ST. LOUIS (AP) - St. Louis' governing board signed off Wednesday on sending a much-debated measure that would allow citizens to review complaints against police officers to a final vote as early as next week, with a key sponsor promising future tweaks while welcoming "an extra set of eyes" on law enforcers.
The city's Board of Alderman, by a voice vote and with scant discussion, forwarded on for final consideration the measure to create a seven-person St. Louis Civilian Oversight Board that would investigate citizen complaints of police misconduct and review police policy and practices. Its members could make recommendations but not mete out discipline.
The board also could review evidence and witness statements from investigations by police internal affairs, then report its findings to the public safety director and police chief.
But the measure does not give the proposed board subpoena power, as an amendment once sought before being abandoned after a then-aide to Mayor Francis Slay said it was a deal-breaker that would draw his boss' veto. Slay's name now has been symbolically added to the bill as a show of support.
Only 19 of the aldermanic board's 28 members attended the meeting, where a handful of aldermen said "No" during the voice vote that made the bill final, free of further tinkering.
Alderman Antonio French, one of 16 sponsors of the measure, told reporters afterward that 15 votes are needed for it to pass.
"It is a step in the right direction. It provides an extra set of eyes" on police, French said, noting that a push to get subpoena power for the planned board could be revisited. "Hopefully we'll no longer leave it up to police to police themselves."
The Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression called Wednesday's vote a "major step forward" in what "has been a long-fought struggle" for enhanced police accountability and transparency, most recently after area racial unrest that followed the police shooting death last August of Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.
That group "acknowledges the thousands of residents who were part of the movement for police accountability long before Ferguson exploded," the coalition's statement read. "Their demand for a professional and unbiased police department has been our guiding light. We are also humbled by the unflagging efforts of protesters in the streets who have pushed the city, the region and the country toward the arc of justice."
Joe Steiger, president of the St. Louis Police Officer's Association, declined to discuss the bill Wednesday in advance of it perhaps being decided next week.
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