The St. Louis community needs to stop Interim Police Chief Lawrence O’Toole from being installed as the city’s permanent chief, said leaders of the Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression (CAPCR.)
At a Dec. 14 public forum, O’Toole was presented as one of the six finalists in the search for a new police chief, and he was met with outrage and protest from the public.
CAPCR, a grassroots advocacy group for police reform, has since launched their “Anyone but O’Toole” call-in campaign.
“Let Jimmie Edwards, the director of public safety, know how we feel,” the group said in a statement. “And let Mayor Lyda Krewson, who says she’ll have a strong say in the decision, know that she cannot show such hypocrisy by asking for residents’ input and then ignoring the will of the people.”
For the first time since the city regained control of it’s police department from the state in 2013, the city has been able to conduct a nationwide search for police chief. This spring, St. Louis embarked on a historic project of opening up the search for community input. The mayor’s creation of the 13-member Citizens Advisory Committee in May gave people the promise of making transparent what was previously a “backroom process of selecting police chiefs by the Board of Police Commissioners,” the group said.
Throughout the summer, the committee held work sessions where they gathered community input.
“St. Louis spoke with a unified voice—we want a transformative chief who will bring an era of change,” CAPCR stated. “The community most definitely did not want O’Toole. We gave a strong vote of no confidence in the man on whose watch we saw protesters beaten while handcuffed, maced while subdued and flat on the ground, kettled and arrested in mass without regard to guilt or innocence. We said ‘no’ to the chief who ‘owned the night.’ ‘No’ to the chief who lied when a black officer was shot by his own white colleague. ‘No’ to the chief under federal investigation and a federal court injunction for his outrageous responses to protests.”
They said it was “a slap in the face” to the community for O’Toole to be one of six finalists for the police chief position.
“Such a choice threatens to discredit the entire enterprise,” the group said. “Was the fix in from the beginning? Will we have gone through this entire process only to have our expressed desire ignored in favor of a new round of repression? Even if another candidate is chosen, O’Toole’s inclusion is an outrage. He came into the group of finalists with a veto already issued by the people. His presence only took up a slot in the finalist pool that should have been open to a qualified candidate.”
Edwards and Krewson said they will make their final decision before the end of the year. The group called on the community to “flood them” with calls and emails.
“The decision will be made soon,” CAPCR stated. “Don’t delay.”
