City building inspector says his boss pushed him to solicit daycare donations

A St. Louis city building inspector who was placed on leave on Tuesday says that the city’s chief building official pressured him for years to solicit donations from the daycares he inspected. The inspector identified former Building Commissioner Frank Oswald, who retired in March, as the source of the pressure.

Oswald’s wife had a contract position running a charity golf tournament for a local nonprofit. The inspector says Oswald was not only aware that he was soliciting donations on behalf of the tournament, but pressured him to do so. 

Oswald insists that what the inspector, whom SLM can identify as Dan Coplin, says is not true. “Dan’s pretty upset right now with the whole world. I am very concerned about him,” Oswald said. “I’m worried about his mental health right now.”

In just the past week, the city’s Building Division has been hit with two scandals, leading Mayor Tishaura Jones to ask the FBI to investigate. Last week, SLM reported that three companies associated with building inspection supervisor Banjo Popoola received $2.5 million from programs he oversaw tasked with fixing up rundown properties in the city. Popoola resigned last Friday.

Then, on Tuesday, KSDK political editor Mark Maxwell reported that another building inspector had visited city daycares, soliciting donations from their owners for a charity golf tournament benefiting the Special Education Foundation. 

While Coplin wasn’t named in the report, he was caught on tape on at least one occasion suggesting that the owners contribute as much as $10,000. Daycare owners told KSDK they felt compelled to give or risk being shut down by the city. Coplin wore his city badge and uniform during the visits.

Coplin resigned yesterday. He tells SLM that he never meant to pressure anyone and that in fact he was the one who felt pressured—by his boss. 

Oswald’s wife, Karen Carter, worked as a golf coordinator for the Special Education Foundation, a St. Louis-based nonprofit that throws a major tournament each year. A July 2019 email from Carter to Copplin included a list of businesses, most of which are daycare centers, and says “if they’ve been solicited and if they’ve donated.” The businesses were sorted by level of donation, with some categorized as “have not contacted,” with contact information provided in some cases. 

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Coplin said, though he acknowledged it looked bad. “I just tried to do the right thing.” He said he never meant to pressure anyone to donate and alleged he had been “asked to ask the daycares if they would donate.” 

Asked who was pressuring him, Coplin said it was Oswald. He said that he’d bring checks back to Oswald, who would “put it in his suit coat pocket.” Asked how long this went on, Coplin said “years.”

When KSDK and SLM stopped by Oswald’s house in the Gate District yesterday, he defended his actions. 

“He should have never had a badge on or been in front of somebody requesting [money] during work time. Period,” Oswald said of Coplin. 

Oswald said that he didn’t know about the email his wife sent to Coplin, though he acknowledged it was a clear ethical violation.

Oswald couldn’t completely explain exactly how it was that his wife, Carter, and Coplin got connected in the first place. He said that Carter was paid “very minimally” for her work with the Special Education Foundation.

As for collecting the checks from Coplin, Oswald acknowledges that Coplin would drop off an envelope of “whatever” with Carter’s name on it and that he’d then give it to her. 

Tim Eby, executive director of the Special Education Foundation, confirms that Carter worked in a contract role for the nonprofit for many years, serving as its golf coordinator. She did not earn financial commissions in that role. 

Eby began his job with the foundation in April 2022. While Carter ended up leaving after the golf tournament that fall, Eby says there was no suggestion of trouble at that time. Any allegations about impropriety in the city’s Building Division, he says, “has all been news to us.” Eby says the organization is now looking into donations made by daycares and considering refunding any that were made under duress.

Oswald did say that became aware of complaints against Coplin, though he hadn’t seen the video that aired on KSDK prior to the broadcast. Before retiring from the city, Oswald says, he “probably” alerted his supervisor in the Department of Public Safety, which at the time was Dan Isom, about allegations against Coplin, which Oswald says led to Coplin being reassigned. Coplin was no longer responsible for inspecting daycares, but allowed to remain in the city’s employ. 

About the other scandal rocking the division which he used to oversee, Oswald says he was shocked to learn about Popoola’s connections to multiple contractors getting millions of dollars from the ARPA-funded programs Popoola supervised. “He was the nicest person, a nice gentleman, very polite, always willing to work hard, do anything anytime for you,” Oswald says. “He just pulled the wool over everybody’s eyes.” 

Under Oswald, Popoola was promoted to supervise the city’s program to identify rundown properties, arrange for work to be done at them, and then bill the owners. 

But Oswald couldn’t explain how contractors were hired for the program, other than to say he thought the process should have been put online via a bid portal, like it is done for demolitions. “Unfortunately, just with timing and whatever reasons, the mayor’s office wasn’t able to get it all accomplished,” he says of the ARPA-funded programs Popoola was tasked with supervising.

On Tuesday, Mayor Tishaura Jones announced that she had asked both the FBI and the state auditor’s office to investigate the Building Division. 

Questioned about the allegations against Oswald, a mayoral spokesman told SLM, “We’re going to let the investigators do their job.” 

With additional reporting by executive editor Sarah Fenske