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ST. LOUIS — A long-embattled ӣ����Ƶ civilian police oversight board is now defunct, the city’s top lawyer said in a letter sent to board members.

City Counselor Michael Garvin warned board members in a letter Thursday that they could run afoul of a new state police takeover law if they discuss officer complaints or in any way overlap with state board business.

“I recommend that you take great care to avoid interfering with state-controlled police operations,” Garvin’s letter says.

Derrick Kilgore, the board’s vice chair, said in an interview Monday that the news was frustrating. A new crop of appointees were just now getting ready to start reviewing complaints after about a year’s worth of training.

“This is pretty much stopping us before we can start,” he said.

The board was set to discuss misconduct complaints at its 4 p.m. meeting on Monday. Instead, board members debated what they could and couldn't say in public — and promised they'd continue the discussion.

The citizen police review board, created in response to calls for police reform after the Ferguson protests in 2014, was blocked for years from reviewing police shooting investigations and misconduct complaints due to bureaucratic roadblocks�����Ի���legal wrangling.

In 2023, the Board of Aldermen approved a new oversight bill, designed to neutralize police union complaints.

Last year, Kilgore said he was encouraged by Cara Spencer, then an alderwoman and now the city’s mayor, to join the board after serving as the Benton Park neighborhood’s safety chair and working with police to clear a nuisance property on his street.

“There’s a lot of great cops, and there’s a lot of bad cops,” he said. “I feel like this position was a hope to bridge the gap between civilians and police so we can hold bad police accountable and celebrate good officers.”

He was appointed in July 2024 and sat through hours of training — sometimes as much as four hours a week.

But Garvin says in his letter that the current oversight board, following the state takeover of the police department this year, no longer has authority to investigate police misconduct or complaints.

The police department, as run by the state board, can indeed have a civilian review board to review misconduct allegations and submit recommendations to the police chief.

But the creation of that board is no longer governed by city ordinance — instead, the city’s police manual outlines the process.

If the current civilian board moved forward with their reviews, Garvin’s letter says, it could run afoul of state law, which outlines penalties for those who interfere with the functions of the state police department.

Spokespeople for Spencer and the police department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

At Monday's meeting, confusion dominated. Some board members asked whether they should continue with the meeting given the city counselor's advice.

A lawyer for the city — Barbara Birkicht — repeatedly warned the members that they could be in violation of attorney/client privilege rules if they spoke about the letter's legal advice in public. 

Board member Harrison Sands, a social worker at Washington University, asked how that could be the case considering the board was the client being represented.

"Those are things that we could discuss in a closed session but not in open session," Birkicht said.

Steve Rovak, an attorney who is a member of the board, said he wanted another opinion.

"All I'm going to say is I think it is very unclear what we can't do but also what we can do," Rovak said. "The ordinance defines 'oversight' rather loosely."

The board's chair, Ciera Simril, pledged to keep the discussion going. 

"We're not giving up," she said.