Missouri’s Bush and Hawley offer divergent visions of policing with federal dollars
Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley wants to hire 100,000 more police in cities across the nation.
Missouri Democratic Rep. Cori Bush wants cities to shift some responsibility for public safety from police to local health departments.
Their vastly different visions for the future of policing would both employ one of Congress’ most powerful tools for spurring change locally: federal grants.
Bush’s “People’s Response Act,” introduced Monday, would create a five-year, $2.5 billion grant program encouraging localities to treat crime as a public health issue, supporting ”community-based organizations that are designing, implementing, monitoring, or otherwise supporting health approaches to public safety.”
Bush, a nurse and activist who rose to prominence as a protest organizer in Ferguson after the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown, said her proposal “will transform public safety into a system of care rather than criminalization, healing rather than incarceration, and prevention rather than policing.”
Hawley has proposed establishing federal grants aimed at hiring 100,000 additional police officers nationwide. Local police departments would apply for the funding to increase their ranks.
“They’ve got to commit to increasing the overall number of cops. It’s got to be new cops that they’re funding and after that it’s pretty broad,” Hawley said last week.
The legislative framework unveiled by Hawley last week did not include a specific dollar figure for the grants, but the senator said the proposal would cover the hiring costs for departments that qualified.
The two proposals come as Missouri’s two largest cities, Kansas City and St. Louis, are moving forward with their changes to their police budgets. St. Louis’ spending plan, which goes into effect Thursday, reduces police funding by $4 million annually.
Bush, a close ally of St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, has been a vocal supporter of the budget, which moves the money to affordable housing and other programs.
“For decades, our city funneled more and more money into our police department under the guise of public safety, while massively underinvesting in the resources that will truly keep our communities safe,” Bush said in April when the St. Louis budget was unveiled.
Kansas City is facing a lawsuit from its state-appointed police board over Mayor Quinton Lucas’ plan to shift $42 million from the police budget to a “Community Services and Prevention Fund.” It would require police commissioners to negotiate with the city manager on how it is spent.
City leaders call it a reallocation meant to increase the city’s voice in the department’s spending decisions. Hawley disputed that characterization.
“It’s a cut,” Hawley said. “If you talk to cops, they say it’s a cut. They’re very clear on this. I’m following it. I’m really concerned about it.”
Both St. Louis and Kansas City have grappled with high rates of gun violence. Kansas City broke its record for homicides last year with 182, while St. Louis experienced a 50-year high of 262 murders.
Reform advocates say this is proof that a new approach is needed. Hawley argued that it is instead a call for more cops on the streets and steps to protect those already on the job.
“The people in my state are feeling it. They are afraid to go out at night. They’re afraid to go out on the streets. They’re afraid to drop their children off at school,” Hawley said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week.
In addition to the proposed grant program, Hawley wants to increase criminal penalties for assaulting federal officers and to “create a separate criminal offense for targeting someone based on their status as a law enforcement officer.”
Bush has repeatedly argued that more police won’t necessarily make communities safer. She wants to establish a new Division of Public Safety within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, tasked with overseeing federal efforts to promote a health-based approach to public safety.
Bush’s proposal comes two weeks after she rolled out legislation aimed at ending the federal War on Drugs, which would shift power over controlled substances away from the Department of Justice to Health and Human Services.
“Our communities deserve a better response to mental health and substance use crises — which is why this new Division would be tasked with creating a trauma-informed federal response unit that can be deployed to communities to support state and local governments in responding to emergency situations, substance use, and mental health crises,” Bush said Monday.
