ST. LOUIS — For six years, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department has been sitting on a secret: a unit created to investigate police shootings did such shoddy work that its reports were often late, missing key information or not filed at all.
The failures were detailed in a 2018 audit of the Force Investigative Unit, describing delays, errors and incomplete police work.
The city has been fighting to keep the audit out of public view ever since it was finished.
The administration of Mayor Tishaura O. Jones has denied the Post-Dispatch’s Sunshine Law request for the report and blocked its release in two federal court cases. But the Post-Dispatch recently obtained key elements of the report from a law enforcement source. Multiple other sources have confirmed its authenticity.
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The 2018 audit was ordered by Michael Sack, then a police major. Sack would later become a lieutenant…
