The St. Louis Cops Who Are Trying to Bleed Their City Dry
After the unexpected windfall from the Rams lawsuit, city officials and residents spent years debating how to use the money. Under Board Bill 22, which is advancing through the city’s Board of Aldermen, the funds would go to repairing homes damaged by last year’s tornado, helping displaced residents find housing, demolishing unsafe buildings, rebuilding North St. Louis neighborhoods, repairing sidewalks and streets, upgrading aging water infrastructure, redeveloping vacant properties, and supporting small businesses. The settlement is a rare opportunity to make investments that cities often struggle to afford through ordinary annual budgets, but the police board’s position is that tens of millions of those dollars should be diverted to policing instead. The consequence of a board win in the lawsuit would be less money for rebuilding neighborhoods and more money for an institution that already consumes nearly a third of the city’s general revenue—and generates millions more in legal liabilities, settlements, judgments, and overtime costs.
The details are specific to St. Louis, but the underlying dynamic is far more widespread. The lawsuit offers a revealing look at the extraordinary fiscal and political power police departments enjoy in U.S. cities. At a time when local governments are struggling to fund schools, parks, housing programs, public health initiatives, transit systems, and basic infrastructure, a police department that already consumes a substantial portion of municipal resources is attempting to use the courts to suck even more funding away from other city services.
The board is pursuing this funding shift even as taxpayers already bear an enormous range of police-related costs that rarely appear in discussions about police budgets. When politicians and police advocates talk about police spending, they usually mean appropriations. They point to the department’s annual budget and argue that officers need more personnel, more equipment, or higher salaries. But policing’s true price tag extends far beyond the amount formally allocated to a department each year.
