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It was hot, the sun was out, I can lose these now because we are on the set and out of the sun.

Hi, it's Alvin Reid sitting in for Charlie Brennan on this evening and welcome to a hot evening of Donnybrook.

I am joined of course by Wendy Weise, media veteran.

Joe Holleman sitting in for Bill McClellan today of the St.

Louis Post Dispatch.

Sarah Fenske from St.

Louis Magazine in the 314 podcast and in my chair, Jacob Kirn, Managing Editor of the St.

Louis Business Journal.

Well, during a contentious meeting this week, Alderman Sharon Tyus said that Alderman Rasheen Aldridge deserved a bullet in his head for some of his recent behavior.

Well, it is cast, she might be censured and a lot of people are upset with her and Sarah, I got to ask you, were you as put off as others by Alderman Sharon's verbiage?

Yeah, I was put off.

I can't say that I was shocked.

Like, she has a habit of just honestly being very nasty and sort of like holding the floor in a filibuster and just blasting everybody, which is kind of fun to watch the first time you go to an Aldermanic meeting.

It gets old really quick and some of this name-calling gets old really quick and this thing that she said about Rasheen Aldridge, I thought was like almost shocking how far she went.

Then she doubled down, she issued a press release saying, oh, well, it was just an analogy.

I was saying if we were in a foxhole together, he's the one I would shoot first.

I was like, this is the worst press release follow-up I've ever seen in my life.

I think they need to take action on this.

That kind of language should not be called for by a political body when you're talking about policy disputes.

It's out of line.

I'm gonna say that I do think that she was guilty of nothing more than a poor choice of words.

And the follow-up with the outrage from Rasheen and other members, that's all theatrics.

I mean, honestly, first of all, in a police investigation, now they've turned it over into a police investigation?

First of all, did anyone ever for one millisecond think that Sharon Tyus was gonna shoot Rasheen Aldridge?

You have to report this to the police department.

And censoring the behavior of St.

Louis aldermen?

We could be here all night long talking about the embarrassing behavior.

I think the thing which Sharon Tyus, and believe me, I have been on the receiving end of her yelling fits before, but I will say this, at least with Sharon Tyus, you know exactly where you stand.

So when it comes to politics, I will at least give credit where credit is due.

And yes, she could have picked a different way to say it.

Oh, you think?

But I think the idea that people find this heinous, I think, is completely overblown, and it's trying to make political hay out of something that you should have went, that's Sharon being Sharon.

Instead, we're gonna try to make some sort of bigger issue out of this, and I think that's misguided.

I think, you know, Kimberly Ann Collins was at this meeting, state representative, very well respected state representative.

I think she was genuinely shocked.

I think she thought this went beyond anything.

It was just incredibly poor judgment.

So there's two sides of it.

On the one hand, if you you're an elected representative, even if it's for a fairly few amount of people, actually, but you just, you cannot make that decision.

It looked to me like she knew that she was being filmed, and that just does not work.

On the other hand, I will say, she is reelected continuously.

She is.

I mean, and she is dogged, and there are parts of her area where, you know, it's held up compared to some of the surrounding neighborhoods.

She is really invested in keeping problem businesses in line, so there's kind of two sides of it.

I can, I can, and as, and I understand that it's like the La Brea Tar Pits where the dinosaurs, it's like, you know, we've been following Sharon Tice for a very long time, so, so are we shocked?

No, not at all.

She could have, she could have cursed, I think.

It's when you, when you say bullet, you know, and you think of, you know, it goes back to, I don't, I don't know why, Dan White, the San Francisco commissioner, and Harvey Milk, and Mayor Moscone, you know, it's like, I'm sure people just thought, oh, he's just being Dan, you know, and, and she is, does, you know, she said she doesn't have a gun, she's not a violent person.

It was a, it was Sharon Tice being Sharon Tice, and I really wish that she had just cursed, you know, because then we would have all said, oh, you know, bad, you know, bad, bad girl, or bad politician, whatever, but I agree.

I think it has, it has exploded into the stratosphere, and it just doesn't belong there.

