Reed throws down gauntlet on local control of police
The Armory, origin of the state-controlled police department
ST. LOUIS — Board of Aldermen President Lewis Reed is beginning next session with one issue firmly atop his agenda: Gaining local control of the police department.
The question is: Can City Hall do anything about it?
In a post at Reed’s blog, St. Louis Core, the first-term board president writes “our police board should not be a political spoil to be handed out.”
Reed then calls on Missouri legislators– particularly those outstate, who comprise the majority at the Capitol — to abolish the state-appointed Board of Police Commissioners that has run the department since the Civil War. (State leaders didn’t want union sympathizers in St. Louis to have access to the city’s armory, which stills stands today.)
Says Reed:
The state legislature is the body that would ultimately have to vote to pass any local control measures. The citizens of St. Louis cannot affect the political career of a legislator from outstate Missouri. Special interest groups and political machines can.
No real case has ever been made in favor of state control, only against local control. We ask the question - why shouldn’t state legislators entrust the citizens of St. Louis city with the affairs of its own police department like cities all across the state?
There has been some talk that the city would be willing to give the police union greater control of its pension system in exchange for supporting the end of the Police Board.
If that doesn’t work, city leaders will have to come up with some other brilliant political parry, because for 150 years nobody has been able to convince Jefferson City to relinquish its grip on the city’s police force.
That would be Union sympathizers, not union sympathizers - right, Jake?
If anyone can facilitate this, Lou can. He’s one of the best
negotiators I know.
What? “The Great Visionary” Lewis Reed actually taking a stand on an issue?
What a silly notion - that outstate lawmakers would knowingly vote to help the City of St. Louis. In fact, many of these rural lawmakers build whole voting records based upon denying progress or consideration to the City. Some still fan the flames of rural anger by evoking how the state remains on the hook for costs related to building the “DomeStadium” downtown, better known as the Edward Jones Dome. And they wink in unspoken racial code while muttering about how rural schools were cost hundreds of millions of dollars siphoned by “Fed’rulJedges” toward City school desegregation. And they mutter about “SANTLoo’-iss” crime and municipal corruption being as dependable as the sunrise over the Arch. And now the once and future Mayor has poked outstate in the eye about the Tuscumbia bridge project getting federal stimulus money. Yes, this is a non-starter “UpInJeffCity.” Outstate lawmakers wouldn’t take a tinkle on the City if it were ablaze. They’d bring the marshmallows.
How about bringing back control of our schools, Lewis? Or is that not what your developer-masters want? Reed is such a gasbag.
Leave it to one of the crazy school people to try and equate the public schools to the police department. The police department has been under control since the Civil War and the schools were so poorly managed by local representation that the state had to take over. Two completely different things, but of course don’t let facts get in the way of your trivial rant.