Ballwin and former police chief are sued for background searches

Over a four-year period beginning in 2020, he ran more than 1,000 names through the Regional Justice Information System (REJIS), a crime database used by most law enforcement agencies in the St. Louis area that tracks all sorts of personal information, from criminal history to driver’s license records and vehicle registration information.

It is a misdemeanor for a police officer to use REJIS without a proper law enforcement purpose, and former police chief Doug Schaeffler’s colleagues in Ballwin found that hundreds of his searches were “very questionable.” Schaeffler, who has sued to be fired in December 2023, faces a possible criminal investigation into his use of REJIS.

Now the city of Ballwin is facing its own reckoning.

Clayton’s attorney, Mark Pedroli, filed a class-action lawsuit against the city and its former police chief on Friday, seeking financial compensation for the hundreds of residents whose privacy rights may have been violated. Neither Ballwin nor Schaeffler have yet responded to the lawsuit.

“The improper use of REJIS and state criminal records to search citizens without reasonable suspicion and for non-law enforcement purposes constitutes an inappropriate means of gaining access to citizens’ classified information and private data,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit accuses the defendants of violating the Missouri Constitution’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure, invasion of privacy, and negligence.

The lead plaintiff in the case is Kevin Roach, a former city councilman in Ballwin. Of all the known names of the people being sought, Roach’s name is perhaps the most problematic when it comes to potential invasion of privacy. Roach is a member of Missouri’s Safe at Home program, which protects the home addresses of people who have been victims of domestic violence, assault or stalking. It also protects the addresses of their family members.

According to public documents, members of the Safe at Home program — more than 2,000 people are in it at any given time — use the same mailbox in the Secretary of State’s office. The program has their address and delivers their mail.

Roach’s name was run through REJIS by Schaeffler on the same day – January 24, 2022 – that Ballwin City Attorney Robert Jones was investigating the Safe at Home program. Roach has been a frequent critic of the mayor.

It is not known whether city officials had anything to do with Schaeffler’s search of Roach or other residents, but Pedroli’s complaint alleges that Schaeffler could not have acted alone and conducted many searches “at the request of other Ballwin officials.”

Schaeffler “and Ballwin agents, alone and in concert with others, improperly searched more than 150 individuals without probable cause or without reference to law enforcement purposes,” the lawsuit says. Those searched included people “who lived or worked in Ballwin or were merely speaking at a public meeting in Ballwin.”

The name of a Ballwin resident, Matthew Conlon, was sought days after he complained at a City Council meeting about an incident in which Jones and Mayor Tim Pogue conspired to disqualify a candidate for City Council from the election. Another resident, Mike Scott, was sought after his complaint after he emailed two City Council members asking about his privacy rights.

Such actions show that Ballwin officials believe they are above the law, Pedroli says. He hopes his lawsuit — along with a separate, ongoing public records lawsuit — will shed light on abuses of the REJIS system that may be occurring in other communities.

“Americans have a fundamental right not to be subjected to unreasonable searches or seizures. That is a core and definitely bipartisan American value,” Pedroli said in an interview. “Ballwin is an outrageous and horrifying example of the government conducting illegal searches of Americans who live in Ballwin, work in Ballwin or simply participate in democracy.”