MO Republicans want state control of St. Louis police. What does that mean for Kansas City?

Emboldened by a statewide vote that forced Kansas City to spend more on its police, Missouri Republican lawmakers are trying to put St. Louis’ police department back under state control.

A bill, filed last month by state Sen. Nick Schroer, a St. Charles Republican, would place the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department under control of a state board of commissioners appointed by Republican Gov. Mike Parson. The arrangement would be almost identical to Kansas City — the only city in Missouri without direct control of its police force.

The legislation, which comes 10 years after St. Louis regained local control of its police through a statewide vote, could dampen ongoing efforts to bring Kansas City back in control of its own department. It’s the latest example of Republicans in Jefferson City attempting to blunt a more progressive and diverse city’s ability to decide how its citizens should be policed.

State control of police in the two cities anchoring either side of Missouri was originally born out of Civil War-era racism. Today, both cities have high populations of Black and Hispanic residents — St. Louis with 49% combined, Kansas City with 37%. Both are led by Black mayors. And, the state’s two biggest cities also regularly elect more progressive politicians than other parts of Missouri.

“We are big. We are heavily Black. And we are unabashedly progressive in many of the solutions we seek to find,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said, referring to Kansas City and St. Louis.

“I think this has everything to do with the fact that cities are easy punching bags. Cities have leaders that often look different. They elect leaders that often look different. And I think we’d be fooling ourselves if we didn’t think that this stemmed almost, in my opinion, directly to issues of race.”

Schroer, in a text to The Star, painted state control as a way to curtail violent crime in St. Louis — the main argument from Republicans who support returning St. Louis to state control. It’s the same argument Republicans used to successfully push a ballot measure that forced Kansas City to spend more of its general revenue budget on police in November.

“If we continue to kick the can down the road regarding the public safety of citizens in St. Louis, then there will be no one to kick it back to us as the murder rate and violent crime sours,” said Schroer, who added that state control removes “politics from policing.”

But violent crime totals actually declined in St. Louis between 2020 and 2021 after seeing year-over-year increases from 2018 to 2020, according to data compiled by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Dan Isom, St. Louis’ interim public safety director and a former police chief, wrote to lawmakers last week to oppose the bill, arguing that the city has made strides to reduce crime since gaining control of the police department.

“Removing local control will make us less safe, less accountable, and less able to serve and protect our highest priority, the residents of St. Louis,” he wrote.

Lucas and some Kansas City lawmakers point out that state control does not directly correlate to reduced crime. Kansas City, which is under state control, saw its second-deadliest year in history last year with 171 killings, marking the third year in a row with staggering violence. In 2020, the most homicides ever were recorded, with 182 lives lost. The next year was the third-deadliest year, with 157 killings.

“They don’t square,” state Sen. Greg Razer, a Kansas City Democrat, said of the arguments that state control will curtail crime. “They’re just saying the citizens of St. Louis just can’t police themselves. I’m not sure how having the governor appoint a few people drastically changes things. You have two cities with two different governing structures with the same problem.”

Police reform

Schroer also told The Star that his bill is intended to push back against the national movement to reduce police spending.

“This war on police is being done to earn cheap political points instead of protecting public safety,” he said in a text message.

But the bill comes at a time when debates over policing reform, and police brutality, have reignited across the country in the wake of the killing of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police officers last month. Many cities began to examine their police budgets – and the role their departments play in the community — after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.

Some activists in Kansas City say state control is antithetical to this movement. They argue that citizens should be able to have a say and oversight in how their city rolls out policing reforms, not state lawmakers.

“State control means no reform as far as we are concerned, unless it’s initiated within the department,” said Lora McDonald, executive director of MORE2, a Kansas City social justice group. “In fact, we have come to understand state-appointed boards mean no one holds anyone accountable unless by choice and at the mercy of the chief.”

For example, Darron Edwards, lead pastor of the Kansas City-based United Believers Community Church, pointed to the Memphis police department’s decision to quickly release video footage from the death of Tyre Nichols. He said Kansas City would not have been as transparent under its current policies — which are established by the state-appointed board.

“Kansas City, at this point, could never respond like Memphis until that policy is changed,” he said.

McDonald was optimistic that potential state control over St. Louis police would not set back efforts to regain local control of Kansas City’s police.

But some Republican lawmakers say it would.

“Say St. Louis does go back to state control — I would assume that would kind of bolster the argument that maybe Kansas City needs to stay right where they’re at in terms of state control,” said state Rep. Chris Brown, a Kansas City Republican.

Brown and state Rep. Mark Sharp, a Kansas City Democrat, filed legislation this year that would effectively lessen the state’s grip on Kansas City’s policing decisions.

The bills would remove the maximum salary cap for Kansas City’s police chief. They would also remove the requirement that applicants for chief be under 60 years of age and allow the police board to establish a salary range for officers.

Lucas, Kansas City’s mayor, acknowledged that the path forward to returning Kansas City to local control is likely not through the GOP-controlled Missouri General Assembly. He said the state’s initiative petition process — which allows voters to place issues on statewide ballots — could be one avenue in the future.

“I think every legal process available is on the table, but I don’t believe that it’ll be going through the legislature — getting good committee hearings — to return Kansas City to local control for its police,” he said.

State Rep. Richard Brown, a Kansas City Democrat, said that while the Kansas City community continues to call for local control of its police force, he thinks the overarching debate should be about holding the department accountable for its actions.

“It seems like every time that there is an incident somewhere in the nation where we have found these rogue police officers, people seem to think that local control would have better control of the police department, but I think really the issue comes down to accountability — accountability of those who are in charge of the police department,” he said.

At its core, asserting state control over a city’s police force effectively takes away the ability of citizens in that city to decide how to handle crime, said Lauren Bonds, the legal director for the National Police Accountability Project, a nonprofit that promotes law enforcement accountability.

“If we’re moving that decision-making power to the state level as opposed to the local level, it’s seriously diluting people’s ability to control what happens with the people that police them,” she said.

Bonds said the effort to assert control over St. Louis and Kansas City illustrates a national trend where states controlled by conservatives target cities led by Democrats. But, she said Missouri has had an outsized role in trying to dictate policing decisions of its cities.

“This is a pretty big aberration from what we see at the national level,” she said. “Missouri is kind of doing a lot comparatively in terms of trying to exert that control.”