Well, you know, Archie Bunker and George Jefferson agreed more than they disagreed.

You young ones is making too much out of this, let me tell you.

Now, Sharon Tice, and I got the point that she was trying to make, okay, and that was, she believes Rasheed is untrustworthy, okay, and falls into the category of, you know, I think you're a traitor, and this is how traitors are handled.

I got it.

She should not have used that bullet, that, that, like I said, that term, but at the same time, I'm with Joe, police investigation, Cori Bush coming out and saying, you're gonna chastise Sharon Tice, oh no, no, no, no, no.

St.

Louis is a violent city, you're gonna take anything for granted for the police?

They better, this one, there's a Sharon Tice didn't mean, she wasn't gonna harm anybody.

I'm like, I'm like Joe, I've been gone off on by Sharon Tice, and it's entertaining more than it's threatening.

Look, I'm not gonna defend the police investigation, I think, honestly, the police were a little bit chasing clout trying to insert themselves into this versus anybody else saying, like, oh, we got to get the police involved, they were like, oh, we were aware of this, and then they issued a second statement, it's like, police, come on, go, go answer some of those calls from people who actually need help, but I think, you know, Sharon Tice wastes so much time on the Board of Aldermen, and maybe this is why I'm taking a hard line on this, like, there are a lot of things that need to be dealt with in the city of St.

Louis, and if we're creating all this time where we can levy personal attacks on people, as opposed to actually getting worked on, maybe that's the biggest insult of all.

But I think she comes from a different time, you know, where, yeah, you could, there could be hyperbole, and people would just, you know, okay, but this is, we do have to alter our, what we say to the generation.

I hear what you're saying, in this case, I think, you know, whatever, and also, I don't know if you had moved to St.

Louis yet, and Jacob, you're probably too young, Sharon Tice got, like, redistricted out before there was a, yeah, like, and so, she has had to come back from that.

She is a fighter, sometimes she gets on my nerves, but I'm just, that's what I'm saying, like, I think you have to, I think you have to know Sharon Tice, I do, and I'm on this one, I'm sorry, I'm gonna give her a pass.

Well, and I think, I gotta say, because I think you bring up a great point, she was redistricted out because she doesn't play well with others on the board of aldermen, but then she immediately gets voted back in by the people she represents, as Jacob pointed out, so she's doing her job, so while I wish that maybe she was a little more circumspect with her language, like some other aldermen were, I wish some other aldermen worked as hard at improving their ward as Sharon Tice.

And the whole seniority question, when it came to Rasheen Aldridge, I mean, so there's, there's, you know, there's gonna be bad blood in almost every political body somewhere.

That's true, and one last thing, one time she blasted off on me in the afternoon, and the late DJ Wilson and I from Red Front Times went to the alderman Christmas party on the same board of aldermen floor where she went berserk on me and DJ and had drinks with her, and wished each other a Merry Christmas, and I think that's, we need a bit more of that here and all throughout the United States in politics.

Speaking of politics, Danny Hoskins, he penned a opinion piece that ran in the Post-Dispatch, and I just thought it was like a, some kind of cry for help.

It was, he mentioned faith, he mentioned religion, he mentioned his dad, his first job, what do you call people, obstructionists, I just, it went on and on.

Now in the meantime, while we're, as we tape this show, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals federal is hearing one last, I guess, plea from the Republican Party to, to reenhance the redistricting that was voted on in the spring in the legislature that the Supreme Court of the United States has rejected twice.

All right, Joe, help me man.

I just, you know, somebody give Danny a hug, okay, and let's make this go away, and I think a bigger point is, is I've realized over time that something that politicians are apparently incapable of doing, and I mean Democrats and Republicans, is just getting up and go, you know what, that was a bad idea, and we're sorry about all that, so let's just forget about it.

They are, you know, I don't know if this horse is dead, but it is so on life support as they drag it across another line.

I mean, the people didn't like your plan, you know, the courts don't, the state courts don't like your plan, the federal court doesn't like your plan, at some point you just go, yeah, we gave it our best shot, we're done, just that's all I want to happen.

