An O'Fallon man is facing felony charges after surveillance video allegedly caught him hurling a spiked metal device at the entrance to the St. Charles County Department of Corrections, damaging three cruisers and leaving one caltrop lodged inside a tire. Allen Brown was arrested after officers found him and his car at a nearby business, and he later admitted to placing the device, according to court documents.
According to KMOV, officers responded on September 15 to the 200 block of North 2nd Street, the address of the jail's entrance and exit for law enforcement vehicles. Court documents cited by the station say Brown drove past that entrance and threw a caltrop at the jail's driveway, damaging three police cars, with one caltrop becoming lodged directly in a tire. Police recovered the metal device at the scene and, per the same court documents, later found more caltrops during a tow inventory of Brown's car.
A caltrop is a spiked metal device. The design traces back to Roman military tactics used to disable horses' hooves before later being adapted to puncture pneumatic tires. That is a sharp contrast to the tire-deflation tools police themselves use during pursuits — commercial stop sticks use hollow spikes that release air slowly, as Hoodline has previously reported.
What Brown Allegedly Told Investigators
Court documents describe Brown admitting he placed the caltrop at the jail entrance hoping law enforcement vehicles would damage their tires, per the same account cited by KMOV. Brown reportedly expressed disdain for certain law enforcement agencies and the government more broadly, and told investigators he acted to disrupt law enforcement transport cars. He also said he wanted to cost the government money because, in his view, government actions had already cost him money.
Reporting from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Tuesday noted that prosecutors described the spikes used in the incident as “medieval-like,” and that court documents detailed Brown's explicit statement of disdain for law enforcement. The St. Charles County Department of Corrections, located at 301 North 2nd Street, is a maximum-security facility with capacity for more than 500 inmates that houses local, state, and federal detainees, according to ThePublicIndex. Brown reportedly lives in O'Fallon, one of the county's two most populous cities.
Charges and Potential Penalties
Brown is charged with one count of property damage involving law enforcement and one count of obstructing government operations, according to KMOV's reporting.
The obstruction charge is a misdemeanor. Brown is currently held on a $25,000 cash-only bond.
It remains unknown whether Brown manufactured the caltrops himself or purchased them, and whether additional police vehicles beyond the three cited in court documents sustained damage. Police identified Brown using surveillance video and arrested him at a nearby business.
