For a lot of people, “Defund The Police” is simply a talking point. But for St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, it’s a well-thought-out plan that she hopes to set in motion. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Jones is making plans to cut jail and police budgets and shift the funds toward community efforts like affordable housing and aid for the St. Louis homeless population.
Jones, who took office in April, wasted no time changing the way the city handles law enforcement. This past week, she supported a $4 million cut out of the police department’s $171 million budget, mostly for vacant officer salaries. Jones plans to allocate the money towards civil rights litigators, a victim’s services program and other services geared towards the community.
‘Law enforcement is not the solution’; Mayor Tishaura Jones looks to upend city approach to crime https://t.co/SRYAwbmyMc
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch (@stltoday) May 1, 2021
After becoming St. Louis’s new mayor last month, she promised to transform the city’s problematic police force in her inaugural speech, “I stand here before you today resolved to make change, to transform our city and to transform our approach to safety.”
During her first day as mayor, Jones supported a budget that defunded two St. Louis jails. She hopes to save up to $7.8 million– with a portion set aside for social workers and services aimed at helping jailed persons gain their freedom.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jones is transforming St. Louis in similar ways to New York City, Austin, Texas and Baltimore, Maryland. Those cities have all made measures to defund or decrease their police budgets. But the tenacious woman’s take on police budgeting will help set the city “on a new path to tackling some of the root causes of crime.”
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Daniel Isom, a former St. Louis police chief, supported Jones in her reform efforts and discussed his view on what could help with the city’s violent crime.
“We’ve had an overemphasis on law enforcement as a solution. I’ve talked about it throughout my tenure as police chief, that law enforcement is not the solution,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “The solution is investing in people, investing in communities, investing in families.”
Speaking on the big shift in how the city handles community budgets and police jobs and the resulting backlash, Isom continued.
“I do think it’s a significant shift, but that’s the direction that our country is going in.”
