When it comes to policing in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ region, Chuck Wexler was ahead of his time.
A former Boston police officer, Wexler is now executive director of the , one of the nation’s foremost agencies dedicated to the improvement of law enforcement.
In 2015, Wexler came to ºüÀêÊÓƵ to announce the results of a study of policing in the region. One word highlighted the report’s findings: fragmentation.
“The fragmentation of policing among 60 separate police agencies, many of which are extremely small, causes inefficiencies and uneven delivery of police services to area residents. ... The fragmentation in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ region is extreme,†the report said. “It is a dysfunctional and dangerous situation that cannot be sustained.â€
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Among the recommendations was a massive consolidation of police departments in ºüÀêÊÓƵ County. The report even contemplated an “ideal world†where the two largest agencies in the region, the ºüÀêÊÓƵ Municipal Police Department and ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Police Department, would merge.
Why were these suggestions so important?
Think about the constant focus on downtown crime. City police sometimes struggle to respond quickly to crimes there because the force is spread thin. So it resorts to overtime and seeks private funding sources. But walk to any Cardinals or ºüÀêÊÓƵ City SC game and what do you see? Police vehicles from around the region, paid through tax money and private funders, to provide additional safety.
Why isn’t this the model every day?
That sort of cooperation would happen more frequently if fewer agencies competed for tax dollars. Recently, the union for police officers in the county raised the same issues of recruiting and force reductions that have plagued the city for years.
These are problems all over the country, Wexler tells me.
“You’ve got a staffing crisis in American policing, from small, medium to large agencies,†he said this week in a phone interview. “The American system of law enforcement is 18,000 agencies. Eighty percent of them are 50 officers or less. It’s very fragmented. Whatever we can do to combine resources is a step in the right direction.â€
Nine years after that report on fragmentation in ºüÀêÊÓƵ was issued, and 10 years after the Ferguson uprising that inspired it, there is progress of sorts. Last month, the municipality of Calverton Park voted to disband its police department. That followed similar decisions made in the past year in Velda City and Bel-Nor, and other consolidations in recent years in Pine Lawn, Charlack and Kinloch.
This is progress.
One of the great values of the , managed by the East-West Gateway Council of Governments, is that leaders throughout the region — from multiple counties in Missouri and Illinois — are talking about a unified strategy to fight crime and reduce homicides.
This is the sort of regional cooperation that Wexler’s researchers were urging nearly a decade ago. The failed Better Together process that tried to merge the city and the county collapsed, perhaps because it tried to do too much. But some of the same goals appear to be unfolding slowly in a more organic fashion.
Wexler’s goal of police consolidation mirrors that of social justice advocates. The nonprofit law firm ArchCity Defenders, for example, recently released a paper calling for the consolidation of all county municipal courts into one court. The idea builds on the reforms that grew from the events in Ferguson, which reduced the incentives for courts and police to be used as revenue sources for cash-strapped cities.
“If we want to bring a sustained change to this system, we must act more boldly and transform the municipal legal landscape for good,†.
Consolidation — of police agencies and the municipal courts they serve — can serve two purposes: freeing up police officers to better battle crime hot spots; and reducing the use of municipal courts to exacerbate poverty, particularly among Black residents in pockets of north ºüÀêÊÓƵ County.
Calverton Park’s decision signals a path forward for the ºüÀêÊÓƵ area and perhaps the nation.
“In 2024, we have a major staffing crisis across the country, and you would think there would be a push for consolidation and there isn’t,†Wexler says. “There’s no other country in the world that has this kind of inefficiency.â€