St. Louis Mayor calls on Board of Police Commissioners to ‘refocus’ priorities

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert4) - Mayor Cara Spencer unveiled a plan for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department on Wednesday, calling on the state-appointed Board of Police Commissioners to “refocus” its efforts following a controversial raise granted to Chief Robert Tracy in a closed-door session.

Spencer said she is asking the board to emphasize “Officers, Oversight, and Public Trust,” through four priorities:

• Compensation study: Issue a request for proposals for an independent study to raise entry-level officer salaries to match regional and national markets.
• Oversight and city coordination: Adopt a resolution affirming the board’s responsibility for operational oversight. Adopt a written policy requiring police to share incident action plans with the city’s Emergency Management Agency and Fire Department before major city-wide events.
• Violence and crime prevention: Give the city’s Office of Violence Prevention standing access to “shooting reviews.”
• Transparency: Publish outside-counsel billing records within 30 days, schedule a promotional exam within six months and create a clearer process for civilian complaints.

“The asks are pretty clear. And so I’m confident that these can be received by the board and can be acted on by the board,” Spencer said.

Spencer has been critical of the board’s decision to grant Tracy a $112,000 raise during a closed- door session on a Saturday earlier this month. That emergency meeting had been just before 5 p.m. the previous day.

Gov. Mike Kehoe asked Attorney General Catherine Hanaway to investigate whether the board violated open meetings laws. Hanaway passed the investigation to a Kansas City law firm.

Hanaway told First Alert 4’s David Amelotti the firm will review whether notice of the meeting was sufficient and, if not, whether it fits into one of the exceptions. She said that will require finding out what board members knew and what they were told.

After the raise, the board’s attorney, Chris Graville, resigned. He also called for an independent investigation of the board’s practices.

“Do we have a chief accountable to no one, to himself?” Spencer said. “They are public officials. They are paid with public dollars. And they need to answer to the public.”

Kansas City mayor weighs in

In Missouri’s two largest cities, a state-appointed board controls the police department. Both cities are required to budget 25 percent of their revenue toward police.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, who has been a vocal critic of state control of the two departments, wrote an op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch calling the dysfunction surrounding Tracy’s pay raise a “stain on public confidence.”

On Wednesday, he told First Alert 4 that he believes there is a fundamental flaw in the structure of two state-appointed boards. He also called on Kehoe to reconsider his appointments to the board.

“All of these mistakes will continue to happen until you get local control, or at the very least, you get a board that understands the importance of local voices and local authority, and not just their own,” he said.