After it was reported that the new mayor of St. Louis, Missouri, which “holds the unenviable record of the highest murder rate in America, ahead of Baltimore, Chicago and Detroit for the sixth year running,” said that “more police doesn’t prevent crime,” podcast host and former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly offered a simple but stark message to the citizenry of St. Louis: “Good luck St. Louis.”
Good luck St. Louis. https://t.co/TUrDMpSbYm
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) May 19, 2021
St. Louis mayor Tishaura Jones told The Telegraph: “St Louis needs a lot of help. … We still have two separate police unions — one for black police officers and one for white officers. If they can’t trust each other, then how can they expect the public to trust them?”
Jones has said, “The arrest and incarcerate model of public safety obviously isn’t working. And in cities where they have added more police to the mix, those cities are no safer than they were before. So we have to do something different.”
KMOV reported that Jones allegedly doubled her security as she cut police positions. The news site noted:
Under former St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson, only two police officers were assigned to her security detail. According to a spokesperson for the police union, when Mayor Jones took office, she doubled the number to four. A second police source also confirmed the number is greater than it was before. However, the police department told us they would not officially disclose the number of assigned officers and wouldn’t tell us why not.
A spokesperson for Jones’ told KMOV, “We cannot provide much information for security reasons, however the staffing for the mayor’s security is based upon recommendations provided to our office before inauguration.”
In 2017, Jones ripped the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, writing, “What is killing our region is a systemic racism that pervades almost every public and private institution, including your newspaper, and makes it nearly impossible for either North St. Louis or the parts of South St. Louis where African Americans live to get better or safer or healthier or better-educated. St. Louis needs to change. I am not afraid to say that. … I will look at every issue through a racial equity lens.”
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in January that the city’s homicide rate “hit 87 killings per 100,000 residents in 2020, the highest on record since 1970,” noting that the number “exceeds the previous high of 69 per 100,000 people set in 1993.”
The National Police Support Fund, arguing against defunding the police, writes:
- More policing is necessary to confront violent crime in larger and emerging cities. Community-based policing has been proven to reduce the homicide rate in NYC in the 1990s.
- Defunding the police would lead to more chaos and increased crime in areas that are already seeing increases.
- Would require more police officers to work overtime. In some departments, this leads to decreased officer morale and increased burnout.
- Decreased budget means lack of training and resources- including de-escalation, use of force, and cultural awareness training