The new board majority on the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners seems to be shunning its new place in the highly politicized spotlight of St. Louis media, after Gov. Jay Nixon’s three appointees voted en bloc to elevate one of their own, Bettye Battle-Turner, to board president. This move voted out of the board presidency the last of former Gov. Matt Blunt’s appointees – Todd Epsten, a liquor distributor – who promptly resigned from the board altogether in mid-meeting. The only other board member is Mayor Francis G. Slay, who serves in an ex officio capacity. A highly political operator himself, Slay immediately accused the governor of playing politics with the police board.
Of course, he was. Missouri law gives the governor four of the five appointments to the St. Louis police board. This archaic law creates a diplomatic relationship between the governor and mayor that can be used for good or ill. It is typical of this mayor and his leadership that he had a far better relationship with Republican Governor Matt Blunt than he has had with Nixon, a Democrat. Blunt’s various appointees and Slay presided over a humiliating decline in police governance that dominated the news for years and resulted in a series of scandals and a stinging State audit.
Slay, the only elected member on the board, participated actively in this decline in police governance. When numerous lapses in their collective leadership were laid bare in the State audit, Slay’s only response was to call for local control. Asking Nixon to join him in lobbying for local control was in effect challenging the governor to use his own political clout to surrender some of his own political power – something that is nearly impossible to imagine Francis Slay doing himself. In the most recent legislative session, Slay made the St. Louis police board a political issue for Nixon. If Nixon was indeed behind the coup staged by his new appointees, as Slay claims, then the governor has delivered a highly successful stroke of political payback.
Nixon then continued to make effective political capital out of his role in appointing the majority of the police board by speaking up for Police Chief Daniel Isom. Isom had the winning hand in the immediately prior act of political brinkmanship on the police board, when he effectively forced the resignation of one of Blunt’s Slay-friendly police commissioners, Vincent J. Bommarito. Bommarito had just moved aggressively to question Isom’s leadership, making it clear there is a good-old-boy faction in the department that wants Isom out. We suspect the mayor is well aware of the wishes of this faction and would have done his best to give them what they want. But Isom outsmarted the forces arrayed against him, and then Nixon flexed his muscles and put Slay on the sideline.
Slay still wears around his neck the albatross of a dignified, competent African-American civil servant in former Fire Chief Sherman George. Nixon seems to be reaching for a halo effect in bolstering a dignified, competent African-American civil servant in Chief Isom. We are impressed by the governor’s political savvy and bold leadership on this matter.
