Feature

U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen Resigns

Written by DOYLE MURPHY

Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, announced last Thursday he is resigning, effective December 30.

A Trump nominee, Jensen will slide out ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, which may have led to his ouster anyway as the new administration makes new nominations.

As the U.S. attorney in St. Louis, he’s taken an aggressive approach to prosecuting crimes in the city. Robberies and drug possession cases involving guns that would have normally been run-of-the-mill prosecutions handled at the state level by the St. Louis circuit attorney were kicked up to the federal level by the hundreds under Jensen.

Despite his zeal for sweeping up cases, Jensen managed to avoid the public controversies that often follow such turf battles and maintained a relatively low profile for the most part. He popped up in national press earlier this year when Attorney General William Barr, who is also resigning this month, tapped him to review the case against Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

Flynn had pleaded guilty to a federal crime and admitted he’d lied to the FBI about discussions with a Russian ambassador. Under pressure from Trump, Barr ordered a probe of the voluntary plea, an unusual move for a Department of Justice that typically doesn’t try to undo its own work. Jensen, a former FBI agent, reviewed the case and concluded

U.S. Attorney Je Jensen is heading to a private firm. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI

that the DOJ should scrap the case.

Flynn was never sentenced and has remained a Trump loyalist. He was rewarded last month with a pardon.

In a news release on Thursday evening, Barr praised Jensen as a professional and dutiful servant.

“Jeff Jensen brought unparalleled experience to the position of

SCHOOL CLOSINGS Continued from pg 9

Last week, Adams reminded school board members that they had been working through closure talks since late 2019 and that the process had included town halls and community outreach.

But in a city that has spent months battling coronavirus outbreaks and economic shutdowns, the news appeared to catch many by surprise. In the days following the announcement, hundreds of people provided comments through an SLPS feedback form, and a December 8 board meeting ran more than three hours as board members discussed the public comments — while also voicing concerns that the vote was being rushed.

St. Louis’ elected officials joined the fray as well, with the St. Louis Board of Aldermen voting 19-1 last week to pass a resolution (which is not binding) that opposed the closings. The resolution stated, in part, “The closing of public schools not only disrupts and often has a negative impact upon the education of the students attending those schools that are closed but also often devastates the surrounding community.”

In light of the pushback, Adams came to see that more communication was needed before a final vote. Last week, he asked the board to “pause” while he set up additional meetings with school leaders and organizations that may have “concrete recommendations that provide services.”

But Adams made clear that he is not looking for a critique of the process that had led to the recommendations.

Closed in 2007, the remains of a former classroom in Euclid School in Fountain Park o ers a vision of what might be in store for the latest proposed school closures. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI

“This is not about rhetoric, this is not about telling me what you think,” he continued. “This is about real resources with details that align itself to the eleven schools that we’re talking about.”

Adams later said that he would not “walk away” from his recommendations to close the schools. In pointed remarks, he rejected critiques that the process was being rushed and that the SLPS administration had ignored neighborhood needs when assembling the list of proposed closures. He pointed to the bigger issue: St. Louis’ long decline in population, which hit a mid-nineteenthcentury peak above 700,000 and has since fallen to barely 300,000.

The same trend, Adams continued, explains why the city’s Land Reutilization Authority is trying to sell thousands of properties and vacant lots, and why the Board of Aldermen is set to reduce its members from 28 to 14 by 2022.

The problem isn’t unique to SLPS, but a fact of life for a city trying to adjust to a smaller population.

“What I’m asking the board to do is to pause, I’m not asking the board to stop,” Adams said. “I will not walk away from those recommendations, because kids’ lives are too important.”

Along with Sumner, Adams’ recommendations would outright close Fanning Middle School, Cleveland Naval Jr. ROTC, Northwest High School, and the elementary schools Clay, Dunbar, Farragut, Ford, Hickey and Monroe. Carnahan High would be converted to a middle school. n United States Attorney as a former FBI Special Agent, Assistant United States Attorney, and private attorney,” Barr said. Since his first day in office, eff’s mission has always been the same: to save lives. The extraordinary number of federal prosecutions initiated during his tenure are a testament to that mission. But, Jeff’s efforts were not only limited to the Eastern District of Missouri. Whatever requested of him by the Department of Justice, no matter how big or small, Jeff was always willing to serve.”

Jensen also backed a Barr-favored initiative called Operation Legend that targeted violent crime. St. Louis was one of multiple cities across the country that participated, and Barr visited in October to claim success. As the RFT’s Danny Wicentowski reported, the gaudy stats turned out to be wildly misleading. Despite claims that the operation cut homicides by 49 percent in the city, for example, St. Louis is on pace for its deadliest year in generations.

While Jensen made violent crime his main focus, it was the prosecution of now-former St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger on corruption charges that leaves one of the most memorable marks of his tenure. Jensen recused himself from the case, but one of his biggest hires, Assistant U.S. Attorney Hal Goldsmith, led the prosecution that sent Stenger and his co-conspirators in a pay-for-play bribery scheme to federal prison, upending county government.

