What police reform is needed in Missouri?

This is part 3 of an interview with Cape Girardeau Police Chief Wes Blair.

Following the case in Minneapolis where a police officer put his knee on the neck of George Floyd, the conversation regarding police training and reform has resurfaced. In some areas, municipalities have given in to "defund the police" demands by shifting money away from law enforcement to other social services. In D.C., Senate Democrats blocked a Republican reform effort led by Sen. Tim Scott. But when it comes to real reform, much of the action to be taken is at the state level.

Cape Girardeau Police Chief Wes Blair said one thing Missouri should consider is a database to track officers so departments don't pass off "bad police officers" to other law enforcement agencies.

"I've always been a staunch supporter of that if I terminate somebody, they don't need to go work for another police department," Blair said. "And I don't think that our process for vetting that is as robust in the state of Missouri as it could be."

Blair said when an officer is terminated, a report is sent to the post commission. They make a determination on the officer's license, but this process can sometimes take two or three years before the officer's license is terminated. By then, Blair said, the officer has moved on to another police agency "because they still have their state level commission to be a police officer."

"So if we're going to do some reform, I'm all on board with the system of a database for police officers who have done horrific things and gotten terminated from their agencies to do that. I think that's a good thing. And I think a lot of places are doing that on different levels."

Blair said it's not uncommon for an officer in St. Louis to be fired and then get a new job with another municipality.

"We shouldn't just be shuffling our problems off somewhere else and just getting them out of our hair, so to speak, and let him be somebody else's problem. I think that we owe it to the community at large to say, 'No, this person doesn't need to be a cop anywhere anymore. So that's the biggest piece of reform that I think needs to happen."

Blair said he's not opposed to President Trump's executive order that would require police departments to be credentialed. Cape Girardeau's Police Department does not have state or national accreditation due to the cost in both money and time, Blair said.

Small towns would be at a particular disadvantage, he said, with accreditation costing upward of $20,000 a year.

"So you get some of these smaller communities that have five cops. Well, you're going to kill their budget making them go through accreditation process. So I see that side of the equation, too, but I think that there's probably something that can happen in the middle to make that a viable thing."

Blair said Cape Girardeau is now taking a fresh look at accreditation, particularly if the government makes it a requirement for federal grants.

"We rely on federal grants for a lot of things. So we would certainly do that. And again, it's not something I've ever been opposed to necessarily other than the expense and the time commitment that it takes to keep that credentialing up."

'Defund the police'

When it comes to the "defund the police" argument, Blair offers caution.

"I think that's dangerous," he said. I'm not discounting the social programs that need to happen. And I think you've probably heard me say we need more mental health facilities and mental health providers in our city, and I would love to see money go to that," he said.

But funding those efforts at the expense of police departments will only cut into limited budgets for training and equipment.

"Because budgets are so tight already, you know, the majority of your police department budget is personnel. It's not armored vehicles and guns and things like that. It's in your personnel. So when you start backing money out of the police department, training is going to go. You're going to start cutting the number of officers that are on the street, things like that. I don't know that that really keeps our community safer."

Ending no-knock search warrants is also a dangerous policy, according to Blair. About nine times out of 10, Blair said officers do knock. "But there are those situations where that's dangerous to your police officers," he said. "In a real world where everybody is compliant and nobody wants to kill you, that would be nice. But that's not the reality of the world that we work at."

Blair said he reinforces to his officers that most people in the community support the police. He attends community and chamber of commerce events where he gets to hear this message personally. But most cops don't. They're working long shifts, and the people they see are typically not the ones who want to see the police. Add in sensationalized news stories nationally and people calling on government to "defund the police," it takes a toll on their mental health.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest after the death of George Floyd, Cape PD's push was on the mental health of officers. They've started peer support programs with counselors who have a law enforcement or military background.

The department had a family wellness day planned to connect officers and their families with resources such as financial planning and stress management, but it was pushed back because of COVID-19.

Blair said when he first started in law enforcement, you were considered weak and even unfit for law enforcement if you witnessed something traumatic and it affected you mentally.

"Well, that's such a wrong mentality. It should affect you. You know, it should take a toll on your psyche that you see things, and so I'm glad to see that not just us, but across the country, police departments are starting to go, 'Hey, we need to care about our cops more.'"

Blair said the No. 1 killer of cops is not line of duty deaths but suicide.

"We've got one of the highest suicide rates of any occupation, and I attribute a lot of that to the junk that you see day in and day out. And you don't have a mechanism for getting help to work through that. And so that's become a really important thing for us to do with our officers, and I think that probably will help us get through this really trying time, too, is because we're caring about our cops."

Lucas Presson is assistant publisher of the Southeast Missourian.