Well the arguments have been made once again about why the citizen taxpayers of the City of St Louis should not be given back control of their Police Department. The excuses, err, I mean the alleged reasons are legion. Unfortunately, none is substantiated or enough to override the fundamental right of the citizens of St Louis.

The first red herring thrown out is that the city only wants the police department back to steal the pension fund. The bills going through the legislature prohibit that from happening. But not content with letting facts get in the way, opponents continue in their attempt to mislead.

Next is usually corruption in the City. Now, I may have missed it, but if were true that corruption was at the level of being alleged by the defenders of robbing citizens of their right to local control, wouldn’t I be seeing aldermen even the mayor being hauled off to jail in handcuffs? If those making the allegations of corruption are correct, why are they not doing their jobs to investigate and arrest the guilty? Do they need a Google map to lead them to the FBI offices in St Louis?

Perhaps they are having difficulty finding the U.S. attorney’s office in St Louis. Here’s a hint for you – it’s located in the Eagleton Federal Courthouse downtown. You know, the really tall new building just west of Busch Stadium.

The corruption allegation is meant to incite people to be against local control by the people of the City of St Louis and maintain the status quo. Even in the Senate hearing today, the head of the St Louis Police Officers’ Association (POA) felt he needed to tone down some of the testimony previously given. He changed from “corruption” to “political interference.” Credit where credit is due.

Testimony was even given that the members of the St Louis Tea Party Association opposed the return of local control to the citizens of St Louis. Prior to giving this testimony, the witness pretty much told the committee that the POA had endorsed a number of them and other politicians. His testimony appeared to indicate that the POA thought they had bought some sort of loyalty by their endorsement and were a little PO’d at what they now considered flip flopping. Interesting.

Anyway, I thought the report of the opposition of the St Louis Tea Party Association was rather odd so I checked it out. I found out that it was true that the Board of Directors of the St Louis Tea Party oppose the local control issue. But no “vote” of the members/supporters was taken. As I’ve said before, reasonable people can disagree and we do.

There are 3 things that are the most broken in the City of St Louis:

The schools Crime rate Election board

What do they all have in common? The city controls none of them, and they are all currently controlled by boards appointed by the governor.

There really is no justification for keeping from the people of the City of St Louis what is rightfully theirs, local control of their police department. If the city messes it up — and currently it has No. 1 crime rate in the country — the citizens have the ability to make necessary changes in their elected officials and their city government to correct it. As it is, they have no ability to effect changes or improvements.

As I said, I haven’t seen pictures of aldermen or the mayor being arrested for corruption, but I have read about questionable things happening with the board of police commissioners and recent chiefs. In case you had forgotten, here’s a little reminder of just one of the recent problems:

(Bommarito resigns from Police Board)

This is the fat cat,

That saved his nephew’s arrest,

That embarrassed the City,

That blamed the Mayor,

That blamed the Police Department,

That blamed the Governor’s Board,

That blamed the media,

That ignored the public’s vote,

That blamed the Civil War,

That lay in the house that the Governor built.