Under Jensen’s watch, federal prosecutors also indicted multiple police officers, including five St. Louis cops accused of beating and/ or covering up the beating of an undercover police officer embedded with police protesters. The cases didn’t e tend to officers accused by protesters of beating plenty of non-cops, but it did reveal in recovered text messages the eagerness of the indicted officers and others for clobbering demonstrators following the acquittal of excop Jason Stockley in 2017.

Reuters reported that Jensen had sought a sweeping investigation of the St. Louis police department after the violent response to protests. The news agency cited an unnamed lawyer who claimed Jensen sought approval for the “pattern or practice” investigation from the Trump administration but was “shut down pretty hard.” Jensen later told the St. Louis PostDispatch the report was “simply not true.”

After leaving the U.S. attorney’s office, ensen plans to join a private law firm. n

College student John Wallis returned for a couple weeks in October to his boyhood home in rural Missouri, a place he does not speak about with high spirits. On these rare visits, he has a mental clock ticking in his head, counting down to the time when he can hit the road back to St. Louis.

Wallis began to resent his hometown of Neosho during his junior year of high school. He had begun arguing with others over politics, and he says he heard classmates say nasty things about students of color.

Neosho, a town of about 12,000, sits in the rural southwest corner of the state. The politics are conservative — Donald Trump won Newton County with 77 percent of the vote in 2016 and 78 percent in 2020 — and Wallis’ emerging progressivism wasn’t well received. When he helped organize a Black Lives Matter protest there in 2016, he was threatened, he says. It still scares him to go back.

Some of Wallis’ conflict at home exists within his own family. One night during his October visit, he and his sister ordered Popeye’s for dinner and their conversation drifted into politics. A chat over who they planned on voting for in the presidential election did not end as casually as it began.

They agreed on not voting for Donald Trump. Then, Wallis recalls, his sister said she thought Joe Biden was a pedophile because of a video she watched on YouTube. Wallis says it became impossible to have a civil discussion after that.

Wallis’ parents suggested he and his sister stop talking about politics, but it has become harder for him to relate to people at home. Now back in St. Louis, he emphasizes that his next visit for the holidays will only be for a week.

Wallis used to have a close relationship with his sister. In recent years, he says, they have talked less and less. He tries to change the subject to avoid conflict any time she brings up politics.

He chuckles as he recalls the argument in October, but he sees it as part of a larger issue of polar-

ization that has had serious impli- versity, he says the split started cations in his life. with social media. A controversial

Wallis, who announced to his post would lead to shares, comfamily he was gay on his last trip ments and uncivil arguments, all home, does not shy away from ex- through a keyboard that makes it pressing his opinion on politics and easy to talk and much harder to LGBTQ rights. His Facebook profile listen to a differing viewpoint. picture is outlined with the rain- Wallis hasn’t given up. He still bow colors adopted by LGBTQ com- hopes to repair family relationmunities, and his background is a ships going forward despite the Black Lives Matter logo and photo. differences they hold.

He struggles to find middle ground with his hometown crowd. The divide has become so deep that he says he does not plan on ever going back for an extended time. Wallis’ clash with his sister is D ivision on key issues is not new in the United States. We have fought each other in a civil war, argued over women’s suffrage and suffered only the beginning of a long list through Prohibition. The civil of damaged or tarnished relation- rights movement successes of the ships that have deteriorated in 1960s are often viewed through recent years. After COVID-19 and a sense of nostalgia that tends to the killing of George Floyd, the obscure the reality of police dog already hostile environment be- bites, fire hoses aimed at young came worse than ever. protesters and bloody beatings on

“It’s those kinds of events that an Alabama bridge. We are not a happened in 2020 that made it so nation that always gets along. much more polarized than 2016,” This year, we’ve experienced Wallis says. “And that’s what has three polarizing issues, each of caused a lot of the rifts in my rela- which would have been historic tionships.” on its own.

A student at Webster Uni-

Start with a contentious presidential election that grew increasingly bitter through the year, hitting levels of discord that have yet to subside. Those political divisions soon became entwined in the United States’ disjointed response to a pandemic that upended the economy, killed more than 300,000 Americans and sparked endless disagreements about the best way to handle it.

In the middle of it all, Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis. The footage of a white officer pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes as Floyd’s life slipped away ignited a summer of protests in cities across the country.

A major difference between previous generations’ disputes and ones today is social media. It adds an entirely new dimension to conflict that can make it inescapable and allows fake news to spread like wildfire. Fact and fiction have morphed together, making it hard for us to see through the blurred lines.

A Pew Research Center study published in July concluded that Americans who rely on social media for news were less knowledgeable on current issues and more likely to hear about a conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was created in a lab. Twenty percent of American adults consume political information primarily through social media, according to the study.

Shannon Cooper-Sadlo says one problem with social media is that anyone can find information that supports their beliefs. An associate clinical professor of social work at Saint Louis University and therapist at Foundations for Change, Cooper-Sadlo has seen the impact social media has had on interpersonal relationships.

