The St. Louis Observer: September 3, 2021
Eviction crisis worsened by U.S. Supreme Court ruling; St. Louis prosecutor wants Attorney General to prosecute death penalty cases; North County sees uptick in COVID-19 vaccination
Editor’s Note
Labor Day weekend approaches amid assaults on the rights of poor people and people of color to reproductive healthcare, quality public education, and living free of violence from the state and from private vigilantes. As we reflect on the history of organized labor in this country, we should also remember the critical cross-racial solidarity of the late 19th-century railroad strikes that ground St. Louis to a halt. Racial violence is class violence — something that the Gilded Age labor movement battling the Ku Klux Klan understood and modern “progressives” finally are beginning to remember.
The rights of marginalized people to equal protection under the law are under assault at every level. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court of the United States effectively overturned the precedent set under Roe v. Wade by refusing to intervene on Texas’s ban on 6-week abortions. This week, the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously rejected Ernest Johnson’s death penalty appeal, saying that his intellectual disability was not grounds to spare him from execution.
The law is not neutral, nor was it designed to be. Rather, it has been created by white men within white institutions to protect white wealth - above all else. There are law firms, judges, politicians, and consulting firms that profit from the ongoing attacks on reproductive healthcare, public education, unbiased legal proceedings, protection from state violence, the right to shelter, and more. Even more horrifying are union leaders and labor organizers who have fully rejected support from actors that endorse their causes with one hand while demonstrating a willingness to undermine the rights of women and people of color with the other.
Therefore, the labor movement that rises to today’s challenges must confront legal and state violence in all its forms and at all of its levels: from strengthening teachers’ unions to improving access to reproductive health care for Black mothers, providing support to victims of state violence and recognizing outdated laws that were never designed to support them, and beyond. No one is free until we all are free.
In the News
As part of a larger effort to disrupt the cycle of poverty and crime, Mayor Tishaura Jones’ administration is launching the Social Workers for St. Louis Initiative. The program will hire up to 30 social workers to respond and connect nonviolent persons experiencing mental health crises with medical and healthcare workers, instead of dispatching police to respond. [St. Louis Public Radio/Shahla Farzan]
Mayor Jones announced plans to merge St. Louis police and fire dispatch under the St. Louis Emergency Management Agency. Currently, all 911 calls are directed to police dispatch, with operators transferring to fire and EMS as needed. The combined dispatch center under Emergency Management has been proposed in this year’s capital improvement plan for $32 million. Police dispatch remains more than 30 positions understaffed. The administration is also considering a salary increase for dispatchers [St. Louis Post-Dispatch / Erin Heffernan]
Public health orders, eviction moratorium struck down as Delta devastation continues
Conservative justices on the Supreme Court overturned the most recent CDC eviction moratorium this Thursday, ruling that the CDC lacks the authority to continue the ban without Congressional authorization. The moratorium imposed by the City of St. Louis remains in effect until October 3 [Associated Press / Mark Sherman]
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of the federal eviction moratorium - coupled with state agencies delaying distribution of COVID-19 rental and utility assistance - St. Louisans fear the expected flood of litigation by landlords. Missouri has been one of the slowest states to disperse federal COVID relief funds as tens of thousands of renters face potential eviction in the coming months. [St. Louis American/Sophie Hurwitz]
Public scrutiny for its delay in distributing much-needed COVID-19 relief funds has pushed the Missouri Housing Development Commission to increase staffing in order to process hundreds of applications received weekly by the agency. According to state officials, the State Assistance for Housing Relief (SAFHR) program has assisted more than 14,000 Missouri residents and has distributed $3 to $4 million weekly in federal funds for rental and utility assistance. [Missouri Independent/Rudi Keller and Rebecca Rivas]
A Cole County judge has denied the City of Overland’s attempts to block the implementation of House Bill 271, which restricts local governments and school boards from enacting mask orders and vaccine mandates. The bill, which covered a large swath of topics ranging from regulation of large livestock farms, scrap metal, and easements for utility companies, is being challenged in other Missouri counties as violating the “Hammerschmidt rule,” which allows legislation to be thrown out if a bill does not have a single subject. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch / Kurt Erickson]
Police and prosecutorial accountability in the St. Louis region
In communities where ShotSpotter has been deployed, a recent Associated Press investigation has identified “serious flaws...as evidentiary support for prosecutors,” including missed live gunfire or misclassification of fireworks or backfiring cars as gunshots. ShotSpotter employees also have been caught falsifying information on forensic reports in criminal investigations, demonstrating a vast amount of human bias in a system touted by police as “virtually foolproof.” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch/Garance Burke, Martha Mendoza, Juliet Linderman, and Michael Tarm of the Associated Press]
