Ashcroft & Walters: We Need State Control of Our Police
St. Louis is one of the most dangerous cities in America. But you wouldn’t know it from the FBI’s crime statistics. For three months this year, the city of St. Louis failed to report legally required crime data to the state – the second time in a year – leading the FBI to disavow their own reports. It’s also not the first time: the City failed to report stats for eight months leading to a 2021 FBI report that reflected only a portion of the city’s crimes for the year.
Unfortunately, this is the least of the city’s crime problems. Since state control of the St. Louis Police Department was turned over to local leadership in 2013, the challenges facing the citi-zens of St. Louis have only increased. Downtown businesses are closing, citizens are scared, and nearly 60% of homicides have gone unsolved since 2017, due to the lack of manpower to assist with canvasses and community engagement. Without proper community engagement, there can’t be effective community protection and enforcement.
We all know that most law enforcement officers are severely under-compensated but walk the line anyway. Sadly, St. Louis’s problems go much deeper.
One of the most critical deficiencies is the lack of resources allocated to police vehicles and the repair of those vehicles. Under state control there was a dedicated facility for maintaining and repairing police vehicles but after the city takeover, this facility is now responsible for the en-tire city fleet, creating a large backlog of repairs often leaving officers without working vehi-cles. This hidden defunding has at times led to districts and neighborhoods without adequate law enforcement presence.
Officers traveling to other cities to retrieve offenders, often have to return the offender when their maxed-out city credit cards leave them unable to pay for travel back to St. Louis. Unpaid invoices for orders lead to harassment from vendors and even liens on officers’ personal resi-dences due to the City not paying for equipment and services for the department.
Officers don’t always have the uniforms or equipment necessary, paying out-of-pocket, and waiting months for a dysfunctional bureaucracy to reimburse them. Some officers choose to eat the cost.
We ask a lot of law enforcement. We rightly expect them to respond with professionalism and restraint in the face of violent and complex situations. The least we can do is ensure they have the tools necessary to do that.
Mismanagement of the St. Louis Police Department’s accounting department often leads to annual budgets getting drained by expenses from previous fiscal years, lagging in the system, and depleting badly needed funds from current operating budgets. This leaves the department scrambling to fill budget holes and creating more management chaos.
While the State of Missouri has nearly doubled its annual budget in the last five years, from $28 billion to $51 billion, little of that has made it to public safety agencies. Meanwhile our officers face unprecedented scrutiny, an elected leadership more tolerant of criminals, and in-competence and mismanagement from their leadership.
Under local control, the focus has been on “control” rather than public safety. More energy is spent on debates over police presence in various communities rather than what the men and women doing the job need to be effective.
It is well-known that officers are demoralized, feel a lack of support from their leaders, and are at a breaking point. The state of law enforcement in St. Louis is perilous and just one flashpoint event could lead to a collapse. If, God forbid, another Ferguson or Jason Stockley-type protest were to occur, our first responders are not prepared to handle the unrest and many officers would likely walk off the job.
The Ethical Society of Police has publicly opposed local control in favor of state control since the debate first began to return control of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department to the City. Plain and simple, the decade-long experiment of local control has failed.
The security and well-being of our communities rests on our law enforcement officers. For too long, Missouri’s economic engines – St. Louis and Kansas City – have had a dismal reputation as being lawless and dangerous places. And unfortunately, despite the lack of accurate statisti-cal data, we know these reputations are based in fact. State control is not about protecting the profession. It’s about protecting the people who work in the profession; those who don the badge stand up for what is right in the City of St. Louis and our great state.
It is time to put politics aside and put public safety first. The incompetence and dysfunction putting the people of St. Louis at risk can no longer be tolerated. It is time to act.
Jay Ashcroft, Secretary of State
Sgt. Donnell Walters, President, Ethical Society of Police
