On July 4, 2023, Samuel Davis, a 26-year-old officer for the Northwoods Police Department in North St. Louis County, took Charles Garmon into custody at a Walgreens. After handcuffing Garmon, Davis drove him to a remote intersection outside of a Pepsi bottling plant in Kinloch, a now-largely industrial city of under 300 residents, some four miles and five municipalities from Northwoods.
Outside of the Pepsi plant, Davis pepper sprayed Garmon, beat him with a baton — breaking his jaw — and “told Garmon not to return to Northwoods,” according to a federal civil rights lawsuit Garmon later filed.
Rather than then transport him to any kind of facility where he could then receive treatment, Davis left Garmon in a field on the side of the road for someone else to find, leading to a 911 call, Davis’s identification, a warrant being issued, and his eventual arrest on felony assault and kidnapping charges two weeks later. (Davis’s supervisor, Michael Hill, was also arrested, and both have also since been indicted on federal civil rights charges.)
Within a few weeks, local TV station KMOV found that in his short career, Davis had already jumped to the Northwoods police from the North County Cooperative Police Department, something reporters found using a roster from that department.
“Tracking other departments Davis may have worked at isn’t easy in Missouri,” the station noted. “The state doesn’t have a central system for the public to see if an officer has moved around. The only way to know is to ask each department if an officer worked there.”