Sex was the thing we fought about most, and our relationship improved when we took that conflict off the table. My husband has a couple of fuckbuddies that he sees while I do most of my playing online. (We had this conversation at the start of the pandemic and playing online feels safer.) One of the things I’ve able to explore in the last year is FinDom. I really get off on sending money that we can spare to younger, hotter guys and being degraded for my pains. Thing is, almost all the guys doing FinDom are straight. It’s often a part of their persona they play up: they’re hot straight guys demanding cash tributes from “pathetic fags” that they would never touch in real life. As much as I like having my wallet drained by a hot young straight guy calling me a fag, I would so much rather give my money to a hot and dominant young gay man. Why do so few gay young men get into this? Do young gay men realize how much money they’re leaving on the table? Could you please tell them? Chances Are Some Hot FinDoms Are Gay “I don’t know why there aren’t more gay FinDoms out there,” said Master AJ, “but I’m certainly not the only one.” AJ is 23-year-old sexually dominant gay man who lives, works, and drains gay subs all over the world from his home base in the acific orthwest. e first stu bled over the the FinDom scene on Twitter when he was a kinky gay college student struggling to pay his rent. “I was working two jobs, and while I wasn’t desper-

ate, I was thinking about money a lot,” said AJ. “So, the idea of being in control, which I was already really into, and dominating someone by demanding cash from him that he’d earned? It was a huge rush.” Most male FinDoms go to such great lengths to emphasize how straight they are that AJ sometimes wonders. “There are no male Doms I’ve seen draining cisgender women,” said Master AJ. “So, if these guys really are straight, they would have to stumble on the gay FinDom scene or have the idea to start targeting a community they weren’t a part of in order to establish themselves.” And having seen how much pleasure so any straight identified male FinDoms get out of dominating gay men, “it seems possible that at least some of these guys aren’t being completely truthful about their sexualities.” Why would a gay or bi male FinDom claim to be straight? Because, as AJ points out, it’s going to make him more appealing to a significant seg ent of the gay finsub co unity. There are a lot of gay men who fetishize being bullied by straight men,” said AJ. “And a lot of gay subs enjoy the idea that they are tributing to someone who will never be attracted to the . hich find kind of laughable because being gay doesn’t necessarily mean a guy has a chance with me.” There’s also the issue of antigay slurs in FinDom play and how those slurs land. “Slurs get used a lot in the FinDom/kink scenes,” said AJ, “and they really can sound and feel different depending on the sexuality of the speaker.” Meaning, for some gay men being called a fag by a straight guy in a safe, controlled, and consensual way — like during a cash draining session — feels more degrading (in a sexy way) than being called a fag by another fag ever could. “But other gay men prefer gay FinDoms because they don’t like hearing slurs from straight men,” said AJ. Zooming out for a second… While it may be the case that a small handful of gay FinDoms pretend to be straight to attract gay subs, A A , think so ething else is going on here. a ely, financial do ination and oth-

er forms of online sex work have so lowered the “gay for pay” bar that the kind of straight man who wouldn’t ha e been able to profit off gay male lust twenty years ago — because he wouldn’t have sex with other men on camera for money — is now posting photos of his feet on Twitter, flipping off the camera, and ordering his gay followers to pay “fag tax” for the privilege of looking at him. Just as straight gay-for-pay porn stars managed (and still manage) to get off doing gay porn, there are straight male FinDoms getting off on what they do. “I know I enjoy draining cash from men find unattracti e,” said A . eing dominant turns me on even if I’m not into the person. So, there could be straight male FinDoms out there who get some sort of sexual satisfaction from draining gay men but are still straight.” And it’s easy to see why a straight male FinDom who got a little turned during an online draining session with a gay male sub might make a point of emphasizing his straightness — not just to rub his sub’s nose in it, A A , but to reassure himself. Still, even though there are more straight FinDoms out there than gay ones, AJ’s bank account and spotlessly clean bathroom proves you don’t have to be a hot straight guy to be a successful in o . e’s always been ery open about being gay, A A , and not only do gay male subs all over the world send him cash, but local gay male subs clean his apartment and run errands for him. “I’ve had a good experience with this,” said AJ, “it’s been both profitable and en oyable and ’ e made great connections with so many people, including other gay Doms. I’ve always really liked talking to other gay men — whether they are submissive and into FinDom or not or just intrigued by y profile.” And if you really want to attract other gay men like him to the Fino scene, A A , A suggests aking an effort to find out gay FinDoms who are already online, diligently promote their content with likes and retweets, and — of course — sending your favorite FinDom(s) all the money you can reasonably spare. “Because when you think about

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it,” said AJ, “tributing to a gay FinDom is like supporting a small queer business, and that’s something we should all be doing.” Follow MasterAJ on Twitter @ CashMasterAJ1. Hey, Dan: Many years ago, as an apprentice cocksucker, I hooked up with a guy whose online profile indicated that he was uncut. I’m a Person of Foreskin myself, and I prefer uncut men, and his intact status was a selling point. Upon arrival, it was instantly clear that this gentleman had been circumcised. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Not only was his dick cut, it was cut highly, tightly, and very visibly. When I asked him about the misinformation, he got defensive. I think about this episode from time to time as I search for new and exciting cocks with which to do cock-related things. Every time I go in search of cock, without fail, I encounter men who claim to be uncut who are clearly cut. (I’ve enclosed a few pics sent by “uncut” men who do not, in fact, have foreskins!) The opposite has also happened: self-identified “cut” men who are unambiguously “whole.” But the latter is much rarer an occurrence than the shockingly common false-uncut self-reporters. Have the terms “uncut” and “cut” fallen from the lexicon? Are men that unfamiliar with their own anatomy? Is it a generational or regional thing? What’s going on? Unexplained Nomenclature Confuses Usual Terminology I suppose it’s possible that a small number of men out there don’t know whether they’re circumcised. But I think the obvious explanation is the likelier one: These men are telling you — a prospective new sex partner — what they think you wanna hear. A cut guy will tell you he’s uncut (or vice-versa) because he’s concluded you prefer uncut dick (or vice-versa). Then he sends you a photo of his actual dick, essentially asking, “Who you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?” So, you’re being gaslit with dick pics, T. ou’re being dicklit. questions@savagelove.net @FakeDanSavage on Twitter www.savage.love

JANUARY 12-18, 2022

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 12-18, 2022

riverfronttimes.com

JANUARY 12-18, 2022

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 12-18, 2022

riverfronttimes.com

Riverfront Times, January 12, 2022

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