ST. LOUIS — Regional leaders endorsed a plan aimed at reducing homicides in the metro area, rejecting a move by St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann to give police and prosecutors half the seats on the advisory panel overseeing the initiative.
“Whoever controls the majority ... is going to control the agenda,” Ehlmann said at a meeting of the East-West Gateway Council of Governments on Wednesday.
The anti-violence initiative, worked out during a weeklong conference in December, aims to cut murders in the metro area by 20% over the next three years, focusing on the relatively small number of people involved in many homicides here.
St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones defended the plan, saying Ehlmann’s amendment would have tipped “the scales toward law enforcement.”
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“The principles under which this plan was put together are three pieces: prevention, intervention and enforcement,” she said.
The amendment failed.
The overall regional plan, approved 13-5 by the Gateway board, calls for using a strategy called “focused deterrence,” in which police and social service agencies give people repeatedly involved in violence a choice in meetings with police and others. Job training, education, mental health and drug treatment would be offered, while those who continue engaging in crime would get targeted enforcement action.
The plan also calls for increased hiring of street outreach workers likely aimed at high-crime areas of St. Louis, St. Louis County and St. Clair County.
Ehlmann contended that social service-oriented groups will have too much influence in shaping the plan’s details and law enforcement too little.
Under the approved plan, police and prosecutors will hold 19 of 68 slots on the advisory panel, which will meet four times a year.
Elected officials and their appointees will fill 18 and the remainder is expected to be a mix of people from business groups, schools and health, social service, neighborhood, religious and other nonprofit organizations.
St. Louis County Executive Sam Page and Clayton Mayor Michelle Harris agreed with Jones, saying police will play a key role on the advisory panel.
“If the law enforcement folks in the room say they’re uncomfortable with something, their voice is going to be heard,” Page said.
The Gateway Council’s executive director, Jim Wild, added that the Gateway board will make the ultimate decisions on “money and approach and that sort of thing” for the plan, dubbed Save Lives Now.
Wild said the initiative is expected to cost about $2 million for the first three years, with a mix of private and government funds involved. He said private organizations have committed $125,000 so far, including $25,000 in each of the next three years from the Regional Business Council.
Other Ehlmann amendments also failed, including one to block the appointment of Jones and Page as co-chairs of the advisory panel. He instead wanted the panel to be jointly led by one elected official from the Missouri side of the metro area and one from Illinois.
Ehlmann also wanted the two co-chairs to represent opposite views on how to reduce criminal violence, one favoring traditional law enforcement approaches and the other efforts to reduce the root causes of crime.
Among those backing Ehlmann were top officials from Jefferson and Madison counties, while council members from St. Louis, St. Louis County and St. Clair County generally sided with Jones.
Another flashpoint was over an amendment by Ehlmann to bar the planned anti-violence initiative from hiring any social workers unless the St. Louis police department first hired 10 new police officers. Ehlmann later changed his amendment to allow the new anti-violence organization to hire a social worker or workers only if city police hire an equal number of new officers. That updated amendment was voted down.
He said he didn’t think the plan could work “without traditional police methods” and with an “understaffed police department,” referring to the city department.
Jones shot back: “I’m sorry, you can no more mandate what we do in the city of St. Louis’ police department ... than I can mandate what you do in St. Charles.”
She said the city has made strides in hiring new officers and that across the country, police departments have struggled to replace officers retiring at a rate faster than new ones can be employed and trained.
She also said: “Maybe if St. Charles stopped poaching them, we wouldn’t lose as many officers.”
A St. Louis police spokesman, Sgt. Charles Wall, said later Wednesday that as of the start of this week, the department has 888 of 1,224 budgeted commissioned officer positions filled.
Jones said the city recently graduated a class of 11 new officers, is currently training 17 others and another class of 30 recruits starts training in two months.
The council also rejected an Ehlmann amendment to require all meetings and documents of the advisory panel and subcommittees to be covered by the Missouri open meetings and records law.
The plan calls for advisory panel meetings to be open to the public but says weekly meetings of an “implementation team” would be closed to the public and the press. Supporters said that’s needed to keep potential criminals from learning about police strategy.