ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

ST. LOUIS — When Mayor Tishaura O. Jones was running for office, she said the city was spending too much on its police department. Now it’s set to spend more.

The proposed police budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1, weighs in at nearly $190 million — a $9 million jump over last year and a $7 million bump over the peak during the previous administration.

Two years ago, Jones swept into office on a pledge to reimagine the city’s approach to public safety. Since then, she and other top officials have approved some of the largest raises for police officers in recent memory, ordered a fleet of new take-home cars and started cheering on a nascent revival in the department.

At the same time, activists who hailed Jones’ election as the dawn of a new era for St. Louis have grown increasingly frustrated. In recent weeks, several have pleaded with aldermen to take money from police and put it toward housing, job training and other social services.

“It’s totally unacceptable,� said Jamala Rogers, co-chair of the Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression. “We thought we were on a new course.�

The shift here echoes a turnabout on the push to “defund� departments in communities across the country. Cities from Los Angeles to Dallas to New York are working to boost officer numbers as they grapple with spikes in crime or incidents of high-profile violence — like the shooting of 11 people in downtown St. Louis last weekend. And they’re trying to do so amid fierce competition for officers as more and more leave the profession.

Jones, in an interview, acknowledged that the police budget is increasing but said she’s also investing in alternatives to policing.

She cast the police budget increase as part of a broader effort to raise pay for workers, respond to inflation and defend against state lawmakers’ efforts to put the city’s police department under state control.

“We were fighting back,� she said.

As for alternatives, she cited the Cops and Clinicians initiative pairing police with social workers, saying it has saved officers time and the city money. She said a 911 diversion program is connecting callers in mental health crises to people specifically trained for those situations. And she pointed to the new Office of Violence Prevention’s work to get money into grassroots programs designed to deter or interrupt violent behavior before police have to get involved.

“Public safety is more than just police,� she said, “and I think that our budget definitely underscores that.�

The mayor has heard activists’ calls to move police dollars into alternatives, as well as other calls — from business leaders and ordinary residents — to put more cops on the street. She has twice voted for budgets with money for at least 100 more officer positions than were currently filled.

She said she wants to make staffing decisions in consultation with police Chief Robert Tracy, who became the first hired from outside the department when Jones welcomed him in January.

“He is in the process of totally retooling and reorganizing the department,� she said. “So we should give him time to work.�

Jones didn’t say how much time he needed.

‘It’s too much’

Three years ago, it felt like change was imminent. The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked nationwide protests. Marchers here called for radical cuts to the police budget, echoing calls across the country.

And Jones, in the months leading up to the 2021 mayoral election, was speaking the same language. At a forum hosted by the social justice news site The Appeal, she was asked whether the most recent budget for police operations, roughly $180 million, was too much, too little or just right.

“I think it’s too much,� she said. “I think that we need to redeploy our resources within our entire public safety department.�

She doubled down at her inauguration two months later, questioning whether a department down more than 130 officers from budgeted strength was really understaffed.

And on her ninth day in office, she moved to reallocate $4 million budgeted for 98 of those long-vacant police officer positions and spend it on affordable housing, homeless services, a victims’ support program and civil rights litigators instead.

But she eschewed calls to cut more than double that. And in August, when then-Aldermanic President Lewis Reed proposed putting $5 million in federal pandemic aid to police overtime as part of a larger spending package, she went along.

Over the next year, the police department’s years-long struggle with hiring accelerated. The department lost 79 more officers than it added in 2021 and watched the deficit rise past 80 through the summer of 2022. The total number of commissioned employees was closing in on 1,000 — compared to a budgeted strength of more than 1,200. And the fight to hire officers was heating up.

When St. Louis County officials voted in early August of 2022 to increase pay for their department to attract new officers, the local union chief said he expected city cops to be the biggest takers.

That same month, homicides were surging and business leaders were pleading for help to stem drag racing downtown and aggressive panhandling on South Grand Boulevard.

By the end of the month, Comptroller Darlene Green, who backed the $4 million reallocation in 2021, was publicly proposing pay raises and other incentives to shore up the department. Aldermen approved a resolution along those same lines without dissent in October.

And in March, news broke of the Jones administration’s new deal with the police union, featuring $3,000 retention incentives, salary increases worth several thousand more dollars per officer and promises of take-home cars for those living in the city with five years of experience.

The mayor’s office pointed out that the deal would be void if Republican lawmakers in Jefferson City went through with a state takeover, then a hot topic at the Missouri Capitol.

But Alderman Tom Oldenburg, one of the police union’s staunchest allies at City Hall, said officers got virtually everything they wanted in return. The city budget director estimated the changes would add $12 million to the upcoming budget.

And those pushing for divestment noticed. Reformers came to committee hearings before the Board of Aldermen in late May and early June, calling for an immediate $10 million cut.

But so far, aldermen haven’t budged. A brief push to cut a few hundred thousand dollars in committee never came to a vote.

‘Real investment’

Mental health experts and criminal justice reformers say that while progress has been made toward alternative policing and reimagining public safety services, much more needs to be done here.

Many argue that an overhaul of the system is critical to reaching progressive goals to reduce violence by moving away from what they see as over-policing and over-incarceration.

Mike Milton, who founded the nonprofit Freedom Community Center, said he was “deeply disappointed� to see the St. Louis police budget growing.

His center, one of several recipients of federal pandemic aid focused on alternatives to policing, works to reach people headed toward trouble before they interact with police, and to connect them with mentors and mental health services.

“What you need is real investment, real mentorship, access to therapy,� Milton said.

Blake Strode, executive director of the civil rights group ArchCity Defenders, agreed.

“We are not moving in the right direction in terms of our investment,� he said.

But Strode said the administration was in a difficult spot trying to preserve local control of police. And he said it wasn’t all on the mayor, pointing to aldermen, city prosecutors and residents who continue to call for law and order in response to tragedy and violence. The calls to flood downtown with police officers last week, following the shooting of several teens, marked a kind of cyclical hysteria, he said.

“Until we actually have a radically different understanding of public safety, that is about health and stability and resources and community support and interventions,� Strode said, “we’re just going to continue to see these patterns play out.�

Some say the city can’t wait.

Lisa LaGrone has worked in community violence prevention since the late 1990s, and in March started an organization called Safe Streets Safe Neighborhoods. Her small crew recently went out to talk to some of the teens involved in the downtown shooting, saying she hoped to get ahead of any retaliation that might happen.

She says the public debate about violence often overlooks the challenges that some youths face — and the challenges in reaching them.

One day last summer, LaGrone was handing out free lunches to kids in a St. Louis neighborhood when she came across three boys, all about 10 years old, standing outside. She told them to come over and take some food. They told her they couldn’t.

“Because it was crossing over to another gang’s territory,� she said. “I’ll never forget it.�

“This is a reality for St. Louis,� she said. “That’s how the kids are living now. And it shouldn’t be like that.