Guardians of the status quo – like Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt, the reactionaries at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and St. Louis Public Safety Director Jimmie Edwards – are doing what they always do when their systems of power are called into question: they are resorting to scare tactics.
In the 1970s, it was “welfare queens” robbing you of your hard-earned money. In 1988, it was Willie Horton lurking around the corner. And, now, it’s the scourge of hardened “criminals” roaming the streets. These headlines sell papers, they win elections, and they concentrate power. If only the headlines weren’t a lie.
We have questions.
Why are their attacks so narrowly focused on St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner?
According to both the Post’s “reporting” and the attorney general’s letter, the outcomes they found so unacceptable were orders of recognizance bonds and reduced bond amounts. As one would hope the Post-Dispatch, the attorney general (a licensed lawyer), and the Public Safety director (a former judge) would know, those final decisions are made by judges, not prosecutors.
Why shouldn’t judges use their discretion to release those “presumed innocent” but too poor to pay the bonds that a wealthier person would have paid long ago? Are Jimmie Edwards and Eric Schmitt writing angry letters to the judges, too? Or does that not suit their political purpose?
Another question.
Why so much talk about “fears of” danger? A Post-Dispatch editorial decries “ramp[ing] up public fears even more.” Schmitt lectures that government shouldn’t be “creating either the perception or the reality that violent offenders are being released unmonitored into their communities.” If this danger were a reality, he wouldn’t be talking about perception at all.
And the perception is one that he and others are manufacturing. We have a suggestion: stop it.
One more question.
Why is it that this crew of unelected public officials and commentators feels emboldened to give lectures on criminal justice policy to the prosecutors that we elected? Say what you will about our prosecutors in the city and county of St. Louis—and we do have things to say—they were both democratically elected by landslides.
Their critics? A Public Safety director whom no one elected. The unelected and virtually anonymous editorial board of a newspaper. And an attorney general who was appointed when his predecessor landed a better gig.
Simply put: when it comes to criminal justice policy in the St. Louis region, we didn’t ask you.
We believe that prosecutors have a responsibility, especially at this crisis moment, to do everything they can to release people from the cages we call jails—not only for the safety and health of the people behind bars but for the safety and health of every single one of us who face a common enemy in a presently untreatable and incurable virus. To the extent that prosecutors are doing that, we fully support and appreciate their efforts. To the extent they are not, we should all be calling on them to do more.
But we should not give any credence to the predictable hysteria of people who think empty jail cells signal the end of civilization.
The St. Louis Prosecutor Accountability Roundtable is a collective of advocacy organizations focused on accountability for the elected prosecutors of St. Louis city and county. These organizations include: Action St. Louis, ACLU of Missouri, ArchCity Defenders, Close the Workhouse Campaign, Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression, Color of Change, Metropolitan Congregations United, Missouri Faith Voices, Missouri State Conference of the NAACP, Missourians Against the Death Penalty, Movement Voter Project, Organization for Black Struggle, and Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center.
When Missouri Governor Mike Parson finally declared a statewide Stay at Home order, at first the EYE took a victory lap and filed it under “Sent for You Yesterday, and Here You are Today.” On Thursday, April 2 The American called upon Parson to issue a statewide Stay at Home order (undersigning a letter sent to Parson on March 23 by the Missouri Foundation for Health and other state health leaders); the governor issued the order the next day.
But, on closer inspection, Parson’s order effectively does nothing his previously issued social distancing guidance had done.
“Under Parson’s order, even businesses that are deemed non-essential can remain open as long as they adhere to certain social distancing requirements, such as having few than 10 people gathered at a time,” the Kansas City Star reported. “And those businesses can still seek a waiver from the Missouri Department of Economic Development to allow it to violate those social distancing requirements.”
Notice that the waiver process is routed through the Missouri Department of Economic Development – not the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. To Parson, this is still about business, not health.
One is reminded, again, that this man was not elected governor. Also, that he is the former sheriff of Polk County, population 32,149, according to U.S. Census estimates, only a whopping 1 percent of them black.
The statement issued by House Minority Leader Crystal Quade (D-Springfield) is precisely accurate.
“Honesty and transparency from government officials is essential during a public health emergency. In announcing what was billed as a statewide stay-at-home order, Governor Parson failed to provide either,” Quade stated.
“The order is not at all what was advertised and what health care professionals and Missouri residents had been demanding for weeks. It is so riddled with exemptions that it differs little from the weak and ineffective social distancing directive the administration previously issued, and it formally punts responsibility for imposing stricter measures to local officials. Until the Parson administration takes the strong action the situation requires, COVID-19 will continue to spread in Missouri at an alarming rate.”
The only good news about Parson’s Stay at Home (if you feel like it, or go to work if you feel like it, or make people go to work if you feel like it, or make people work in groups of larger than 10 if you are going to make money) order is that it does not supersede more stringent local orders that are already in place or that could be enacted in the future.
Quade squeezed off a good shot at the former sheriff a few days before. While still dragging his feet on the statewide Stay at Home order, Parson suspended late penalties for renewing concealed-carry permits in the state on the laughable date of April 1.
“If the governor had issued his executive order on conceal-carry permits a day earlier, I would have thought it was a bad April Fools’ Day joke,” Quade quipped. “The fact that the governor thinks this is a priority is beyond disappointing and gives further ammunition to critics who say he isn’t doing what needs to be done to stop the spread of COVID-19 in Missouri.”
This being an election year, Quade’s good sense on behalf of our public health, tragically, will be dismissed as partisan axe grinding. It is notable that Quade has been issuing more statements attacking Parson on public health than state Auditor Nicole Galloway, who is running against Parson as a Democrat. No doubt, this is a strategic choice to try to minimize the election year partisan axe grinding thing.
Speaking of “Sent for You Yesterday, and Here You are Today,” note that Galloway called on Parson to issue a Stay at Home order on March 31. It only took the former Polk County sheriff three days to get where she told him to go, and even then he was only bluffing for the headlines, not actually protecting public health.
