The contentious issue of local control of the city’s police department will be put before the community on March 1 at Harris-Stowe State University.
The Board of Aldermen’s public safety committee will host a forum Thursday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. to discuss various angles of transferring control of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department from the State ofMissourito the City ofSt. Louis.
The meeting will be held at the Givens Administration Building at Harris-Stowe University, 3026 Laclede Avenue.
The panelist will include: public safety committee members, John Chasnoff from the ACLU, Jamala Rogers with the Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression, Nancy Rice representing Sinquefield/Pelopidas LLC, Police Chief Daniel Isom and representatives from the St. Louis Police Association.
No doubt the panel will talk about the controversial “A Safer Missouri” ballot initiative petition, which began circulating for signatures in January.
Only three parties were involved in deciding how to write up the ballot initiative for local control – the Mayor Francis G. Slay’s office, the POA and A Safer Missouri, (a group funded by Rex Sinquefield, the billionaire and conservative policy activist).
The language they created will appear on the November 2012 ballot if the signature-gathering effort funded by Sinquefield succeeds.
Community organizations and the Board of Aldermen – who have been fighting for local control for years – were not at the deal table for the ballot language. And the initiative contains language that takes away power from the board and community, some say.
At the last public safety committee meeting, the American Civil Liberties Union of EasternMissouri(ACLU-EM) and the Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression (CAPCR) testified that they will fight the ballot initiative, though both groups have long pushed for local control.
This ballot initiative, they claim, would make it more difficult for the public to access records on police who are under investigation for wrongdoing and to establish a civilian review board.
John Chasnoff, an ACLU-EM and longtime CAPCR activist, read the language that hinders this authority: “The civil service commission of the city may adopt rules and regulations appropriate for the unique operation of a police department. Such rules and regulations shall reserve exclusive authority over the disciplinary process and procedures affecting commissioned officers to the civil service commission.”
Jeff Roorda, spokesman for the St. Louis Police Association, has said repeatedly that the association is opposed to a civilian review board.
The ACLU-EM has also filed a lawsuit challenging the initiative because the ballot summary approved by the Missouri Secretary of State fails to inform voters of this provision, as well as another that creates an exemption to the Missouri Sunshine Law, which protects citizens’ rights to public records.
In fine print not summarized for the voter, the initiative states that records prepared for disciplinary purposes shall be “confidential, closed records available solely to the civil service commission.”