Missouri Officials Seize Control of St. Louis Police, in Latest Bid to Shutter Local Reforms

Critics say this takeover is the latest in a series of maneuvers, championed by an alliance of police unions and state conservatives, meant to shut down reforms and accountability efforts in Missouri’s cities.

In 2023, threats from GOP state officials to remove St. Louis’ chief prosecutor, Kim Gardner, from office ultimately pressured her into resigning; Gardner, a Democrat who came into office with a reform agenda on the heels of the Ferguson movement, was frequently targeted by local police groups over her new policies, such as instructing her staff to not rely on testimonies of police officers with a history of lying and misconduct. And in 2024, Republicans championed a ballot measure to force Kansas City to spend a quarter of its revenue on police. The state of Missouri already controlled how the Kansas City Police Department is run.

With House Bill 495, Missouri’s new law, St. Louis joins Kansas City as the only two major metropolitan police forces anywhere in the country that are not controlled by their municipal government, according to the Missouri Independent. 

“All this bill does is halt and reverse our progress in service of allowing a small number of non-city-residents to pat themselves on the back because they succeeded in taking away the will of the voters once again,” St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, a Democrat, said in a statement after the bill passed through the legislature. 

Republicans far beyond Missouri have championed similar changes to take charge of law enforcement in Black-led cities and shield the police from reform. Mississippi leaders in 2023 created a separate judicial system for predominantly white areas of Jackson, with prosecutors and judges appointed by the governor instead of elected by city voters. Other states have gutted local civilian oversight boards, including Tennessee in 2023 and Florida in 2024.

HB 495 will quickly shift power away from St. Louis leaders by creating a new, six-person board that will oversee the police department. The board includes the mayor as well as five commissioners who will be appointed by the governor. 

In signing the bill on Wednesday, Kehoe argued that the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department will still be run locally because the commissioners he appoints will have to be residents of the city. “This is a citizen-led board that will make decisions of what’s best to keep communities safe,” he said.

The governor and his allies in the legislature have said the takeover is meant to equip police to deal with crime brought on by less punitive policies and low morale brought on by public scrutiny. At a press conference following the bill’s passage this month, State Representative Tony Luetkemeyer, a Republican, said, “The men and women in uniform deserve the ability to do their jobs without interference from radical politicians who are soft on crime.” 

The bill’s chief sponsor, Republican Brad Christ, represents parts of St. Louis County but his district does not include the city of St. Louis. Christ did not reply to Bolts’ request for comment.

Most Democratic lawmakers opposed the bill, arguing that ending local control had nothing to do with reducing crime. 

Crime in St. Louis has dropped to historic lows since a surge in violence in 2020 during the early stages of the pandemic, including a 43 percent decrease in homicides in 2024 compared to four years prior. Local leaders attribute the decline to reforms such as the city’s Office of Violence Prevention, which they created in 2022 to invest in violence intervention programs.

“That is the most shocking thing, that this bill passed in a year where we are at a historic low with crime,” Aldridge, the city council member, told Bolts. “We live here. We know what is safe and what is not safe.”

Per capita, St. Louis had the highest rate of killings by police among the nation’s 100 largest cities in the period between 2009 and 2019, according to a report by ArchCity Defenders, a local advocacy group that used data from the project Mapping Police Violence. Accusations of corruption, abuse and police misconduct have sown animosity with residents, and police resistance to civilian oversight has only further soured public trust that problems with police would ever really be addressed.

Similar frustrations in the suburbs of St. Louis erupted into major protests in 2014 after a police officer in neighboring Ferguson killed Michael Brown, a Black teenager. The following year, St. Louis adopted a law to create a police oversight board, but the board was immediately stymied by weak rules and resistance from the police department, which would not provide the board with complaints against police officers. In 2021, an investigation by Reveal and the Missouri Independent found that the oversight board hadn’t reviewed a single one of the 53 police shootings that took place in the intervening years.

In the spring of 2021, Tishuara Jones rode local anger toward police shootings to win the mayoral office on promises of reform. Her first order as mayor directed police to cooperate with investigations by the Civilian Oversight Board. 

The state’s police unions turned to the GOP-run legislature to weaken local oversight efforts through a Law Enforcement Bill of Rights, which the state adopted in 2021. It gave police officers special protections, such as allowing officers to review evidence against them before being questioned, and shielded records about misconduct investigations from public view. 

In 2022, Jones signed a local law that strengthened the civilian board and gave it new powers to investigate and discipline officers. But the police unions cited the new Officers Bill of Rights and won an injunction that blocked the oversight board from meeting for months while the city made adjustments to comply with the state’s rules. Even after the injunction was lifted in 2023, the oversight board’s work was further stalled by vacancies, cancelled meetings, and delays in the city’s roll out of a mandated training program.

Rose says he suspects that the department’s new governor-appointed leaders will further embolden police to defy the oversight board and “direct their staff not to cooperate with our investigations.”

St. Louis attorneys met with the city’s Civilian Oversight Board March 19 to determine whether the board’s misconduct investigations can even continue once the police department is under state control. Sources told Bolts that the board’s future is unclear. 

“Initially there was resistance. Now there will be a total lack of cooperation, because they don’t have to,” said Jamala Rogers, executive director of the St. Louis-based Organization for Black Struggle and a founding member of the Coalition Against Police Crimes & Repression. 

Rogers was closely involved in the Ferguson protests and she has played a key role in advocating for local control of police and for establishing the civilian oversight panel. She credits the local activism and grassroots energy for pressuring city officials to set up the board in the first place after long resisting it, and then strengthening it in more recent years. 

Now, she worries that the state’s takeover will deny residents of most democratic avenues to influence law enforcement practices in their own city and demand change. “It is like there is no respect for democracy. There is no respect for the fact there is majority support on these issues,” she told Bolts. 

Aldridge, the alderperson, echoed Rogers’ concern, saying, “It leaves little room for any community input or local input to try to work with our law enforcement. We’re the ones who live here and work here. Now, the police will be run by people who are not close to the problem.”

Policymakers and advocates in Kansas City have similarly complained that Missouri officials are killing local democracy by preventing them from running their own affairs. Local leaders have no control over the Kansas City Police Department but are now required by the state to dedicate a large share of their budget to it; police have also used the state’s recent Law Enforcement Bill of Rights to justify closing police investigations to the public.

Missouri officials’ repeated moves to override policing reforms matches their broader willingness to disregard local preferences and, in recent cases, those of the entire state.

After St. Louis approved a minimum wage increase in 2015, Missouri legislators passed a law in 2017 that banned cities from setting a minimum wage above the state level. A bill that’s still working its way through the legislature would repeal a statewide measure Missourians approved in 2024 to raise the minimum wage and require paid sick leave. Republicans are also looking to roll back a separate measure voters approved in November to restore abortion access. 

“It is a sad situation of a democratic process that has been totally disrupted,” Rogers said. “But we will continue to fight for accountability, transparency and for justice for our community.”