P-D:
St. Louis police, mayor’s office come to terms on local control
The city may yet wrest control of its police department from the state this year.
Mayor Francis Slay came to terms with the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association this afternoon on a new deal that would give police officers collective bargaining rights for the first time ever, and protect existing officer salaries, benefits – and residency rights.
In exchange, the force would become a city department. The mayor’s office would have appointing authority over the police chief, and city leaders could not only set the department’s budget, but determine how that money is spent.
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The city has been fighting for such control for years. State control, the mayor has long said, doesn’t allow city leaders to direct overarching police policy, nor set police budget priorities.
The officers association has fought back fiercely, saying city officials would meddle in police arrests and pilfer police pensions, as association leaders testified to more than once in Jefferson City.
(snip)
Discipline hearings would keep police department rules, but shift from the police board to the city’s Civil Service Commission, which currently handles discipline for city employees.
And elected officials who “impede, obstruct, hinder or interfere” with police work, according to a draft of the bill, would be fined $1,000, and could lose their office.
I’ve been saying all along that the pension argument isn’t the best arrow in the quiver against local control. Race is — Should this local control deal get done, the Board of Aldermen will immediately put in a civilian review board, fill it with cracker jack box theology degree black preachers, thereby ending any hint of effective law enforcement on the part of the SLPD. I suppose this last line in my blockquote is an attempt to head that off. But responsibility for enforcing that law would fall in the lap of the CA’s office. The CA being Jennifer Joyce, of the Obama-lover “truth squader” scandal. Do you honestly think she’ll enforce such an ordinance against City Hall politicians, especially if there’s a racial tar baby involved?
SLPOA. FAIL.
