Photography by Ryan Krull
St. Louis Public Safety Director Charles Coyle.
A director in the city’s Department of Public Safety has filed a complaint against the department’s head, Charles Coyle, alleging that he made unwanted sexual advances toward her and then subjected her to unfair scrutiny after she rebuffed him.
The complaint filed by Sandra Zambrana, director of the city’s Neighborhood Stabilization Division, is buttressed by two other whistleblower complaints addressed to the Department of Personnel, in which two of Zambrana’s subordinates allege that they were coerced by DPS higher-ups into making false statements against Zambrana.
Coyle put Zambrana on forced leave not long before she filed her complaint with the city’s Department of Personnel.
A DPS spokesperson would not comment on Zambrana's current employment status on Friday. A City Hall spokesman also declined comment, saying the situation is a personnel matter.
Zambrana is an attorney who worked for the City Counselor's office before taking over the Neighborhood Stabilization Division in 2022. Part of the Department of Public Safety, the division works to coordinate efforts between police, elected officials, community groups, and others to proactively address issues at the neighborhood level. The Citizen Services Bureau also falls under its umbrella.
Coyle was a deputy chief with the St. Louis Fire Department when Mayor Tishaura Jones named him interim DPS director in January 2023. He was appointed to that role full-time that October.
In her complaint, Zambrana says that the first instance of harassment came in February 2023 when Coyle came to her office to tell her that he’d heard she was “problematic” and he should “watch out” for her.
As the meeting wrapped up, the two moved toward the door but then Coyle turned around, Zamabrana wrote, ran his fingers through her hair and said, “After meeting you, I can tell you are a teddy bear." Zambrana wrote that when they shook hands, he gazed at her and “with a sexual tone added, ‘I can protect you, but you have to tell me that you want me to.’"
Thereafter, Zambrana wrote, every time she met Coyle at his office, he would “leer at me in a sexually suggestive manner, overtly eyeing me up and down.” She said that he made inappropriate comments about her clothing: for instance, how a dress she wore hugged her curves. He also asked her repeatedly if she’d thought about his offer to “protect” her. Zambrana wrote that she routinely deflected his behavior, ignoring or pretending not to understand his comments, and redirected conversations. In one instance, she wrote, when she shook hands with Coyle and he pulled her closer, she pretended to trip.
Over the course of the following year and a half, the complaint says, Coyle yelled at her for including the wrong people in an email, instructed her to lie when she spoke to the Board of Aldermen, and accused her of misusing law enforcement’s REJIS database. Zambrana was given a pre-termination letter accusing her of misusing that database.
However, the two whistleblower complaints filed by Zambrana’s subordinates state that they were instructed to fabricate statements against their boss.
One of those whistleblower complaints says that the employee in question was called into a meeting with Coyle and his deputy director, who asked about the REJIS searches. This employee said that the searches were “practice” searches so they could learn how to use the system.
After giving this explanation, the employee wrote, “I was then told by Director Coyle that I needed to ‘make sure I gave the right answers,’ which felt like a clear attempt to pressure me into providing a false statement.’”
This employee also said that they were told to write that they had witnessed prescription drugs being distributed illegally in the office, “a claim that I have never seen nor believe to be true.”
Zambrana's employees appear to have helped her move from one home to another. That could be a violation of personnel police if the employees felt pressured to do so or if it was done on city time.
One of the subordinates who filed a whistleblower complaint acknowledges that “move day” occurred, but states the deputy DPS director “coerced” them into writing a statement that “inaccurately reflected my personal recollection of events.”
“Deputy Director [Levaughn] Smart handed me a pen and paper and instructed me on what to write. After reviewing my initial statement, he told me that it was not specific enough and had me rewrite it to include details that I was not comfortable with, including false information about my supervisor,” the complainant wrote.
A whistleblower complaint from a second employee paints a very similar, though less detailed account of feeling as though they were being pressured to make false statements about Zambrana “under threat of disciplinary action.”
The complaints against Coyle—and Zambrana’s forced leave—are just the latest turmoil at City Hall, which has seen numerous departments dealing with their top managers on leave or under fire. The jail commissioner recently returned from an unspecified three-month leave only to be "separated' from the city on Saturday, the personnel director is suing the mayor’s office (which is trying to fire her), and the mayor has publicly asked for the FBI to investigate the building division over troubling allegations about city employees cashing in on ARPA-funded programs and shaking down daycare facilities.
