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A representative for Teneo, a New York- and London-based CEO advisory group, told the county’s Board of Police Commissioners on Wednesday it plans to release a report on its findings by the end of the year. As the group is working for Centene Corp. and other companies, it wasn’t clear if its report would contain all of its conclusions.

Teneo’s access to the county and city police departments has already resulted in a top-secret experiment in which the departments planned to join forces in a high-crime area straddling the city of Jennings and the city’s Walnut Park West neighborhood.

A series of Post-Dispatch articles in late October disclosed the effort. The tight lid on it — and the failure to include key stakeholders, including the area’s two top prosecutors — brought the effort under heavy criticism and suspicion that private entities are directing a key government function without oversight.

The first public mention of the review and the joint city-county effort came during Wednesday’s police board meeting, five months after County Executive Sam Page announced the review of the county police department.

In a videoconference, Courtney Adante, president of Teneo Risk Advisory Group, said her team had drilled into six areas of interest: a “cultural diagnostic� that considers everything from employee relations to public trust in the police; the department’s communications strategy; crime reduction strategy; use of technology; use of force and allocation of resources.

“I want to clarify that I’m here to provide you all an update today on the framework and the scope of the assessment, but not specifics on our assessment findings to date,� Andrade told the board.

‘Long way to go’

Lt. Col. Troy Doyle, who was appointed by County Executive Sam Page in June to serve as a liaison between the consultants and the police department and later filed a claim of racial discrimination against the county, told the board that he hoped the document “will contain many of the hard truths we know to exist ... we have a long way to go and our efforts should not end with the publication of a document.�

A trove of more than 500 documents obtained by the Post-Dispatch through the Sunshine Law request reveal that review started shortly after Page announced it in late June. And the requests for meetings and information came from some of the biggest names in law enforcement, including William Bratton, the former Boston and New York police commissioner and Los Angeles police chief.

The requests sometimes left officials in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ scrambling to collect information and grasping at what the consultants were looking for.

The effort is funded by Centene, the Clayton-based managed care giant, and other local companies. Centene donated more than $200,000 to Page’s reelection effort. The company and others has been pushing for years for the city and county police to combine some or all of their functions. Centene CEO Michael Neidorff said in a roundtable in October that if business leaders had not become involved, the cooperation in Jennings and ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ wouldn’t have happened.

From the start, police board chairman William “Rayâ€� Price Jr., noted the lack of information the board was given about the review. When Mayor Lyda Krewson announced a parallel review in her city, Price told ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County Chief Mary Barton and the four other police commissioners that a Post-Dispatch article “reveals more information concerning the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ City study than we have been provided.â€�

Within days, emails show, polite but insistent emails from Teneo consultants began to engage police officials of every rank from Barton down, setting up calls, interviews, updates and submitting record requests and spreadsheets with detailed questions.

In a July 10 email, Price told Barton to remember one priority when she met with the consultants. “Make sure they understand how important to us is the portion of the study concerning diversity and inclusiveness and what can be done, within and without, to combat racism and discrimination of any kind.�

Barton only a few weeks earlier had come under fire for comments she made to the County Council indicating she did not believe systemic racism existed in the department.

She responded: “Yes sir.�

Teneo also sought meetings with the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County Police Association, the Ethical Society of Police, a group that represents minority police officers, and the chiefs of University City, Hazelwood and Florissant police departments.

The consultants asked detailed questions and requested records about every facet of the department’s operations, from training, the department’s racial makeup, how it investigates shootings by police officers and its agreements to patrol municipalities such as Jennings and Wildwood.

In one email in August, Teneo Senior Vice President asked Doyle and Lt. Colby Dolly for some information.

“Would it be possible to get information on the use of force within the department? Specifically, a breakdown of officer involved shootings, how many members are involved in discharging their weapon per incident (and) the number of rounds fired during each incident. Thank you.�

Dolly responded: “How many years would you like?�

Olson: “Five years, please.�

Nondisclosure deal

By September, records show, the county’s lawyers were drawing up a contract for Teneo to sign that included a nondisclosure agreement to protect confidential information. It was not clear whether such an agreement was reached.

Some high-ranking officers were left sometimes wondering what the consultants were doing.

On Oct. 24, with days to go before the joint city-county effort in Jennings and ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, the city’s Lt. Col. Mary J. Warnecke asked her counterpart in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County, Lt. Col. Bryan Ludwig, if he’s received “a plan or a draft of a planâ€� from Teneo.

“No, we don’t have anything yet either,� Ludwig responded.

The documents also showed how the group planned to introduce the public to the joint city-county effort.

A draft of a memo shared between Teneo and the city and county police indicated it was important to frame the initiative as being “people first� and centered on a “holistic, collaborative approach to healing a community rife with victims, crime, fear, and disorder.�

“To be successful, this initiative must be perceived as a coordinated, collaborative, and cohesive coming together of community, private and public sectors to make sustainable improvements in one of the region’s most underserved areas,� the memo said.

It continued, “Certain stakeholders may have differing opinions and motives for supporting or speaking out against the plan; thus, the communication messaging must be firmly grounded in a vision and mission all can agree on to avoid the media identifying ‘sides’ and playing one side against another.