Following the scandal-ridden resignation of Joe Mokwa, the governor-appointed St. Louis Police Board has selected Colonel Daniel Isom as the new police chief.

Here is the official announcement from Police Board President Chris Goodson: Continue Reading

As a young girl laid in her bed, butterflies swarmed in her belly with anticipation of the first day of school that awaits when she opens her eyes. A freshman no more, young Shaneick Golden would be starting her sophomore year at the V.

But her dreams of walking the halls of Vashon were violently interrupted when a loud noise and a sharp pain opened the 15-year-old’s eyes. A bullet pierced her back as she slept on her living room couch. By nothing less than the grace of God, the hot metal stopped short of her heart and lodged tight in her ribs — too close, the doctors say, to safely remove. So when young Golden does finally make it to school for her first day, she will carry with her, inside her, a bullet and a reminder that in her neighborhood there is no safe place from the terror of the gunmen that run the streets of north St. Louis.

My story today is not about the violence that is all too common in our city, and which has unfortunately defined St. Louis for many, many people. My story today is about the response to that senseless violence, a response that is too common, and which has unfortunately defined St. Louis for many, many people.

“They don’t care. Point blank,” says a neighbor of mine, not specifically about Golden’s shooting, but whenever we discuss the city’s response to the violence that plagues our neighborhood.

“They don’t give a fuck unless it happens to them, in their neighborhoods,” he says.

If you believe the responses to the story of Golden’s shooting on the daily newspaper’s website, you’d have to agree with my neighbor’s pessimistic assessment.

“This is a cultural problem wherein thug behavior is lauded and cooperation with the authorities is frowned upon,” writes “CrabbyAbby” at STLToday.com. “Until the residents of these neighborhoods rise up united against thugs, gangs, druggies, etc. and let them know they will report the criminal, no longer be intimitated or paid off with dirty money, and take back their neighborhoods, these daily shootings will continue.”

“Rise up against the thugs”? CrabbyAbby is expressing a point of view that is common among people who do not live in these areas. It is a view that is often expressed in the comments section of this website too when I write about city violence. It is the view that northside violence is northsiders’ problem and exists because northsiders don’t take control of (and responsibility for) their neighborhoods and their violent neighbors.

This view is both ignorant and offensive. In hearing it, I can imagine how the average Iraqi feels when he hears American leaders on television saying that Iraqis need to get their act together and get a functioning Democracy in place ASAP, that they need to hurry up and get their infrastructure rebuilt so the country has 24-hour electricity, that they need to hurry up and end the government corruption so aid money directly benefits the poor and not corrupt politicians.

The hypocrisy is laughable. In demanding these people take full and rapid responsibility, the American pundits take none. The same is true here.

The security situation in the Hyde Park, O’Fallon Park, and Fairground Park neighborhoods (and many others), is more a result of City government and police department policies than it is the fault of the Golden family or families like theirs.

FACT: The City of St. Louis is the owner of more drug houses than any drug dealer in St. Louis. When it comes to slumlords, Paul McKee doesn’t hold a candle to the City’s Land Reutilization Authority. In the 3rd Ward, where Hyde Park is located and where Shaneick was shot, the city is holding onto entire blocks of vacant, unsafe buildings. Land banking, they call it. And what is happening inside these buildings between when city employees come to cut the grass every four to six weeks? The drug trade.

FACT: The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department has surrendered parts of this city to drug dealers and thugs. What would happen if I drove my 2009 Cadillac Escalade over the curb and onto a grassy hill in Forest Park? What would happen if I blasted the newest Young Jeezy track as the summer sun reflected off my 30-inch rims and a steady stream of people made their way to and from my passenger side window? You know what would happen.

Not since the worst days in this city’s history have drug dealers behaved that brazenly in the Central West End, since before there was a “Central West End”. But there are parts of the city that are reminiscent of “Hamsterdam” from HBO’s “The Wire”, where drug activity is so open that the lack of police activity sends a clear message to the good residents that live in these neighborhoods: “You’re on your own.”

You’re on your own. That’s the underlying message relayed from the comments of “CrabbyAbby” on the Post’s website, and also in comments from Mayor Francis Slay and former Police Chief Joe Mokwa when they voiced outrage over St. Louis being labeled as “most dangerous” in national surveys. That’s just “some neighborhoods”, they say. Surely not the neighborhoods of their constituents.

But what about the good people who do live in these neighborhoods? They are, by the way, the majority of people living in these neighborhoods. For them — for us — St. Louis is most dangerous. Many of them vote. Many of them pay taxes. Many of them don’t want their kids to live their whole lives in these neighborhoods. And none of them want to see their kids die.

What responsibility does a government take in defending its people against domestic terrorists like the young, armed men that control some of our northern streets?

What responsibility does a government take for a girl like 15 year-old Shaneick Golden, who couldn’t even make it to attend her first day at her underperforming high school because she lives in a war zone just 3 miles from City Hall?

What responsibility? Ideally, a lot.

Systematic underreporting of rapes, missing money from police vaults, and now the “borrowing” of impounded vehicles for the personal use of cronies and his own daughter. Do you think it’s time for Police Chief Joe Mokwa to be fired?

Margaret Donnelly calls on St. Louis Police Board to ask for new Independent Investigation

The Citizens of St. Louis deserve to know all of the facts

ST. LOUIS – Representative Margaret Donnelly called on the St. Louis Police Board to immediately ask for a new independent investigation into the use of impounded cars by police and by Police Chief Joe Mokwa’s daughter. “The people deserve a thorough and independent investigation and today I am calling on the Police Board of St. Louis to ask the State Highway Patrol to do that investigation” said Margaret Donnelly.

Recent revelations involving Police Department practices and Chief of Police Mokwa’s role in the use of impounded vehicles have raised serious concerns. Even though an independent investigation had previously occurred, new information as reported in the Post Dispatch about the police chief’s role suggests that all of the facts have yet to come out. “ The citizens of St. Louis need to have confidence restored in their police department and the way to accomplish that is for the Police Board to initiate a new investigation with all of the new information thoroughly reviewed,” concluded Donnelly.

Representative Donnelly is a candidate for Attorney General.

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