It is time to re-think public safety

This call to action is authored by the undersigned 13 groups.

We’ve learned from the coronavirus that societal systems that keep us safe and healthy --medical assistance, food distribution, delivery of necessary products – depend alike on those valued and those most often undervalued. We should never again stray from the maxim that no one is safe unless everyone is safe.

We have not heeded this lesson in the past. Nationally, our huge military expenditures were toothless against viral attack. No border walls isolated us from disease. In the City of St. Louis, we have poured more than half our General Fund into police, courts and jails while providing the Health and Human Services Departments with less than 1% of that budget. 

We are less safe as a result: with violent crime high and too few resources to support us through this health emergency. What can the Health Department do when its staff has been reduced by half in the last 10 years?  

It is time to re-think our notions of public safety, setting very different priorities moving forward. 

The city budget is taking a huge hit from the loss of sales and earnings taxes; the Budget director predicts revenues reduced by $34 million or more. We are, however, hearing arguments that austerity budgets should hold the line on old solutions. The Post-Dispatch frets about increases in property crime. The City Operating Plan has only a 1% decrease in police spending.

But we must not double down on failed systems. Any social disruptions, if that is your concern, will likely come from workers protesting inadequate pay and health protections or from those rightly protesting disparities in health outcomes. Those disparities, writ large in St. Louis since the “For The Sake of All” (2013) and Ferguson Commission (2015) reports, are still evident in the rates of coronavirus infection and death in our black community. Those problems are our genuine public safety priorities. 

Traditional austerity budgets will only make things worse. To this end, we need major shifts in 2021 St. Louis city budget spending.

We should close the Workhouse, which now holds barely more than 100 prisoners. The Justice Center is adequate for our needs. Despite planned cuts, almost $9 million more could be redirected to meet real public safety obligations. 

The police budget has been a sacred cow, but is another opportunity to disinvest from the carceral state and invest in real, community-oriented safety. Weeding out failed practices could reduce the police budget by 5%, saving $10 million. 

We need to look at overtime pay and the high proportion of white shirts in the police department. Are the millions spent on the bells and whistles of the Real Time Crime Center actually yielding results? What about Shot Spotter, the efficacy of which has been questioned nationally? We grossly overspend on SWAT – only .5% of its deployments are for hostage situations or barricaded or active shooter, the high-profile situations which are its purported justifications.  

Money saved from the Workhouse and policing should go directly to our Health and Human Services departments. In the coming recession, there will be all the more need to focus on job training, affordable housing (being reduced by $1 million in the budget), the unhoused, and full three-year funding for Cure Violence. A 2% set-aside for early education would be an investment in our people and in future public safety. 

We need greater transparency and community involvement in making these decisions. More choices should be made through participatory budgeting, and the city should create a Community Advisory Board to study and recommend budget reallocations.

This is a new era. We need to approach it with creativity and boldness to meet our challenges –for the sake of all.

By ACLU of Missouri, Action St. Louis, ArchCity Defenders, Close the Workhouse, Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression, Deaconess Foundation, Empower Missouri, Forward Through Ferguson, Metropolitan Congregations United, Organization for Black Struggle, Peace Economy Project, United Congregation of Metro East, WEPOWER.