ST. LOUIS, MO — Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed House Bill 495, which, according to Bolts Magazine, transfers the authority of the police from the city to a board, created by the state Republican-led government.
And, adds Bolts, this transfer of power “effectively ends more than a decade of hard-won community oversight and rolls back reforms born out of the Ferguson uprising and the Black Lives Matter movement.”
Bolts Magazine claims this law reverts St. Louis back to a “Civil War-era model of state-controlled policing—an arrangement that remained in place for over 150 years until 2012, when Missouri voters approved a return to local control.”
Bolts writes “a six-person board will govern the department, with five members appointed by the governor and one seat reserved for the mayor.”
“The police will now be run by people who are not close to the problem,” said Alderperson Rasheen Aldridge, a critic of the action. “We’re the ones who live here. We know what is safe and what is not safe.”
However, Gov. Kehoe claimed this bill is a “citizen-led” initiative because the board members will reside in St. Louis, reports Bolts, noting House Bill 495 also alters the city budget, mandating that 25 percent be directed towards policing.
“It is a clear gesture of white men wanting to control urban areas. It’s a strategic move to take away transparency and silence the voices of the people who live here.” – Alderperson Rasheen Aldridge
Aldridge believes, said Bolts Magazine, “It is a clear gesture of white men wanting to control urban areas. It’s a strategic move to take away transparency and silence the voices of the people who live here.”
Bolts points out that with the passing of House Bill 495, “St. Louis joins Kansas City as one of only two major U.S. cities without municipal control of its own police force.”
Keith Rose, a member of St. Louis’s Civilian Oversight Board, said, “It feels like we just now got to the place where we could do the work…Now that we have the tools, they’re taking them away.”
Bolts also reports St. Louis’s Civilian Oversight Board“ has faced years of obstruction from police unions and lawsuits but had finally begun to function effectively.”
Aldridge points out in Bolts, “That is the most shocking thing [that] this bill passed in a year where we are at a historic low with crime.”
Jamala Rogers, executive director of the Organization for Black Struggle, believes, Bolts Magazine reports, “This is about control, not safety. It is a sad situation of a democratic process that has been totally disrupted. But we will continue to fight for accountability, transparency, and justice.”
