Troy Doyle’s career plan did not include being chief of the Ferguson Police Department.
“My ultimate goal was to be the police chief of the St. Louis County Police Department,” he said.
Doyle joined that department in 1992 and worked his way up through the ranks. But after being passed over twice for chief, he realized that he would not advance any further.
Doyle publicly announced his plans to retire from St. Louis County on March 10, 2023. Four days later, the Ferguson City Council unanimously approved his hiring as the chief of that city's police department.
“It was almost like a natural fit for me to be here as the chief of police,” he said of the decision. “I was so familiar with the demographics and the territory up here that I wanted to come here and try and do some good for the community.”
Doyle, 55, first wore the uniform of the Pagedale Police Department, in a town of about 2,500 south of Ferguson.
“I remember thinking, ‘Man, how have we not found this guy before now?’” said former St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch. “Why is he in Pagedale, and why didn’t he come to the county sooner?”
Fitch was a lower-level commander when Doyle arrived in the county. Fitch said he was always impressed by the younger man’s commitment to community policing.
“Whatever community he worked in, they knew him. They knew of him, they respected him, he was their go-to person to get things done,” Fitch said.
Doyle spent a good part of his St. Louis County career in the north county precinct and was its commander when Michael Brown was fatally shot by Ferguson officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9, 2014. He logged many nights on West Florissant Avenue, the epicenter of the protests over Brown’s killing.
“I felt the pain, the emotions in the community and the people who were out there,” he said.
His job, he said, is to take the pain that people experienced and use it to transform policing in the city.
Doyle is drawing on his personal experiences as well.
“I know it, I’ve been there, I’ve got the trophy for it,” he said. “I tell people all the time, I grew up in north county, I probably got pulled over more than anybody I know.”
The Ferguson consent decree
Doyle was under no illusions about the size of the task facing him.
Brown’s death sparked a Justice Department investigation that found the police department had engaged in a widespread pattern of unconstitutional and racially biased policing. After initially hedging, the city agreed to a 133-page consent decree that lays out hundreds of policy prescriptions.
The consent decree was absolutely necessary, Doyle said, but it’s not a punishment.
“This is just a document, and it's just going to guide us in the right direction,” he said. “This is going to set our policies and procedures, and hopefully put us in a position where we have some of the best policies and procedures in the region.”
The team in charge of monitoring Ferguson’s compliance decree appears pleased with Doyle’s efforts.
“The City’s progress toward compliance with the consent decree largely stalled during 2022 and the early part of 2023,” mainly due to turnover in key positions including police chief and city manager, the team wrote in an October 2023 status report.
But, they noted that Doyle and other newcomers were “organized, capable, and motivated to reach compliance” with the consent decree, and that the pace had picked up. The city was still lagging in some policy development areas, the team said, and had yet to develop a plan to train officers on the new policies.
Doyle promptly filled two key positions after he was hired – a public information officer and a training coordinator who would be in charge of ensuring officers learned the new policies.
“The court may remember this was a key ask that we made the last time we were here,” Justice Department attorney Amy Senier said at a regularly scheduled status update in July. “It’s an important step for how the FPD is going to design and deliver in-service training, and it really demonstrates that the department is taking ownership of its own training program.”
In addition, Doyle said, the department is currently 75% staffed and its demographics more closely align with those of the city, which is more than 70% Black.
“Many of the young officers, they understand what took place in 2014, and they wanted to be part of the change,” he said.
An anniversary and a tragedy
Travis Brown was one of those young officers. Doyle hired him away from St. Louis County in January and made him a key part of his staff.
On the night of Aug. 9, the 10th anniversary of Michael Brown’s death, protesters gathered as they do every year in the road in front of the police station.
Officers let them block traffic, Doyle said, even posting a car at the north and south ends of the street so they didn’t get hit by vehicles. Protesters were also allowed to shake the fence surrounding the station. But when the fence broke late that night, Doyle ordered his officers to make arrests for property damage.
Travis Brown was a member of the arrest team. He suffered a severe head injury when one of the protesters, 28-year-old Elijah Gantt, appeared to run directly into him. Gantt was later charged with several felonies.
Brown remains in critical condition at a St. Louis hospital. His family said in an update on Sunday that he had been battling pneumonia.
At a press conference the next afternoon, Doyle was visibly angry.
