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State takeover of St. Louis Police Department clears Missouri Senate with bipartisan support

Jack Suntrup, St. Louis Post-Dispatch on

Published in News & Features

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The Missouri Senate on Monday easily approved a state takeover plan for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department over the objections of the city’s mayor and local senators.

The plan, approved on a 27-5 bipartisan vote, now moves to the House, which could vote this week to send the measure to Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe for his likely signature.

The legislation calls for a six-member Board of Police Commissioners, including five gubernatorial appointees and the mayor, to oversee the police department.

The state takeover provision would take effect when Kehoe signs the legislation, and the governor would have 90 days after that to appoint four of the commissioners.

The bill would require Kehoe to appoint a “transition director” to “ensure oversight of an orderly transition of the control of any municipal police force” from the city to the Board of Police Commissioners.

The implementation period would begin when Kehoe signs the bill and end no later than July 1, 2026, the legislation says. The board would take control of the police department during the implementation period.

Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, who faces reelection next month, has touted declining violent crime in efforts to kill the takeover. On Monday, she called the fight against state control “far from over.”

“This effort to take away St. Louisans’ control of their own police department is in line with the cowardly attempts at autocracy we are seeing at the national level,” Jones said in a statement. “I cannot and will not sit down and allow this complete disregard for democracy to compromise the safety of our residents for political gain.”

All Republicans except Sen. Mike Moon of Ash Grove voted for the takeover.

And only four of 10 Senate Democrats voted against it: Steven Roberts and Karla May of St. Louis, Stephen Webber of Columbia, and Brian Williams of University City.

Senate Democrats who voted for the bill were Minority Leader Doug Beck of south St. Louis County, Tracy McCreery of Olivette, and Maggie Nurrenbern and Patty Lewis of Kansas City.

Two Democrats, Angela Mosley of Florissant and Barbara Washington of Kansas City, were absent.

 

Roberts hinted last week that fellow Democrats could break with him to support the bill.

The vote came after multiple Democratic priorities were added to the omnibus crime bill that included the state takeover.

Now included in the legislation is a state task force on missing and murdered African American women, a limit on how much jails and prisons may charge inmates for phone calls, and a measure allowing more exonerees to seek restitution from the state.

The legislation also would require the sheriff of the city of St. Louis to have a valid peace officer license “within two years of being elected as sheriff.”

Roberts said he and May negotiated “significant improvements” to the legislation, including on the structure of the board.

Previous versions gave fraternal organizations such as the St. Louis Police Officers Association influence in the selection process for most of the board. But the latest version removes that. The new version also requires appointees to receive Senate confirmation.

Four citizen commissioners appointed by the governor would need to be city residents for at least two years, while the fifth gubernatorial appointee — a nonvoting member of the board — would need to be either a city resident or a St. Louis County resident who owns and pays taxes on real property in the city.

Resurrecting state control would put an end to an era of local control realized after a statewide campaign and vote in 2012 to undo the state’s police board.

Prior to the statewide campaign more than a decade ago, St. Louis’ police department had been under state control since the start of the Civil War, when pro-Southern state officials wanted to contain the pro-Union city police department.

Jones’ news release Monday said state control is “rooted in pro-slavery and treasonous ideology dating back to the eve of the Civil War.”

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