The fight for control of the St. Louis police force
On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti
WBUR
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 14 March 2023
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The State of Missouri controlled the St. Louis police force from the Civil War until a decade ago. Now Republican state politicians want that power back. We explore the struggle for control of the police between the city and state.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is on point. I'm Megna Chocobardi. In March 1861, the governor of the state of Missouri, |
| 0:11.6 | Clairborn Fox Jackson, organized a convention in St. Louis to debate whether St. Louis should |
| 0:17.5 | side with the Union or the Confederacy as the battle lines of the Civil War were drawn. |
| 0:23.9 | St. Louis sided with the Union. Governor Jackson favored the Confederacy and was not happy. |
| 0:30.9 | So that may, May 1861, he took over control of the St. Louis Police Department. He appointed |
| 0:38.2 | a board of five secessionists to run the department. Of course, the Civil War happened and then |
| 0:44.7 | it ended. But Missouri State control of the St. Louis Police Department continued. It lasted |
| 0:51.7 | more than 150 years, all the way until 2013, after Missourians voted to let the city finally |
| 1:02.6 | run its own police department. Well, now, a mere decade after that, legislators in the state |
| 1:09.2 | capital of Jefferson City want to take back control of St. Louis's police and they have the support |
| 1:14.6 | of the city's police union. So today, we'll talk about what's happening in St. Louis and the |
| 1:20.0 | fight for control of its police force. And we'll begin with Tony Messenger. He is the metro |
| 1:26.9 | columnist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch and joins us from St. Louis. Tony, welcome to On Point. |
| 1:32.6 | Hi, Magnet. Thanks for having me. Okay. So there are a couple of bills being considered in the Missouri |
| 1:40.6 | State Legislature. Can you just quickly describe what they contain and what they propose to do? |
| 1:46.9 | Well, they basically propose to do exactly what happened in the Civil War to have the state |
| 1:52.7 | of Missouri take over control of the city's police department. And it really is a re-litigation |
| 2:00.9 | of that same situation that happened in the 1800s. It's a fight over power. It's a fight over race. |
| 2:08.8 | It's a fight over who gets to be in charge of public safety in the city. It's residents |
| 2:15.3 | or white rural Republicans who control the Missouri legislature. |
| 2:19.8 | Hmm. Well, just so that folks know a little bit later in the show, we're going to be both hearing |
| 2:25.3 | hearing from both the current mayor of St. Louis, Missouri and also a Missouri State Senator |
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