Tony Messenger | Post-Dispatch

Metro columnist

ST. LOUIS — In one of his first cases as a federal judge, Joshua Divine was the one asking the questions.

And the key question in the case before him was about the state-appointed Board of Police Commissioners. As of March, that board was supposed to be in charge of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.

“Does the board exist right now?” Divine asked Lucas Chapman, an assistant in the Missouri attorney general’s office, where the judge previously worked.

Divine, a Trump appointee, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a judge in the Eastern District of Missouri in July.

Now he’s overseeing a years-old wrongful death and police brutality case involving a 63-year-old St. Louis man, Don Clark Sr. Clark was killed during a no-knock SWAT

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