In 2023, the Policing Committee of the LWVSTL updated our Vision and Mission Statements, which now read as follows:

VISION STATEMENT: The LWVSTL Policing Committee envisions a St. Louis region in which:

• Police act without bias
• Police act without using excessive force, respecting constitutional rights of all citizens
• Police and the community work together
• Police departments are transparent and subject to independent oversight 

MISSION STATEMENT: The LWVSTL Policing Committee works to increase transparency on the use of excessive force in their communities; and to encourage, empower and help police and citizens to work together for the elimination of all excessive force.

In our work on excessive force, we compiled a list of eleven types of use-of-force data we believe should be available to the public on each police department’s website. These are:

1. Accreditation status
2. Whether or not the department reported use of force (UOF) incidents to the Department of Justice and the Missouri Attorney General, as required by law
3. Annual report
4. Use of force policy
5. Date use of force policy was last updated
6. Number of police-citizen contacts, number of UOF incidents, and percent of contacts in which there was UOF, per year
7. % of UOF incidents in which each type of physical force was used (taser, firearm, etc.), per year
8. % of UOF incidents in which citizen had various types of injuries (none, first aid at scene or in custody, ER, admitted to hospital, deceased, unknown), per year
9. Total number of complaints received (internal and external combined) per year
10. Types of allegations for all complaints (oppressive/rude, racial profiling, excessive force, discreditable conduct, neglect of duty, disobedience of orders, other), per year
11. Disposition of allegations resulting from all complaints (sustained, not sustained, unfounded, exonerated, closed/withdrawn, officer resigned), per year

Then we checked each of 48 police departments in our area to determine how much of that information the police shared on their websites. The results were placed into a use-of-force transparency spreadsheet.

We identified the six local police departments that both do the best job on reporting use of force data to the public and were willing to confirm our findings. These six departments provide at least seven of the eleven types of data on our list: Creve Coeur (9 of 11), Clayton (10 of 11), Ferguson (7 of 11), Florissant (8 of 11), Richmond Heights (10 of 11), and St. Louis County (8 of 11). Both Clayton and Creve Coeur Departments plan to increase their reporting to include all eleven types of data on our list in the coming year.

Ultimately, we hope to encourage all local police departments to recognize the value for police-community relations of being transparent about use of force.

In other work, the Policing Committee continued to inform itself on policing issues by reading a variety of relevant news articles and research reports and attending Zoom seminars. Two examples follow:

1. We reviewed the first annual Missouri Department of Safety report that was required by a bill last year from MO State Senator Brian Williams. The report contains all serious use of force incidents by all departments in Missouri. A total of 113 use of force incidents were reported to the MO Attorney General, representing 393 law enforcement agencies out of 643 in the state. This was for a period of nine months. The next report will cover a year.
2. The committee looked into a promising grassroots program known as Omaha 360, which has succeeded in decreasing gun violence, police use of force, officer-involved shootings and complaints against police in Omaha, Nebraska.

Chair: Louisa Lyles
Email: Policing [at] lwvstl.org