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And thanks to Seth Goldamp and his team at Design Aire because this studio is nice and chilly even though outside it's uh like a Kolkata sauna.

Hey Joe, your colleague Roland Close uh hung up the uh what what do you say in your I guess the editor's cap.

I don't know.

The editor's cap.

Yeah, Roland Close, a a good newspaper man, uh uh called it quits.

He had been at the Post for 13 years.

He had worked at a number of papers, including the Riverfront Times here in St. Louis, two stints at the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and uh uh just just a good all-around guy, but mainly he was also a consistent watcher of Donnybrook.

And being a nononsense kind of guy, when I would come in after doing one, I go, "How was the Donnybrook show?"

He go, "It was kind of boring this week."

Or he'd go, "Hey, it was really good."

I mean Roland always told you to ch but best of luck to you Roland.

You deserve it.

Absolutely.

Editors used to wear visors.

Yeah.

Back in the day the visor thing.

Yeah.

I just that came to me when you said that.

Yeah.

Alvin, I want to ask you about a very strange case.

Um, Janice Mensah, an activist, but also someone who was on the oversight board for the jail, was arrested two years ago when Mensah went into the jail to try and investigate the death of an inmate.

After all, Mensah was on the oversight board and felt it was the responsibility of the board to look into these things.

Well, instead, she was arrested.

Uh, they were arrested.

um Mensah uh was actually put on the ground.

We're going to find out exactly what happened, but um was prosecuted by the city.

Today, Mensah was was in court and the prosecutor for the city failed to cite the ordinance under which Mensah was allegedly charged.

As a result, the judge Woodiest threw the case out.

Now, do you think that the prosecutor who had a lot of experience didn't want to prosecute this case in the first place and kind of set up the case so that it would go away?

Okay.

I will say that um I have packed with cynicism because my wife and I have had binged the wire like over about a week a week ago.

And so that's why I'm saying like I don't I'm not going to say that the you know the case was like thrown but this was so what that program was about and and the judge kind of like in on it too because he said like hey nobody's going to say anything but I'm going to fail to mention this ordinance and you're going to notice that I failed to me mention this ordinance like in 25 seconds and the whole thing is going to be thrown out in about five minutes which is what everybody body wants anyway from the police, the mayor, the sheriff's department, even though McGomery wasn't involved in this one.

So, I'm just saying like it's funny how this worked.

I I like your wire theory.

I'm never going to argue against the Warriors logic.

That's impeccable.

But I will say this was an unusual case.

Mayor Cara Spencer could have easily dropped this if the city didn't want to pursue this and would not have taken heat for dropping it.

I do not believe.

Right.

No one wanted this.

It would have been very easy for her to get rid of it and she could have done that and didn't.

And I think that what happened here is you had a pretty complicated case because it had originally been in municipal court and then Janice Mensah appealed it.

It gets kicked upstairs.

I think it's pretty unusual to see a low-level trespassing charge get tried in circuit court.

And I think that this is something that it was unusual that they had to do this in circuit court because you wouldn't always get this kind of charge being in circuit court.

And so I'm just going to say were made trespassing and resisting arrest.

Yeah.

And those are misdemeanors.

That does not usually go to trial.

But if I am Mayor Spencer, I am crossing every tea and dotting every eye at this point.

I am not taking anything for granted.

I I'd still Go ahead, Jo.

No, I was just going to say first of all, love the cynicism.

Love the uh second is, you know, I believe it ended up as it should have been.

I do want to throw out there and I'm not saying the opinion, but you also get a side where the city's saying, look, the city offered to drop the charges, right?

They said you have to sign a waiver that you won't sue us.

Okay.

Now, on one side, you say, well, that's kind of low level, but then if your attorney doesn't do that, that's kind of not being a good attorney for the city.

I mean, we'll drop the charges in except that's what they're supposed to do to protect the city.

That's But that's I don't like it, but that's a lawyer doing their job.

So, it was one of these cases that somehow for whatever reason, conspiracy theory or the prosecutor just messed up, it ended up the way it should have.

That's the kind of thing that happens on the good wife.

So, maybe we need to expand our horizons a little.

I don't like that kind of extortion.

I think if a case is bum, it should not end up going to trial, even if somebody might later sue.

My colleague Ryan Krull sat through this trial, said it was incredibly slowm moving, kind of shocked the city, put all this time into trying to prosecute this, but he said it did not look like the city had a good case whatsoever.

