There is an axiom in American politics that we get the government we deserve. It is a simple enough concept, but I am generally unconvinced that this is true in a political context shaped by corporate capture, voter disenfranchisement, and antidemocratic electoral structures. And I am quite certain that it is not true when it comes to creating conditions of safety and wellbeing for ordinary people.
No, when it comes to public safety, we deserve so much better than we get.
St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and St. Charles are three very different places politically and culturally. But when it comes to defending racist state violence, they are and have long been virtually indistinguishable.
Perhaps more than any other region in the nation, St. Louis has been forced repeatedly to face the human and societal toll of an oppressive system of policing and human caging. In the past decade alone, we have seen one show of resistance after another, with the three largest flashpoints coming roughly three years apart: the Ferguson Uprising in 2014; the Stockley protests in 2017; and the racial justice protests following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020. Each mass mobilization resulted from police killings of Black civilians. Each swept in new waves of civic leaders and public officials. And each prompted louder critiques of a racist system of policing, punishing, and caging that is, undeniably, defined by and designed for violence and social control.
And yet, in the halls of power, it seems that even the most recent history is soon forgotten.
Take, for example, just a few choice pieces of legislation in the City of St. Louis. The Board of Aldermen appears poised to give final approval to Board Bill 184, which seeks to allocate roughly $87 million, mostly in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. One might assume that, in the midst of a still-ongoing pandemic that continues to take lives, disrupt families, threaten livelihoods, and destabilize housing, these funds would provide critical relief to those families and communities most impacted. Instead, this bill hands more than $21 million over to police and Corrections for such critical needs as new squad cars and elevators in SLMPD headquarters.
Another bill that appears to be full steam ahead is Board Bill 206. This bill seems fairly straightforward, taking $2.5 million of unspent funds from the overtime portion of the police budget and shifting it over to the “Real Time Crime Center,” a truly Orwellian name for the ever-growing surveillance apparatus that SLMPD has been building out since 2015 with minimal oversight or transparency. You might not recognize BB206 as a naked money-grab if you weren’t aware that the initial $5 million allocation for overtime was funding that no one asked for, police leadership didn’t want, and the mayor insisted she wouldn’t spend. So really, while it may look like a simple reallocation, it is actually a brand-new $2.5 million gift for police gadgets and personnel. What a neat trick! And this time, the sponsor even managed to get the mayor’s Public Safety Director and Police Chief to testify in support.
In St. Louis, despite our enormous challenges in poverty, health, and violence, these are the things that somehow pass for serious attempts at public safety: new police cars, cameras on corners, and protecting unsuspecting door handles from unwanted touching. (On this, I’ve already spilled more than enough Twitter characters.) And it all just glides effortlessly through an otherwise reliably contentious legislative process. Even most of the “progressive” elected barely bat an eye, let alone raise a genuine, full-throated objection to the idea that millions of dollars should be directed to new toys for the department that is both the best-funded branch of city government and the most deadly police agency in the entire country.
The result is consistent: ever more criminalization, ever more punishment, ever more money and power to police, prosecutors, and jails. And it’s not just on the spending front.
The latest local controversy on public safety and policing has focused on the City’s effort to defend, and expand, the doctrine of qualified immunity in a police abuse case stemming from the Stockley protests. If you are not familiar with qualified immunity, you need only know that (1) it is a doctrine that functions to protect police even when they have done something wrong and illegal, and (2) expanding its already ludicrous reach would be even better for police and even worse for the rest of us. My organization, ArchCity Defenders, is not counsel on this case (though, in full disclosure, we did represent the plaintiff temporarily); however, based on experience in our own cases, I can assure you that this phenomenon of defending state violence at all costs is not limited to this case, this City Counselor, or even the City of St. Louis.
Indeed, in the past year alone, the City has continued to deny responsibility for police abuse, defended inhumane jail conditions, and argued that a woman who succeeded in winning a jury verdict against a police officer after an unjustified tasing should actually pay the City for its attorneys’ fees.
Just down the road, St. Louis County has, since 2016, defended in court the practice of Wanteds–by which police arrest and detain any person of their choosing (most of them Black) without a warrant or court involvement–despite a Department of Justice report outlining the constitutional defects of this practice. Since the start of the Wanteds case, we have seen three transitions in police leadership in St. Louis City and County, just as many in executive leadership, and many more in local elected legislators–most touting “reform” –with no discernable effort whatsoever to stop this practice. Wesley Bell and Kim Gardner, both Black, self-proclaimed “progressive” elected prosecutors, have expressed some aversion to the use of Wanteds; have either brought an end to this practice by adopting a policy of declining cases that rely on Wanteds? Absolutely not.
To the west, St. Charles has insisted, with some success, that it should bear no responsibility for jail guards who inflict violence and cause head trauma, acute brain injury, and long-term psychological harm to Black and brown detainees, even when there is a documented history of virulent racial animus by those very guards.
All of these are positions taken publicly, in court filings, for all to see. St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and St. Charles are three very different places politically and culturally. But when it comes to defending racist state violence, they are and have long been virtually indistinguishable.
And none of it should come as a surprise. Even in these times of political conflict and polarization, it remains a rare point of bipartisan agreement that police, prosecutors, courts, and jails are politically untouchable. In fact, the only time any of these institutional actors lands in hot water with elected officials is when they turn their backs on one of the others. (Think Kim Gardner taking on the good old boys club of police and legal insiders, or SLMPD officers prosecuted for brutalizing fellow officer Luther Hall–but not for brutalizing many dozens of others.)
And now, as if there were any question at all about any of this, we have received unmistakable confirmation from none other than the President of the United States in his recent State of the Union Address.
“Fund the police!” says the same president who, 28 years before, as a senator, championed a national crime bill that massively expanded criminalization, the War on Drugs, and mass caging of Black, brown, and poor white people across the country; the same president who panders to Black voters with unspecified appeals to “police reform” and “community policing” while having completely abandoned any effort to secure even the truly tepid reforms embedded in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act; the same president who, having nominated, finally, a Black woman to the United States Supreme Court, has made sure to emphasize, first and foremost, that this former public defender is also from a family of police officers and endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police.
“Fund the police! Fund them! Fund them!” In case you missed it the first time. Standing ovation from former Top Cop Kamala Harris.
So that’s the politics. But allow me to note two more things that haven’t changed.
First, police continue to execute people in this country at egregious, almost unimaginable, levels. In 2021, police killed 1,134 human beings. Victims of these killings are nearly three times more likely to be Black than white. This machine of violence and death continues to churn, in our names, every day.
But second, crucially, everyday people are still resisting.
Recall St. Louis Board Bill 184, the ARPA spending bill that is set to send millions of dollars in pandemic relief funds to police and jails. An incredible thing happened when a hearing on the bill was opened for public comment last month: people showed up in protest. After patiently waiting through hours of aldermanic delay and grandstanding, members of the public testified for more than an hour, one after another, in three-minute increments. The message from each and every person was the same: no COVID relief funds for the police.
This is the power and potential of radical movements. This is the debt we owe to those giants of history who went against the grain and struggled for transformation beyond the contemporary moment not because it was popular or palatable but because it was necessary and just. In times of such deep political regression and backlash, it is difficult to keep insisting that we deserve better than cops and cages. But insist we must.
Re-envision public safety. Divest from prisons and jails. Defund the police.
Blake Strode is executive director of ArchCity Defenders, a holistic legal advocacy organization.
