The St. Louis City budget board approved a $4 million cut in funding to the city police and the elimination of 98 unfilled police jobs in this years budget bill.
This comes after St. Louis saw its highest homicide rate in 50 years. The unsolved murders occurred overwhelmingly in impoverished black neighborhoods in the city.
The murder rate in St. Louis City hit a 50-year high in 2020.
Mayor Tishaura Jones praised the police budget cuts arguing that the defunding of police will help tackles “some of the root causes to crime.”
Evidently, it’s the cops’ fault.
This is pure insanity coming from the left today in cities across the US.
Marxist Rep. Cori Bush praised the move.
She got her start as a Michael Brown Ferguson protester.
Via Jack Posobiec.
— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) April 30, 2021
The Riverfront Times reported:
With the backing of Mayor Tishaura Jones, St. Louis’ top budget board approved an amendment that seeks to reallocate $4 million of the police department’s budget, including the elimination of 98 unfilled positions.
The amendment to the city’s spending plan — which still needs to pass a final vote in the Board of Aldermen — would not remove any active officers from their jobs, but reflects what the mayor’s office calls “an opportunity to ensure that the right resources are distributed to the right call.”
“For many years the budget has not supported the needs of the people and that’s why we’re seeing record numbers of homicides and other acts of violence,” Jones said in a statement after Thursday’s meeting of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment.
“What we’ve been doing doesn’t work,” Jones’ statement continued. “This revised budget will start St. Louis on a new path to tackling some of the root causes of crime.”
The $4 million diverted from unfilled police positions represents a small fraction of the depart’s annual budget of more than $170 million, but it’s a big step for the new mayor’s agenda: On the campaign trail, Jones often critiqued the city’s years-long efforts to shore up police staffing, arguing that more cops were not always the answer to crime while urging the city to instead “put the public back in public safety.”
