After almost three hours of impassioned debate, the St. Louis City Board of Aldermen passed a bill today (Monday, April 20) to establish a civilian oversight board that has the power to review claims of police misconduct, voting 17 to 8. Two alderpersons who were previously supportive of Board Bill #208 – Christine Ingrassia and Scott Ogilvie – voted “present.”
Several aldermen acknowledged that people around the world were watching the bill’s outcome today, after witnessing the unrest that began when Ferguson police shot and killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown Jr. in August.
“St. Louis has become the poster child for police problems and broken trust between communities and police,” said Alderman Antonio French (Ward 21), sponsor of the bill. “It is St. Louis that people are looking at today to decide what we are going to do about what we’ve seen these last few months in our city.”
The bill’s passage was historic, said Alderman Terry Kennedy (Ward 18), who championed a civilian oversight bill that the board passed in 2006 but that Mayor Francis Slay vetoed. City residents have been calling for civilian oversight of the police department since the 1940s, when the Urban League tried to push the issue, he said.
“Do we see this as an end all? No, we do not,” Kennedy said during his comments on the aldermanic floor. “Do we feel like the cup is completely full? Not the cup I drink from. But where do you start? We see this as taking the first step.”
The bill authorizes the seven-member board to conduct investigations – an aspect of the bill that has gotten much pushback from the police union. However, both French and Kennedy said they would have also liked to see a bill that gave subpoena power to the board. Slay threatened to veto a bill with such language, and the St. Louis Police Association vowed to challenge it in court.
Kennedy said they yielded to the city counselor’s recommended changes to ensure that the bill would withstand any possible legal challenges. After the board’s vote, the police union said it still plans on taking the aldermen to court.
Slay, who was a co-sponsor of the bill, released a statement announcing that he will sign the legislation into law on May 5.
John Chasnoff, co-chair of the Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression, said the group shares some of the aldermen’s concerns regarding lack of independence and subpoena power for the civilian oversight board. The coalition plans to propose two companion bills that will address those issues in the near future, he said.
Ingrassia felt intimidated
Chasnoff said he was not completely surprised by Ingrassia’s “present” vote. Ingrassia was a co-sponsor of the bill and has repeatedly announced her support for it.
“She has been misrepresenting her views on this bill for quite some time and telegraphing a move towards a ‘no’ vote while also maintaining that she would vote ‘yes,’” he said.
During the floor discussion, Ingrassia said that over the past week, she had been “subjected to intimidating and ignorant behavior” in social media, in person, at work and her home.
Ingrassia told the St. Louis American that the intimidation mainly consisted of “unfair attacks” on social media. While in the meeting, Ingrassia said she was reading Twitter posts which stated that she was planning on voting “no” because she received a donation for the police union and “sold out.” She said the donation didn’t influence her decision.
One day after working at a restaurant, she got a message from someone who said he saw her in her place of work and said he was “full of rage.” However, the man told her he would never confront someone while they were trying to make a living, so no confrontation occurred.
On Monday at 7 a.m., protestors visited Ingrassia’s home as part of the rolling demonstration called “Monday Mournings,” where they have also knocked on the doors of Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III and Slay to demand that the leaders work towards healing the community in its current state of mourning. On Ingrassia’s door, the group left a letter designed in the shape of a cartoonish alarm clock and with the heading, “Good Mourning, Christine Ingrassia.” The letter stated that they believed in her participatory budget model, and they also urge her to pass the civilian oversight bill.
When asked if she felt this was intimidation, she said it was a sign that the group “doesn’t want to have a conversation with me or know who I really am.” Before the board meeting, she told Kennedy that she was not going to vote in favor of the bill because of these occurrences.
“I wanted to send a clear message, even though most of the demonstrators are more like-minded than not,” she said. “I’m not going to make that behavior credible.”
When asked if she felt it was worth voting in such as way on important legislation just to prove a point to a select group, she said, “It’s a valid question. That’s the decision I made this morning. I’m not happy I made the decision, but that’s the one I made.”
Chasnoff said he was sorry to hear that Ingrassia felt harassed, but her vote displayed a “misplacement of priorities.”
Not a perfect bill
Alderwoman Sharon Tyus (Ward 1) dominated the discussion for the first hour, pointing out that the bill does not go far enough to be independent from the mayor’s office. She even pulled out an executive order that Slay wrote in 2006, after he vetoed Kennedy’s bill. She said the current bill uses the exact same language and that passing the bill would make the board a “rubber stamp” for the mayor.
However, Kennedy later corrected her.
“This bill is not modeled after anything that the mayor wrote,” he said. “It’s modeled after the original legislation that we made – that the mayor used to create his executive order.”
The Board of Police Commissioners at the time adopted the order, but the aldermen – namely the African-American Aldermanic Caucus – refused to participate in it because it basically gutted the important aspects of Kennedy’s bill.
Although many were surprised by the “present” votes, the “no” votes were largely expected. Those included Tyus, Tom Villa (Ward 11), Joe Vaccaro (Ward 23), Ken Ortmann (Ward 9), Joseph Vollmer (Ward 10), Larry Arnowitz (Ward 12), Beth Murphy (Ward 13), and Donna Baringer (Ward 16).
Before the aldermen voted, French encouraged the aldermen to see this bill as a step and not a panacea.
“A perfect bill is not available to us today,” French said. “A ‘present’ vote is not making a decision; that’s standing on the sidelines. A ‘no’ vote is saying you are satisfied with the status quo, and we will remain here. And that should not be good enough for any of us.”