This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Dec. 14, 2012 - Fox News is reporting that Sam Dotson has been unanimously selected as St Louis City’s next police chief. He will be replacing the current police chief, Dan Isom, who is retiring on Jan. 1 to teach criminology at the University of Missouri at St. Louis.
Since Isom announced his retirement, Dotson was seen as the probable front runner, as an earlier story in the Beacon reported.
The reason, sources said, is his closeness to Slay.
Dotson, 43, would be one of the youngest chiefs in department history.
His career has been golden so far. The ever-smiling Dotson was an aide and protege of former Chief Joe Mokwa. One of Dotson's accomplishments was his crafting of the police detail for the St. Louis visit by Pope John Paul II in 1999.
Dotson, who joined the department in 1995, resigned in 2003 to take a job at Anheuser-Busch, but the job didn't work out and Mokwa welcomed him back with open arms a year later and Dotson got to retain his sergeant's rank. Such a re-hire is a rare occurrence in the police department.
In 2008, the police board forced Mokwa to retire when a St. Louis Post-Dispatch investigation uncovered shady dealings between Mokwa and an auto towing company.
But none of Mokwa's troubles rubbed off on his trusted aide. Slay eventually became so impressed by Dotson that he plucked him from the department to become the city's Director of Operations. Dotson got a $32,000 raise on top of his $78,000 police salary and was able to keep his police commission and captain's rank.
Bill Bryan is a freelance writer.