Last week, the St. Louis County Council gave final approval to a pay increase that will average about 30 percent per officer, made possible by an identical sales tax increase county voters approved in April.

If Proposition P doesn’t pass on Tuesday, the starting salary gap between city and county officers will be roughly $10,000. If it does pass, there will still be disparity between the departments, but the city police union has negotiated raises of about $6,000 per officer.

State Rep. Bruce Franks Jr., who has been a fixture at recent protests, says that while no one wants to see good police officers leave, the city could find the money to hire more officers and pay them more without asking taxpayers to sign off on a second half-cent sales tax hike in six months.

“If there were particular officers I could just give a raise to, I would certainly do that,” Franks said. “We need an audit to figure out where this money for public safety is going, how it’s being spent. And get some of these wasteful dollars back, so maybe we can have a raise, but not on the backs of poor people.

“The fact that we already spend so much of the budget on public safety, and so little on attacking the root cause (of crime) is an issue itself,” he added.