Just to look forward briefly, it's it's not gonna go away, you say make it go away, it won't go away, the next thing is gonna be to examine the Missouri Supreme Court and maybe change the makeup of that somehow, or how those justices are selected, so that's gonna be coming.

Every state, including Kansas, just this last election cycle, that where that's been brought up, has failed, and it would be no different than the state of Missouri.

I mean, the Missouri plan is one of the best things going in this state, it's given us a competent judiciary, you know, I thought that op-ed that he wrote for the Post-Dispatch, I thought it was one of the craziest things I've ever read, which is saying a lot, and I thought the most ominous line, he kind of ended it with like, you know, as I learned from my father, Hoskins, never give up, and I'm like, never, never, we have to keep doing this.

Well, and he's been, you know, he's dug himself in, so now this sort of, this softer, gentler Denny Hoskins, as you said, who's crying for help and looking for a hug, it just was, it was, you know, is he having a personal crisis, or does he see what's happening finally?

I still think that what they thought would happen just didn't happen, it didn't materialize the way they thought it would, and so he and Katherine Hannaway are just gonna give it one more, you know, they're gonna give it one more push, but as you said, Jacob, it's not going anywhere.

Also, he has been sued twice, now one by a whistleblower who said he was dismissed because he was not happy with something that was going on in the office, then one, which I think is overreach, some people have filed a class-action suit.

There's actually now two class-action lawsuits, there's three lawsuits, and I think this one from the whistleblower is actually the compelling lawsuit.

Very compelling, very compelling.

I am Mr.

class-action lawsuit, I fill out the low card, but I don't think I'll join in this one.

Instead of complaining about these legal opinions, there is a legitimate path forward for them.

If the Supreme Court is saying the referendums apply to everything, which is effectively what they're saying, then go change the Constitution, and let us decide should the referendums apply to everything.

Based on the most recent election results, I think we would probably choose that they are going to apply to everything.

Yeah, I agree with you.

So, the Police Department wants to get the message out that they're really cool, I guess, because they're into social media and Instagram, and they're gonna hire, I guess, four new communications people to go with Mitch McCoy.

Sarah, are you gonna apply for one of those?

I am not, but you know, good for them, they got approval from the Police Board that they're basically gonna like double the size of this department that works under the sort of well-known spokesman Mitch McCoy, former TV journalist.

It's a lot of people, I mean Kara Spencer herself came out and was like, yeah, we only have three people total in the mayor's office.

They're gonna now have twice as much of that.

And she voted against this.

She did vote against this.

I will say, in favor of what the police are doing right now, with the decimated local media landscape that we have, there's maybe like three or four of us that are trying to cover politics.

Everybody else is just covering crime all the time.

They get a lot of media inquiries.

I can understand it from that point of view.

Three seems like a lot at a point that that's, that their staffing levels are where they're at.

Like don't they need that money for officers?

Absolutely.

I find it offensive as a city resident that like you should be using this for more officers.

We had this whole thing before where they wanted tens of millions of dollars to do even capital improvements to the building and all of their buildings, the police building.

And my question then was, why do all the other government buildings have to be absolutely horrendous but you get some kind of Taj Mahal all over the place when we need more police?

I mean, it's crazy.

This is the same thing in my mind.

It really is.

For the communications arm of the police department, this is remarkably tone-deaf, in my opinion.

That he, because I would think that Mitch McCoy would be the first one to say, um, time, time, you know, because we're down 800 officers or, you know, that changes almost every day.

We need more police officers but we're enhancing the ranks of the communication.

It makes no sense at all.

Well, and I'm not even, I'm not sure I buy the argument that it enhances communications.

I think what it does is it increases the amount of communication.

But there used to be a time when you could just call a spokesperson and they would actually talk to you or walk into an office.

What I'm afraid this new thing will be is the advent of packaged little items so that when you call up the police department, they'll go, we posted something on that and there's gonna be a little self-contained video with words and that's gonna be used.

When it used to be you could get a spokesperson and say give me the details.

