Document k9orOYqvGgqmE9yg1OzzY5qq0

ST.LOUIS POST-DISPATCH TUESDAY, MAY 24,1988 Officer Revels In Fast-Paced Job Mayor Uses Humor To Smooth Over Bumps EAST ST. LOUIS CITY ON THE EDGE PART3 . By Peter Hemon Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Photographs By Odell Mitchell Jr. Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Carl E. Officer, low in the seat and in white shirt sleeves, was at the wheel of a dented, blue squad car, the lights flashing as he threaded a zigzag path through the evening rush-hour traffic crawling along Interstate 64. Rolling through red traffic signals and stop signs, alternately punching the accelerator and brake pedal, Officer, the mayor of East St. Louis, was performing a job that most public officials leave to their police departments. With a bodyguard nicknamed Pit Bull riding shotgun, Officer was answering a peace-distur bance call and loving every minute of it. The mayor arrived at a Baptist church where a heavyset woman in the congregation was loudly argu- ing with the pastor. The dispute involved the woman's son. Pointed fingers and obscenities were flying as Pit Bull lumbered over. A thick-necked gentleman, he sported a shaved, gleaming skull and carried a .45caliber automatic; the pistol's black handle peeked from under the back of his bowling jacket. His calm ing influence was magical; the argument quickly 1 ended. Through it all, Officer stood by the trunk of the patrol car, munching on a barbecued beef sandwich, : a late lunch. He clearly revels in a job he has held since 1979, when at the age of 27 he became one of the youngest mayors in the nation. Officer has been re-elected , twice to a post that pays $30,000 a year. His critics say it gives this man, who has an almost defiantly playboy image, a wonderful play toy -- a city of some 50,000 residents, fire hats to wear, police cars to drive. Critics are easy to find, but so are supporters. Few are lukewarm when asked their opinions about a mayor who at various times has unstrapped a shoulder-holstered 9mm pistol before delivering a civics I lecture to schoolchildren; grabbed a fire hose and helped battle a blaze; wisecracked about "microwav ing" money in the city's most recent financial emer gency; and doggedly pursued a riverfront redevelop ment plan despite a flurry of crippling suits. Officer's problems might seem overwhelming: a virtually empty treasury, mounting debts, under staffed police and fire departments, an impoverished constituency. But he rarely loses his sense of humor See OFFICER, Page 4 DSW 135565 STLCOPCB4035544 Officer From page one or is at a loss for words. On a recent morning, an NBC reporter interviewed him shortly after 9 a.m. in his official office on the third floor of City Hall. The mayor, wearing a pin striped blue suit and sky-blue shirt, looked surprisingly fresh for someone who claimed to have retired for the night a scant three hours earlier. His professional duties, he explained, required that he "personally attend to the needs" of a sorority that was meeting in St. Louis. For the next half hour, Officer was grilled about the avalanche of city diffi culties. Asked where he would find the money to deal with them, he quipped, "I always come up with the money." Glib, bluntly candid about the roughhouse politics in SL Clair County, at times teasing. Officer was living up to his nick name emblazoned on a plaque on his desk: "Smooth." He described how city services were crippled as revenue sharing was phased out, predicted better times when the Board of Aldermen is reduced from 16 to eight members next spring and said the problems with trash collection would be corrected. Although known to favor an occasional sip of Jack Daniels -- from bottles some times wrapped in a brown paper bag -- Officer asked an aide to fetch a glass of water. "I don't want to see `Jack' today at all," he said, his only reference to his long evening. Shadowing the mayor on his excur sions can be exhausting, said Pit Bull, one of five police officers assigned as Officer's bodyguards. About 5 feet 7 inches and muscular, a diamond glitter ing in his left ear lobe, Pit Bull declined to give his name or to have his photo graph taken. "He's running all the time," he said of his boss. "He never lets up. ... We stay with him in shifts. I'll leave him in the evening, and then another guy will pick him up." The guard detail has been a source of frequent complaint in a city short of po lice officers and in which Illinois state troopers help patrol the streets. Late last year, the complaints became shrill when two bodyguards pulled a pis tol and an Uzi submachine gun on a man who was said to, have threatened the mayor in the restroom of a bar in Peoria. Both men later were suspended from their jobs as auxiliary police officers. It turned out that one of the guards had a guarded past; he had been accused of rape, and his license as a security guard in St. Louis County had been re voked. He also had been fired as a Pagedale police officer after he was charged with theft and conspiracy to possess drugs -- charges that were dropped just before trial when a key witness refused to testify. Although the mayor declines to talk about threats against his life, he takes them seriously, said his press spokes man, James Ingram. Officer said that shots once were fired through the win dow of his parents' funeral home at 2114 Missouri Avenue. A few years later po lice learned that two men had spoken of a $20,000 contract to kill the mayor. Shortly after his NBC interview ended, Officer sat dozing in the back seat of a white city car while Pit Bull buried the speedometer at 80 mph through rolling farm country. The mayor was on his way to Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, where he was scheduled to intro duce the Lincoln Senior High Jazz Band. The group was performing there at an arts conference. Awakening from his catnap, the mayor offered a running, often racy commen tary on the women in his life. He has lost none of the flair that repeatedly puts him on unofficial lists of the metropolitan ar ea's most eligible bachelors. "I'm still looking for the right lady," said Officer, 36. "I'd love to have some kids." Officer clearly had a roving eye dur ing his few hours at the university. In short order, he encountered a young fe male student who asked to pose with him for a picture, got a name and address from another and offered a third a pack of chewing gum, saying, "I just want to see how your hands move." When he concluded his brief remarks at the arts conference, Officer apolo gized to the several hundred people in the audience for having to leave early. He mentioned the sorority again. "I've got to go back and deal with all those 1,400 young ladies and all those prob lems facing my city." It was quintessential Officer, a mixture of the serious and irreverent, the pol ished speaker and stand-up comedian. After stopping at a Greek restaurant for a light beer and a gyro sandwich, he .climbed back into the car for the bulletride back to East SL Louis. He chose his real work place this time--the cluttered room down the ball from his official office. Officer waded into a stack of paper work, pausing to speak to one of his law yers about the city's precarious finances and to answer a stream of telephone calls. After an hour or so, he sent an aide out for a couple of Miller High Lifes but was told the refrigerator had been emp tied by the "beer fairies." Several visitors mentioned a cover sto ry on Officer that had recently appeared in SL Louis Magazine. The mayor, inter viewed the day his city's assets were fro zen, was quoted as saying that at such moments all he wanted was "heavy sex." He put extra spin on the comment by adding that he could "understand why Hitler took Eva Braun down into the bunker." Did he regret saying it? someone asked. Officer smiled and shook his head. "My constituents don't give a damn about thaL" WEDNESDAY: Looking to the future. DSW 135566 STLCOPCB4035545 DSW 135567 STLCOPCB4035546 dSH I"561 STLCOPCB4035547