St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner has requested appointments of special prosecutors - often supplied by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office - to assist with a backlog of criminal cases. Claiming a “lack of resources,” Gardner’s office has claimed that its understaffed office necessitates the appointment of special prosecutors and has requested the appointment of specific prosecuting attorneys from rural Missouri to assist with its caseload. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch/Joel Currier]
St. Louis County municipality Country Club Hills has settled a federal civil rights lawsuit with a man assaulted by police outside of a supermarket in 2018. One of the officers instructed a market employee to falsify information to support the brutality and asked the owner to delete security camera footage showing the assault; the other officer has been charged with misdemeanor fourth-degree assault in St. Louis County Circuit Court. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch/Robert Patrick]
A Maryland Heights police officer has been charged with enticement of a child after he asked for explicit photos from who he believed to be a 14-year-old girl. Veteran officer Gregory Ortlip was caught when he messaged an undercover investigator working with the Kentucky Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and Ortlip admitted to receiving nude photos of underage girls. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch / Katie Kull]
Further reading
Persons incarcerated in the State of Missouri are now eligible to receive up to $6,495 per academic year through the Pell Grant program to pursue a college education. The expansion of the program by the Biden Administration now includes up to 200 colleges and universities, an act that marks a significant shift by Biden, whose 1994 crime bill effectively eliminated incarcerated person’s access to the Pell Grant program. [Missouri Independent/Daniel C. Vock]
Kevin Strickland, a man who has been incarcerated for 41 years after being wrongfully convicted, now faces opposition to his release by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt. Despite overwhelming evidence of Strickland's innocence and the support of local prosecutors to release him, Schmitt claims that Strickland received a “fair trial” and that he is guilty. The case is set for hearing on September 13. [Missouri Independent/Rebecca Rivas]
An exhibit of the history of the LGBTQ+ rights movement in Missouri has been removed from its location in the Missouri Capitol building with no explanation. Governor Mike Parson claimed that the exhibit did not receive approval by the Missouri State Parks board (where Parson holds a seat), but public records from the last five years show that the exhibit was never discussed by the board. [Missouri Independent/Jason Hancock; St. Louis Public Radio/Jodi Fortino]
St. Louis County vaccination efforts have shown significant improvement in northern municipalities through a partnership with local businesses. Six North County zip codes, identified as most vulnerable by County health department officials, experienced an increase in vaccination by 8.2% while the rest of the County has shown a 6.3% increase. [KSDK/Justina Coronel]
Republican lawmakers called a special session to “evaluate” whether critical race theory - a graduate-level academic concept that acknowledges racial disparities throughout U.S. history and society - is being taught in Missouri public schools. Education advocates asserted that lawmakers would bar educators from teaching about the history of slavery in the U.S. and the 1955 murder of Emmett Till. No Black witnesses were asked to testify before the all-white, predominantly Republican education committee. [Missouri Independent/Tessa Weinberg]
The City of St. Louis has hired an Arkansas associate warden as the new commissioner for the department of corrections. The City Justice Center, a facility under the new commissioner’s administration, has experienced at least six detainee uprisings since the end of December and allegedly has been undergoing renovations and lock replacements for several months. [St. Louis American/Dana Rieck]
Quote of the Week
“Charter schools target Black and brown communities while capitalizing and scapegoating the victims of racism. Nearly all of the charter schools in the St. Louis region are in the City. The only charter school in the county is opening in Normandy, much to the chagrin of the local community, a district with a population that is over 95% African-American. White neighborhoods in the St. Louis region don’t have people clamoring for school choice, because the educational system is designed to protect white students and experiment on African-American students.”
Former SLPS middle school teacher Isaac Moore in his exclusive piece for the St. Louis Observer, “Capitalism fails Black students every time.”
Legislative & Legal Update
City of St. Louis
The St. Louis Board of Aldermen remains in summer recess, with regular sessions to resume next Friday, September 10, 2021, at 10:00 a.m.
State of Missouri
The Missouri State Legislature is on recess until January 2022.
Call to Action
In consideration of Texas’ facially unconstitutional ban on abortions after six weeks, the Observer encourages its readership to donate to local abortion funds. Launching in 1993 after the landmark case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the National Network of Abortion Funds has worked to remove financial and logistical barriers to abortion access, including working with clinics to pay for procedures and paying for transportation, childcare, translation, doula services, and lodging.