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The Resurrection of Carl Officer

Continued from page 2

It was this breed of pent-up street-level frustration that created the perfect scenario for Carl Officer to strike a populist, anti-establishment tone in his successful run for mayor in 2003, a campaign that saw him nudge out machine-backed candidate Eddie Jackson by 233 votes after finishing a distant second in the primary. (East St. Louis employs a nonpartisan runoff system, in which the top two mayoral candidates advance to the general election.)

"It had nothing to do with Carl whatsoever," scoffs Charlie Powell, leader of East St. Louis' legendary Democratic machine. "If you're an Officer in East St. Louis, you're just like a Kennedy. He's royalty. And he's a schmoozer."

But this time Officer arrived at city hall to find a mayor's office that had been stripped of virtually all the authority it wielded during his first go-round. Where once he was surrounded by nineteen staffers and possessed the power to hire and fire at will, nowadays Officer is designated a lone paid civil servant and must rely on volunteers to answer his phone and man the reception area -- duties he occasionally undertakes himself if nobody's available. The city manager -- a position that was created in the wake of Officer's first tenure -- does all the hiring and supervises all city services. These days the office of mayor is considered a part-time job (though interestingly, Officer's annual salary is $50,000 -- $20,000 more than he earned as a full-time mayor in the 1980s).

Beyond the role of symbolic public figurehead, the extent of the mayor's reach is a single vote on the East St. Louis City Council. And considering that Officer spent a great deal of his campaign trashing the council's power brokers -- one of whom was his opponent in the general election -- he now finds himself completely shut out of Powell and Jackson's inner circle and on the losing end of virtually every three-to-two council vote.

"Carl has to get permission to call a cab," quips SIUE's Moore. "And the council won't give him that permission today."

After a year and a half of cranky public gamesmanship, matters came to a brisk boil at the December 30 city council meeting at which Alvin Parks was confirmed as city manager. After interim city manager Bob Storman announced his retirement amid published allegations that he'd exposed himself to a female staff member, Jackson, Powell and council ally Eddie Russell tapped Parks for the $81,000-per-year post without consulting Officer or Karen Cason, the mayor's lone council collaborator.

"I find it personally insulting that you guys would have met and chosen a city manager without offering me, Ms. Cason and the taxpayers a minimum of input," Officer sneered. "I think this government's being run in a cesspool of back-room bullshit."

The mayor then fixed his gaze on Parks. "Don't get sucked into this crap. They will chew you up and spit you out after the April elections," Officer said, referring to the fact that both Powell and Jackson are up for election. "Alvin, I implore you: Don't do this to yourself."

(Counters Parks, who attends the same church as Officer and is a long-time family friend: "If you're calling it a cesspool, why do you want to be a part of it? If it's good enough for you, then why not me?")

As the meeting drew to a close, it became evident that Officer's venom was not directed at Parks but at the kingmakers who'd anointed the city manager-to-be.

"If you think I've been a thorn in your side up until now," the mayor addressed Powell, Jackson and Russell, "I'm gonna be on you like white on rice, like stink on shit. Whatever I can do to get rid of the three of y'all, I'm gonna do it. Every single breath of my day is gonna be concentrated on getting rid of the three of you from public service."

As the events of the next two months unfolded, Officer would discover that his frustration was shared by two powerful cohorts: the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Five dollars and a sandwich is the going rate for vote buying in East St. Louis -- or so it has been alleged by many people, for many years. Political corruption is one of the worst-kept secrets in a city rivaled only by Chicago for its purported capacity to cast votes for dead folks or to make a ballot box disappear.

"East St. Louis has had a negative image since the cowboy days," says nursing-home operator Pat Gibson. "Nothing shocks me anymore."

But even in a town inured to having its elected officials paraded in shackles before federal grand juries, the indictments of January 21 packed an unprecedented wallop.

On that Friday, the FBI apprehended four government employees, including two key department heads, on charges ranging from perjury to conspiracy to kill a federal witness. One of the department heads, police chief Ronald Matthews, resigned shortly after his arraignment. Matthews and his secretary, Janerra Carson-Slaughter, were each charged with obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice for their alleged roles in helping a member of Matthews' auxiliary force, a convenience-store owner and ex-con named Ayoub "Dave" Qattoum, illegally obtain a firearm. Qattoum faces the same charges, plus a count of unlawful possession of a firearm. An additional charge of perjury was leveled against Matthews for allegedly providing false testimony to a federal grand jury.

"He's pled not-guilty to all counts and intends to defend himself," says Matthews' lawyer, Stephen Welby, whose client's trial date is May 10.

On March 15 Carson-Slaughter and Qattoum entered guilty pleas to the conspiracy and firearms charges leveled against them; in exchange, the government dropped the outstanding charges. Sentencing is scheduled for June 13.

"Obviously, we want to bring all the favorable information available to the court's attention in support of Ms. Carson-Slaughter," reports Carson-Slaughter's lawyer, Scott Rosenblum.

Qattoum's lawyer, Jim Stern, declined to comment on his client's case.

Meanwhile, the revelation that East St. Louis' auxiliary police force included a convicted felon led to the subsequent dismissal of 22 of the unit's 58 officers, after background checks revealed that they too carried substantial rap sheets.

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