She says the collective trauma the country has experienced puts everyone on edge. “When you talk about trauma of any kind, you’re talking about people being in a constant state of fight or flight,”

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GREAT DIVIDE Continued from pg 13

she says. Everyone constantly feels like they are being attacked by others, she adds. For some, this can lead to aggressiveness. For others, it causes isolation that leads to depression.

Washington University Assistant Professor of Political Science Taylor Carlson offers some better ways to go about taking in political information on social media. Carlson studies the way people digest politics and how the information is spread. She says determining the best way to navigate political information is “a million-dollar question,” because everyone’s routine is different. But there are ways to make your internet news diet more productive for you and everyone else.

First, Carlson says, be cautious about the source of the information. Think about the possible biases and the credibility. The next step is to question our own biases as the consumer, she adds. Our evaluation of information can be shaped by our ideological viewpoints.

Cooper-Sadlo offers a different social media strategy to her therapy patients, one that she has adopted herself: Turn it off, she says. The only reason she gets on Facebook or Instagram is to look at pictures of puppies and cats. If that is not an option, just take a break from it every once in a while, she suggests.

Cooper-Sadlo says she believes we will be able to move past the election talk going into 2021. The next question, she says, is how we work to restore relationships that have crumbled after a long year of increasing polarization.

“Rather than continuing to divide, I think we have to come to the table with empathy and compassion,” Cooper-Sadlo says.

In Wallis’ case, some relationships are worth saving, such as the one with his sister. Others, though, may be permanently damaged. Wallis says he has an aunt who does not believe in equal rights for the LGBTQ community, and Wallis is gay.

He told his family he was gay in October, two years after coming out as bisexual. This was not an easy task for someone who grew up religious, which he says caused him to have internalized homophobia for a long time. That did not stop him from opening up about his sexuality.

For Wallis, the relationship with his aunt comes down to a discussion he is not willing to have — whether he has the right to exist as an equal with the rest of society.

John Wallis says political divisions have become more polarizing — and personal. | STEVEN DUONG

Washington University Assistant Professor Taylor Carlson. | COURTESY OF CARLSON

SLU Associate Clinical Professor Shannon Cooper-Sadlo. | COURTESY OF COOPER-SADLO

John Doggette sees a problem with the way people go about their disagreements in today’s world.

The longtime mediator has listened to thousands of people’s stories, and he has learned that most people don’t actually listen when others are speaking.

He is reminded of this over and over again. Doggette decided to dedicate his life more than two decades ago to helping others through community mediation. He moved to St. Louis thirteen years ago from Knoxville, Tennessee, where he had worked in conflict resolution since the mid 1990s. In Missouri, he began as a volunteer for the Mennonite Peace Center and has since founded the onflict esolution enter and Community Mediation Services of St. Louis.

Now 80 years old, he speaks to the Riverfront Times over the phone as he sits in a recliner in his home. Doggette is an unusual person by his own estimation. When he is done with the interview, he will note it in a log he keeps of every person he talks to. Most of the work he has done during his years in St. Louis has been as a volunteer. That includes his attempts to broker understanding in Ferguson following the killing of Michael Brown in 2014.

Leaders of the city signed a Department of Justice consent decree after Brown’s death that called for citizens and police to resolve their conflicts through a mediation service. Doggette was at the head of the efforts, attending more than a hundred meetings directly following the killing.

His attempt to help conflicting sides understand each other was cut short in 2016 when he says no one in the city of Ferguson or the police department responded to a plan to use his services to continue mediation efforts between residents and police. A major issue post-Ferguson was that people did not want to understand where others were coming from, according to Doggette. fficial and unofficial leaders, he says, were not ready to give up their control. He wishes mediation could have been more prominent in the process of healing wounds after 2014.

“No one ever really understood the importance of what we were trying to do and the need for bringing people together,” he says.

Despite the frustrations of Ferguson, Doggette still believes in the work. He stresses the importance of active listening. There is not always a need to form a counter argument, he says. Recognizing you do not always need to defend your point of view can help to understand someone else.

“Bite your tongue until it bleeds,” Doggette advises.

Coming to a consensus on differing viewpoints has not always been the path Wallis has taken in his family relationships. He says he is not willing to compromise on his beliefs regarding social justice, even if that means cutting off family members for good.

But that isn’t what Wallis likes to focus on. He holds onto the relationships he has kept and the ones that could have a brighter future. Despite their hostilities, Wallis believes he and his sister will work toward a better understanding.

One thing that bonds Wallis and his sister is their shared view on equal rights for the LGBTQ community. It’s something that makes them more alike than different and may be a way to bring them together in the future.

Wallis admits he is sometimes closed minded and that having the discussions with family is difficult. oggette sees situations like these as an opportunity for people to listen. Maybe not to agree, but to simply understand.

At the end of a twenty-minute interview with the RFT, he suggests that is the essence of it all.

“That’s the important part of your story, right?” Doggette says. “Having good conversations with people and keep them joyous.” n