“The police department from back in 2014, we don't even have them officers here anymore,” he said. “Everything that the activist community has advocated for, as far as body-worn cameras, implicit bias training, crisis intervention training, all this stuff, we have done all of this. What are we protesting?”
There is still plenty to protest, said one activist who was there to mark the 10th anniversary.
“What they've offered is not what has been requested or demanded by the people,” said Ashley Yates, a leader of the protests in 2014 who returned from Oakland, California, to mark the 10th anniversary. “It has been concessions, things that they say make policing better.”
Yates said studies show that police training is ineffective at making the changes that the Ferguson police department needs. And many of the officers that Doyle has hired, like Travis Brown, worked in other departments in St. Louis County.
“We know they work together. We know that on Aug. 9, 2014, and for months after, there was a coordinated effort that basically called all police within 50 miles of St Louis to come to Ferguson and repress the people,” Yates said.
Yates was also critical of the high bonds faced by protesters who were arrested.
Gantt remains in the St. Louis County Jail on a $500,000 bond without the ability to pay the 10% needed to get out. Another man, Tauren Taylor, is also still in jail on a $25,000 bond with no 10% allowed.
“We’ve called for, on a general level, healing in our community. We can’t heal when the police are still repressing people,” Yates said.
Judges, not police departments, set bond amounts, though police officers make the decisions about what charges they want to seek. Those charges, and the police narrative of the crime in charging documents, can influence the size of the bond.
Doyle also faced criticism for his efforts to crack down on expired vehicle registrations and speeding through an initiative known as Temp Tag Tuesdays.
“Yes, we still want you to follow the law,” said Ferguson resident and Democratic state Rep. Raychel Proudie. “But I don’t want people’s financial status to be penalized. Being poor should not be a crime.”
The consent decree had specifically raised concerns about the city’s use of the police department to fund its operations, often through tickets for non-traffic-related offenses. Doyle said his initiative was not about revenue. According to statistics he posted on Twitter for May 30, 2023, officers made 25 stops and issued either verbal or written warnings. Only 16%, or four drivers, he said, received a summons.
Proudie took her criticisms of Temp Tag Tuesdays public but said she gave the chief a call before doing so to make sure that she wasn’t missing something. The interaction, she said, made it clear to her that Doyle needs to learn to take criticism.
“He didn't take kindly to it, and within the conversation, he told me that it was not his purview to answer to me,” Proudie said. “Folks have an absolute right to not like something and to not give you the attaboys and to cheer you on.”
Proudie also wished that the city had taken more public input on the selection of a new chief – a point also raised by Nick Kasoff during public comment on the night that the board approved Doyle’s hiring.
“Transparency is important, and there was none of that for this,” said Kasoff, who was later elected to the Ferguson City Council by three votes. “Nevertheless, it looks like we made a wise choice, and I hope that the future years of Chief Doyle’s service prove that to be true.”
Building a legacy in Ferguson
Doyle’s reputation as a fixer precedes his hiring in Ferguson.
“I've always been one of those guys that put me in a situation where things are just chaotic or just a mess and give me an opportunity to start looking into it, and I thrive off of it,” he said.
Doyle helped transition both Dellwood and Jennings from their own police departments to contracts with St. Louis County. In 2019, then-County Executive Steve Stenger asked him to help improve conditions at the county’s jail after several detainees died.
Mary Zabawa Taylor was one of the inaugural members of the jail’s civilian oversight board. She met Doyle at the board’s first-ever meeting.
“Troy is a truth-teller,” Taylor said. “When I heard about him getting the position in Ferguson, I thought, how wonderful that is for the people of Ferguson, because he'll sit down and talk to anybody.”
Doyle has brought “respect and dignity” to the police department, said Ferguson Mayor Ella Jones.
“He listens,” she said. “You could call him and talk with him, and he responds. That makes a big difference.”
Jones said she believes that with Doyle, city manager John Hampton and consent decree coordinator Chris Crabel on board, Ferguson could get into compliance with the decree within 24 months.
Doyle became the department’s eighth chief, including those who served as interim, since March 2015 when he was sworn in. His contract is for three years. But he hedged when asked how long he’ll remain.
“I don't know,” he said. “I mean, I know nationwide, you know, the average tenure for a police chief is three to five years. It just all depends on how things go I guess.”
