Who would Risk becoming a Cop?

Timothy Birdnow

The St. Louis Police Officers Association made this comment about the inability of the city to hire policemen:

Here is the article they are referencing.

St. Louis can't get applicants because they are not backing their officers. The District Attorney (our name for Prosecuting Attorney) is a George Soros woman who cut her teeth in the Black Lives Matter protests. She hates cops, and has a list of over thirty that she will not follow up with prosecutions if they make arrests because she says they are racist. The city has allowed protests - and illegal activity during those protests - and even riots. Many city aldermen in the north side marched in Ferguson and in the Shaw neighborhood. City cops are completely hamstrung and there have been shootings of them. Who in their right mind would want to join an organization to be universally maligned?

In point of fact, the police in St. Louis pretty much leave you alone if you aren't committing crimes, unlike many of the police departments in towns out in St. Louis County. The city didn't have control of the police department; the state of Missouri did, and so it was never used as a revenue-generating mechanism.

City cops are hated primarily by criminals who don't like being kept from preying on city residents.

Amazingly enough, an idiot on KMOX radio named Charlie Brennan once argued that we need more immigrant so America to fill vacancies in teh St. Louis Police Department. Yeah; maybe we can get our own version of Officer Noor, the Somali who murdered the Australian woman who had called for police protection up in Minneapolis. We need more like THAT!

What we need is more backing and less groveling to BLM, George Soros, Antifa, and Occupy Wall Street. But then, the Democrats have controlled St. Louis since 1948 when the last Republican mayor was defeated by a Democrat.

Oh, and the SLPD is busy making officers gay pride parades instead of actually trying to stop crime. (See footnote at end for link.)

Hat tip: Tim McNabb



Reader Bill H. thought the post a bit confusing, and he asked me to clarify:

1 I'm not following what you're saying here.

In one paragraph you say that the mayor hates the police, that the DA will not prosecute people who the "racist cops" arrest, etc. In the very next paragraph you say that the police are not controlled by the city, but are controlled by the state and are therefore not "used as a revenue-generating mechanism."
Also in the first of those paragraphs you say that cops are universally hated and there are shootings of them, and in the next one you say they are hated only by the criminals who aren't allowed to prey on city residents.
I'm a fan, but this piece has me confused.

I replied:

Hi Bill!

Sorry if this is confusing to you. The City of St. Louis is an odd place. It seceded from St. Louis County in the latter part of the 19th century and part of the agreement was that it would have to do certain things. It maintains county offices as well as city offices, although the county offices are minimally staffed, for instance. The Metropolitan Police (called that even though they only police the city) used to be under the control of the state of Missouri, but prosecutions happened in the city, not in the state. Read this to understand it better.

Missouri has had control of the Metropolitan Police since the Civil War. According to NPR:

"It all dates back to the Civil War. Claiborne Jackson, Missouri's segregationist governor, didn't want the Unionist city controlling its own arsenal. (History buffs will recall that Missouri, while a slave state, never seceded.)

[...]

The local-control idea never sold, in part because police officers themselves have been nervous about whether the city would make good on their pensions."

End quotes.

The Mayor of St. Louis held only one seat on the five man Board of Commissioners. As a result, the Mayor and Aldermen couldn't pressure the police to do things - like give out tickets for Mickey Mouse reasons or harass homeowners about their grass or whatnot. (It's one of the things I really like about the city.) That changed last year when voters approved an initiative to give control back to the city.

To address your other question; the Police aren't hated at all by a majority of the City residents. They ARE hated by certain segments of the society - especially in north St. Louis, the ghetto areas. That is fairly normal for most cities in America. The Mayor here is a limousine liberal who panders to those who make the most noise. I don't think Lyda Krewson actually hates the cops, but she is under pressure to act as if they were bad guys because of all the organized resistance to them (shoot, a gang of Black Lives Matter thugs showed up at her home in the Central West End and threatened her safety!) Kim Gardner hates them, though, and she's the prosecutor. She won primarily because she is black and half of the city's population is black the voters wanted a black prosecutor to follow Jennifer Joyce, who quit. It also didn't hurt that George Soros sunk a bit of change into her campaign; outside forces helped her win.

I hope that makes the post clearer. I really had intended to confuse anyone.

Here is the link I promised.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:30 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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