JEFFERSON CITY — State Rep. Brad Christ, a south St. Louis County Republican and freshman legislator, is carrying the mantle for a second year on legislation that would end local control of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
Under Christ’s proposal, the St. Louis Police Department would be run by a board of police commissioners made up of four members appointed by the governor and the city’s mayor. Currently, the department is run by a police chief selected by the mayor.
The measure won first-round approval in the Legislature’s lower chamber on a voice vote Tuesday. Floor debate surfaced impassioned and familiar arguments.
Christ said his bill isn’t a crime plan and implied that Mayor Tishaura O. Jones is to blame for a disaffected police force and failing city facing a public safety crisis.
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“This is to create a better foundation for SLMPD that has been decimated by an administration, which in turn has decimated St. Louis city with crime,” he said.
“From the depth of my soul, there is not a racist bone in my body,” said Christ. “This has nothing to do with race. This has to do with supporting our police and saving the citizens of the city of St. Louis.”
He was responding to comments by Rep. Peter Merideth, D-St. Louis, who said that a Civil War-era white supremacist state government ended local control of the police department, which led to more than a century of state control.
When control was returned to St. Louis in 2013, a white man was mayor, Merideth said.
Rep. LaKeySha Bosley, D-St. Louis city, also framed the effort as, at least in part, related to race since the change is being proposed when an African American woman is St. Louis mayor for the first time in history.
Bosley, who spoke emphatically and admitted her comments were an “aggressive” response to an “aggressive takeover” of St. Louis police, also characterized the effort as decidedly partisan.
“I think you’re trying to push this as a: ‘We don’t want to listen to Democrats in the city, so we’re going to put it in the hands of a majority Republican Legislature who we believe we can trust,’” she said.
Rep. Justin Sparks, R-Wildwood, a former St. Louis County police officer, said proposed state control of SLMPD is the result of local St. Louis leaders supporting “a foolish and dangerous policy called ‘defund the police’” to score “cheap political points,” resulting in a mass exodus of city police officers.
“What’s happening in St. Louis is an embarrassment to this entire state,” said Rep. Lane Roberts, a former Joplin police chief and law enforcement veteran. Politics — and not public safety — is driving the debate, he said.
Like last year, Jones has been forthright in her displeasure with state lawmakers’ attempts to exercise greater control over the city, visiting the Capitol last month to lobby against the police takeover and slashing the city’s earnings tax.
Jones at the end of 2022 selected Robert Tracy for the police department’s top position. He’s been the city’s police commissioner for a little over a year.
This legislation is House Bill 1481.