St. Louis CofCC Blog

Virginia Young:

Police control bill advances, with a twist

St. Louis leaders finally got their say today on a bill giving the city control over its police department. But they weren’t real happy with the way the measure ended up.

The bill (HB2117) would do away with control of the department by a governor-appointed board of commissioners. Instead, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen could set up a municipal police department.

Mayor Francis Slay and 25 members of the Board of Aldermen have endorsed the idea. After two previous House hearings were canceled, Slay and several aldermen finally offered testimony on Wednesday.

Also weighing in was the St. Louis Police Officers Association, which opposes the bill because of worries about political intererence, especially with its pension plan.

To pry the bill from committee, the sponsors — Reps. Rodney Hubbard and T.D. El-Amin – accepted an amendment giving Kansas City control of its police department, too. But all sides agreed that could open a can of worms.

It’s not hard to oppose something sponsored by someone who is vying for credit for allocating state money to help paroled prisoners, and by someone who is for reparations for slavery.  However, there are other good reasons to oppose this.  This blogmeister so wrote in another medium:

I also support the concept of state control and supervision of certain large city police departments by the state government which the cities are in.  A model of this control mechanism is the state government of Missouri’s over the St. Louis City Police Department.  The purpose of the control is to allow the occasional conservative governor of that state the authority to appoint most of that department’s directors or commissioners in order to prevent that city’s police board from enacting inane anti-police policies like bans on “racial profiling,” prohibiting police chases, “sensitivity” or “diversity training,” establishing a “civilian review board,” and affirmative action in hiring and promotion, which they would do if they were fully locally controlled by a cabal of white-hating, police-hating black “ministers” and welfare-dependent “community activists,” who would not only constitute that city’s board of police commissioners, but would also be on the “civilian review board” they created.

Transferring control and responsibility over the SLPD from the state to the city would be like sending it from the frying pan to the fire.

UPDATE 3/14:  Former SLPOA President Gary Wiegert also informs us that, if the city gets full control over the SLPD, than their residency rules will take effect again, meaning that all SLPD officers must live in the city, and the ones that moved out will have to move back in.  The recent reforms that allowed for officers with 7+ years on the force to live outside the city came because of the votes of the members of the Police Board that were appointed by Missouri’s Governors.  They’re reversed if the state loses control.