I just heard something that blew my mind: St. Louis County prosecutors are attempting to join the St. Louis County Police Officers Association.
I hope everyone is paying attention to this and other recent moves in our region. It’s like the governor of Wisconsin and that state’s Republican-dominated Legislature passing bills to take away power from the newly elected Democratic governor and first black lieutenant governor. As soon as the power shifts hands – and/or colors or genders – those in power do something to change the rules.
These prosecutors had no interest in joining a union until Wesley Bell beat Bob McCulloch for St. Louis County prosecutor in an upset heard around the world.
The white-dominated St. Louis County Police union doesn’t want the black-led Ethical Society of Police at the table representing officers of color in St. Louis County.
St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner had to appeal a circuit court ruling to the Missouri Supreme Court to get the high court to tell local judges that she doesn’t work for them and to let her do her job.
The St. Louis sheriff had been giving out patronage jobs for years. A white man, Jim Murphy, held that office from 1989 to 2016. When city voters elected a black sheriff in 2016, Vernon Betts suddenly was required to get approval from the circuit judges to hire anyone.
Elkin Kistner had been suing the St. Louis Treasurer’s Office for years and had no audience for his frivolous lawsuits, until I ran for mayor in 2016 and came close to winning. Now, suddenly, the mayor who beat me and her city counselor joined the lawsuit and convinced a former colleague of theirs to give them a ruling in their favor.
What do these events have in common? This is what happens when black people in St. Louis win an election, pose a threat to the status quo, or demand a seat at the table.
All of this is sour grapes and racism on steroids. Some, not all, white people are so scared of a black person who can’t be bought running an office the way it’s supposed to be run and opening doors of opportunity for everyone that they will do whatever they can to move the goal posts as soon as we get close to scoring. Or they play the proverbial Lucy snatching the football from Charlie Brown as he attempts to kick it.
The conflict-of-interest meter on this event in the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office is worse than the one when Brian Kemp, the state’s chief election officer, stole the Georgia governor’s election from Stacey Abrams. If prosecutors succeed in joining the police union, where’s the separation between the prosecutors and the police? How can anyone in St. Louis County expect a fair trial? Why didn’t they consider any other union that represents public employees?
Something similar happened to my father, Virvus Jones, in the early 1990s when he was St. Louis comptroller. A student of late Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, he increased the mandatory minimum for minority participation in city contracting. Black-owned companies of all kinds benefitted from this, and so did their bottom lines. And what happened next? They forced him out of office.
What are people going to do if Lewis Reed loses his race for president of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen? Are some aldermen going to find a way to take away power from the new female (notice I didn’t say black or white) board president?
I’m calling on all white people who care about moving this region out of the 1950s to get your people. Let us lead.
Tishaura O. Jones is treasurer of the City of St. Louis and former assistant minority floor leader in the Missouri House of Representatives.
