Former St. Louis Prosecutor Admits to Covering Up Police Beating of Handcuffed Man
A former St. Louis prosecutor has pled guilty to Misprision of a Felony for covering up the vicious beating of a handcuffed suspect by a veteran St. Louis cop, according to a report from The Huffington Post.
Bliss Barber Worrell was assistant circuit attorney for the city of St. Louis in July of last year, when a veteran officer with whom she had a close friendship reportedly beat the hell out of a man arrested for allegedly fraudulently using the credit card of the police officer’s daughter. The beating was severe enough that the officer injured his own foot and may have chipped one of the suspect’s teeth by shoving his handgun “down the throat” of the handcuffed victim.
In the plea, Worrell says that she did not intend to bring any charges against the suspect in the incident, but that she was present when the arresting officer showed up at the warrant office and decided to help a new prosecutor file charges against the suspect. The report from the arresting officer did not match what she had heard from the veteran officer, but she failed to tell her supervisors what she knew about the incident and filed charges against the suspect anyway for receiving stolen property, for fraudulent use of a credit card and for allegedly attempting to escape while resisting arrest.
The veteran officer isn’t named in the plea, but a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report notes similarities between the details in the plea and the circumstances of Worrell’s resignation from her position in the circuit attorney’s office, when officer Tom Carroll was accused of assaulting 41-year-old Michael Weller after Weller allegedly stole and fraudulently used Carroll’s daughter’s credit card.
Worrell’s plea explains that she was told by the veteran officer that other officers had participated in the beating, including the shift commander on duty that night.
The veteran officer also offered up a particularly cruel detail: that “everyone” was laughing at the suspect, who was “screaming for help” when he was brought into the police station, likely because the suspect was told during transport that he was going to get beaten.
Tammy Dickinson, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, is prosecuting the case, and has indicated the investigation is ongoing and extends beyond “this defendant’s role in covering up an egregious civil rights violation.”