Let me talk to a sergeant.

You could actually get information.

My fear is is that it'll grow into yet another way to be less transparent while making it look like you're more transparent.

Because if you have one-on-one time you can ask a follow-up question.

Bill McClellan's been very angry about this for a long, long time.

And it's a commentary on how people are increasingly consuming media and it's really alarming that now we're just down to a 10-second bite and it doesn't even matter where it's coming from.

I don't even really evaluate the source and it's not clear really from Instagram or whatever that oh this is just a shill for the police.

That's right.

It's sad.

You know and I'm you know in dinosaur if you will but I've always disliked where someone will say well just submit your questions by email.

Right.

One, not only does it cut down on your ability to immediately follow up with an answer, I'm not sure who's answering those questions.

If I send Alvin an email and says answer these questions how do I know he's not running it by six other people and it's an answer by committee?

When it used to be when you talk to a homicide sergeant it was that homicide sergeant.

You knew that's who was saying that or that state representative.

Now you want me to send an email and I get what response by committee and no chance of getting a well wait a minute you said and and I think what it is and I think social media in a way does this.

It makes you believe you're getting you are getting more information you're just not getting any better information.

And Bill's name came up in the story.

Bill calls him Chief McCoy and he said that's okay because he calls him Chip.

A little humor in any situation is a good thing so I'll give that to Mitch.

He could have went, you know, like he could have went all Sharon Tyers.

On a more serious story, the St.

Louis Blues have signed a player named Dylan DeBay and he was involved in a sexual assault case in Canada in which he and other members of the Canadian national hockey team or a younger team were acquitted of any crime.

He was sent signed to another team in the National Hockey League and the Blues have signed him down.

The post-dispatch Alicia Sultan had a just a column and talked to some hockey moms I guess in the Crestwood area and out in the county and they're not very happy with the Blues for signing this young man and I'm kind of troubled by it too, Wendy.

Yeah, Aisha Sultan is, I mean, I think she's a friend to everybody on this panel.

We all consider her a colleague and she's a just a brilliant writer.

I think this piece probably has generated a lot of water cooler conversation because on the one hand I think we are all of one mind even though we're definitely intergenerational on this panel.

I think that the days of Stan Musial and, you know, Kurt Warner even, you know, we've learned enough about athletes and the fact that they're human beings to not, you know, teach our kids to look up to them as, you know, shining models of humanity.

This was at the time he was 19 years old.

He made a mistake.

What I don't understand is we're not leaving any room for growth where and he was criminally, as you said, he was criminally acquitted.

The allegation is damning enough for a lot of people but I think if you have a 19 year old son or a 19 year old daughter and they make a mistake, you would want them, you know, again they're criminally acquitted.

So I don't know what else to to add to that other than at 19 he's six years before, you know, what we think of in terms of the prefrontal cortex, you know, fully developed and I don't think mine wasn't fully developed until recently.

But it's a tragedy all around.

I mean it really is.

His career, the allegations, the young woman, obviously.

I think it's a dilemma in that, as you said, it was an acquittal and, you know, there's been a movement that basically was a ban the box movement to where it was like should people be penalized for crimes they were actually committed and were convicted of.

So on that you have one hand.

I also, however, have no problem whatsoever with the group getting together because what sends a message to a sports team quicker than anything else is attendance and patronizing that team.

So the idea if someone wants to protest it, I think that's fine too.

And if they want to let people know how they feel about this, I mean I think the one, we got to stop looking at sports as being some moral high ground and the Jack Armstrong all-american boy going on.

I mean we've had NFL players who were implicated in a guy getting stabbed to death who was then hired into the booth by a network, okay.

So if you're looking to sports personalities for your moral guidance, you have a fundamental problem.

So I think on the one side, I don't think the Blues can be vilified for signing him.

I also completely support the people who I should talk to, the moms, who say I'm not gonna go to the game or I'm not gonna buy this.

I think that is perfectly acceptable and that sends a message to a team, our rear ends in the seat.