You know, their their whole argument was no one knew he was an oversight board member.

He never identified him as such.

The jail commissioner was there present and had interacted with Janice Mensah at oversight board meetings.

So, come on, try to tell me they didn't know this.

I think they had a dog of a case and they were trying to extort Janice into dropping their lawsuit.

And within the wire, once again, the Baltimore mayor was always in the middle of all this stuff and they had conversations like, "Look, I want this person on the street this afternoon.

How do we make that happen?"

And the police and courts and everybody was involved.

So, I'm not saying this is the case here, but I could see a conversation.

I will say this.

I will say and all's well that ends well.

I talked to one judge today and I said, "How often does this happen that uh the prosecutor fails to cite the ordinance under which the accused is charged?"

He said, "I've never seen it."

And how would an experienced lawyer fail to do that?

Makes no sense to me.

I want to ask you, Joe, about another case in court.

I think it was uh was it Judge Joe White?

Thomas White.

Thomas White, who ruled in favor of one Michael Roth.

Michael Roth was going to the old cathedral and uh for mass new new cathedral, I'm sorry, on Lindle with his wife.

And uh he claims that he left his firearm in his car.

When he came back, the firearm was missing even though the doors to the car were locked, which I thought was weird.

In any event, he went to report it and then he was cited for failing to lock up his firearm in the car, which was the city ordinance.

Well, the judge ruled with Roth that uh there's no law in the city of St. Louis that says you have to lock up your firearm in a car.

Uh that would be sympa sympatico with the state constitution.

Right.

Well, and I think there was and here's come about where it's going to be, oh, Joe Hollman thinks everybody should be carrying guns.

I think when we talk about legal cases, I think this dog had fleas because the argument the attorney made to me made immediate sense by making me report that my gun was in my car.

I am now making myself incriminate myself, which is protected not just by the state laws, US Constitution.

when you take the fifth amendment that you don't have to incriminate yourself because what it was doing was requiring me to say, "I broke the law because my gun wasn't locked up and it got stolen."

And the judge said, "You know what?

Uh, case dismissed."

And I think that's what any judge would look at, regardless of what your feelings are about guns, who should have guns, what they should be, I think it's a case where they're asking you to return yourself in for committing a crime.

And I just don't think you can do that.

Well, I think you do have to find some way to make people responsible if they lose their gun or whatever.

Now, if the city said, you know, if if a gun turns up, be it in a crime, be it just sold to a pawn shop, and it traces back to you, and you don't have a bill of receipt that you sold it, well, what about make it a $5,000 fine, and then people would get the safe because the safe costs how much, you know, and so I think there are ways to go about it.

But I do agree with you that if it is in direct, you know, opposition to what a law is, well, that's what, you know, that's what the judicial system is for, except when they're letting people back out on the street because they made a deal with somebody.

So, could Mr. Roth So, could somebody who does have that background and that knowledge?

Could he say, "I invoke my fifth amendment rights?"

I mean, at the police station, what I think technically he was reporting that the gun was stolen, right?

He wasn't reporting technically that he failed to lock up the gun, but it later found out that he was reporting a theft like you would if somebody stole a suitcase out of your car and they said, "Where was it?"

And you know, it's in the glove box, but apparently it became clear to the police, I'm sorry, that it was not locked up.

With with guys like Michael Roth and his lawyer, we're never going to solve the violence problem in the city.

There are other cities like Boston that require you to lock up that firearm and you know they had 14 homicides last year.

Well, this one required you to lock up your fire.

I'm not so sure that in Boston if someone argued this case some judge wouldn't reach that same conclusion.

Charlie, you want to solve the gun problem and I do and Mike Roth is the guy who's causing the problem.

Yes, he that's the big problem.

No, he's not because he left his gun unlocked in his vehicle.

He was an irresponsible gun owner.

Right.

And if he was on the wire, they'd find a way to say like either cop to the gun or we gonna slap 10 years on you for some indiscriminate thing.

Well, you know, here's the thing is there's constitutional laws for reasons.

If you want to stop the gun laws, let's just start doing random stops on people to see if they have a gun.

Like at the airport where there are no No, I'm talking about out on the street.

Let's have the cops stop at the airport.

Well, let's do that.

Let's do that.

Hey, I'd be in favor of that.

Let's throw out I love stopping.

Let's watch several.

That's all the time we had.

Not all of you.

Thank you very much.

See you next week.