If you don't like how we're running our pitching staff or the trades a team makes, you quit going to a game, the team gets the message.

So we'll see if that transpires here.

I'm kind of of two minds on this.

I find what Wendy says very persuasive.

I do think that like younger offenders, and again I understand here he wasn't even convicted, but we need to give them second chances and locking people up for life for things they did at 19 and 20.

I do not believe in that whatsoever and so you're kind of swaying me.

But on the other hand, it's like you know you're saying you can't look to sports figures to be your heroes.

Well where can you find a hero these days?

I think about this for my kids and I remember being a kid who was crazy about baseball and one of my favorite players was Kirby Puckett and he did a horrible thing to a woman in a nightclub and I still remember how hard that hit and how it changed how I felt about baseball.

It changed how I felt about this team that I had loved and it's like the Twins couldn't have done anything to prevent that.

Like that happened while he was there after he was already a superstar.

To bring on a guy after they've done something so objectionable, it's kind of like, maybe we should hold the line.

Don't you think it's kind of playing out how it really is supposed to because on the one hand you have this acquittal but you also have the Association there in Canada doing this ban on a certain time to play for the Canadian Olympic team but then you also have this situation here where we're gonna have free information.

There's going to be reporting and people are gonna know that this player that they're interacting with, spending money with, looking up to, has this kind of hanging over him where the veracity of that information for those organizations seemed to lead them to a certain action.

And that Hockey Canada, isn't it, that was called Hockey Canada, they had obviously taken action and he will be suspended until either spring of this year, March of 27 or March of 20.

And I doubt he ever plays for the Canadian National Hockey team.

I honestly doubt that will happen.

Hi Jacob, in the last few minutes here, Franklin County, their board of commissioners or whatever they call themselves, approved a massive data center project and in the meantime Mayor Spencer has signed our list of regulations for our future data centers and in the meantime someone has sued because of the green regulations that are part of an agreement but that wasn't from the mayor's office, that was from a committee, not a committee, but another office.

It's not confusing enough.

Yes.

So the city is saying, hey we are among the first anywhere to come up with, you know, regulations that are set in place on water and on how close you can be to residences and on renewable energy for these data centers that are going to be in the city.

What happened before they signed that, they signed it today, but this the giant data center in Midtown right next to Armory was wanting to get approval and move forward in the city with that vacant, huge vacant building that the city needed to address and so these regulations weren't in place at that time so the city went forward and kind of ad hoc came up with some stuff and an entity called the Board of Adjustment told this data center developer you're gonna have to generate on this site, the warehouse site, this certain level of renewable energy, not just use renewable energy credits from Ameren or whatever, but generate it on the site and now the developer is saying, and I have some sympathy with this, that that's, first of all, it's physically impossible on the site and you, the Board of Adjustment officials of the city of St.

Louis, know how much, how I can generate on the Armory adjacent site, give me a break.

This is why we need Mayor Spencer's group of 50 people, who could then advise them on what could be in there.

All right, got 30 seconds.

Joe, cue this right up for me.

Those are the data center regulations that the mayor signed this morning.

She's like, this lawsuit shows why we need these regulations that are codified and not just kind of doing this ad hoc.

So I think it, hopefully we won't see this kind of chaos that we saw over this midterm.

I think they're just hoping the city will drop it, you know, drop those mandates.

Okay, yeah.

Hey, you know, you can drop us a letter, if you would like, and send it to Donnie Brooke, Care of 9PBS, 3655 Olive Street, St.

Louis, Missouri, 63108.

Send an email to DonnieBrooke at 9PBS.org or a tweet to hashtag DonnieBrookeSTL.

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You can scan the code there, and that'll put you right to Donnie Brooke Last Call, which is coming up after this show on our YouTube channel.

Thank you, Jacob Kern, from the St.

Louis Business Journal, for sitting in with us today, and he will be here for Last Call, when we are going to discuss O'Connell's Pub, possibly closing, and Me for Rad, Me for Radness, what am I on?

Me for Madness, and Rock Hill.

Thank you for watching.

Stay cool, everybody.

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