Recent Missouri editorials

The Jefferson City News-Tribune, Sept. 19

Is Missouri “turning a corner” in its COVID-19 fight, as Gov. Mike Parson said Wednesday?

While there are some encouraging numbers, we’re not ready to go that far. The biggest reason: Missouri has the fourth-highest rate of new cases in the nation.

That statistic alone indicates we’re not turning a corner. But, while more new cases are turning up in Missouri than most other states, we’re also seeing a steep decline in death rates.

As we reported Wednesday, Parson said that in April and May, more than 7 percent of observed COVID-19 cases were fatal. That has dropped to a scant .3 percent so far this month.

That’s likely a reflection of our ability to identify more positive cases as well as our ability to treat the virus.

That red-zone report from the White House moves Missouri up three spots from the last report Sept. 6, according to KMIZ-TV 17.

The biggest culprit: young adults. As we reported Wednesday, the age group with the most new positive cases remains 18- to 24-year-olds.

St. Louis County, Jackson County (Kansas City area) and Green County (Springfield area) account for 36.4 percent of the new cases.

So what more can we do to prevent the virus’ spread?

The first recommendation in the White House report is to require masks in metro areas and counties with COVID-19 cases among students or teachers in K-12.

Many of Missouri’s metro areas already have mask ordinances, but many counties with COVID-19 cases in the schools do not.

Here in Jefferson City, the virus has already posed a problem at various schools, and Cole County has no mask ordinance.

Many of the other recommendations are aimed at university settings. They include increasing testing capacity, requiring higher ed institutions to have a plan for rapid testing/contact tracing and recruit college and university students to expand public health messaging and contact tracing capacity. Mask wearing and off-campus social distancing must occur, the report said.

Our state has increased its testing capacity, but right now, it’s imperative schools, especially universities, enforce their mask/social distancing rules. Meanwhile, the state needs to focus on the university hotspots to ramp up testing capacity and quicken contact tracing.

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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 17

There are many difficult questions surrounding the fatal shooting of an unarmed 25-year-old woman by a deputy during a traffic stop in Sedalia earlier this year, but one is easy to answer. The special prosecutor who decided this week not to pursue charges said the absence of a body camera on the deputy makes assessing his explanation for the shooting “somewhat more difficult.” Actually, it makes it impossible.

Six years after Michael Brown’s shooting death, Missouri still doesn’t require all police departments to take this simple step to provide objective evidence in police killings. It’s past time for the Legislature to remedy that and pass - with adequate funding - a statewide body-camera requirement.

Hannah Fizer died June 13 after being shot five times by the Pettis County deputy, whose name hasn’t been made public. The deputy, who had stopped her for speeding, claims that while he was standing outside her car, she told him she had a gun and was going to shoot him. Investigators ultimately found no weapon.

There is, this time, no apparent racial component to the confrontation; Fizer and the deputy both were white. Her friends and family have said in media reports that she didn’t own a gun, and that it would have been out of character for her to verbally threaten a police officer. The officer’s claim of such a threat can’t be corroborated because the body cameras the sheriff’s office had once used had developed software problems, and replacing them was cost-prohibitive.

Faced with those circumstances, Special Prosecutor Stephen Sokoloff said last week he wouldn’t seek charges against the deputy. Sokoloff wrote that “an alternative approach might have avoided the confrontation,” but that the available evidence supports the deputy’s claim that “he was in fear for his life.”

Independently fact-checking that conclusion is impossible. Without body-camera footage and audio, the officer has the final word. That’s the point.

The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police was extensively videoed by a bystander, but in most police killings of suspects, that kind of evidence isn’t available. The world will never know exactly what happened in the moments before Brown died in Ferguson in 2014 because the officer had no body camera. Ditto with the Louisville, Kentucky, officers who killed Breonna Taylor in a botched narcotics raid in her home earlier this year. The $12 million settlement Taylor’s family negotiated with the city, announced Tuesday, is small compensation for never knowing exactly what happened.

Pettis County officials announced that, as a result of Fizer’s death, they have ordered 23 body cameras with audio capability to equip all the county’s deputies. It shouldn’t take a tragedy to prompt such action. A state requirement that police use body cameras would necessitate state funding to offset the costs to local governments. But the cost of doing nothing is too high.

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The Kansas City Star, Sept. 16

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s special legislative session on the state’s crime crisis ended abruptly Wednesday, and largely in failure.

The Missouri House voted to adjourn without taking up Senate crime bills involving prosecutions in St. Louis or higher penalties for transferring weapons to minors.

It was a major embarrassment - and an unmistakable message - for Parson. “If leaders in his own party think his ideas are this bad, what is the rest of Missouri supposed to think?” said state Sen. John Rizzo of Kansas City, the Democratic leader, in a statement.

The governor appeared blissfully unconcerned. “You’re not going to hit a home run every time in this building,” he said Wednesday. “We’re very content with what we got.”

For the record, House members were right to turn down the measure allowing the attorney general to bigfoot prosecutorial decisions in St. Louis. If Attorney General Eric Schmitt, Parson, and Republicans in the Missouri Senate would stop pretending to be St. Louis aldermen and do their real jobs, the state would be better for it.

The legislature did approve a measure allowing St. Louis police officers to live outside their city, a bill that excluded Kansas City’s officers. For that, we can be grateful. Lawmakers also approved a program to subsidize some witness protection costs, but where the funding would come from is unclear.

Other than those baby steps, lawmakers took no serious action to reduce the violence in the state’s urban communities.

Democrats were brutal. “The governor has wasted $200,000 and counting in taxpayer money on a vanity special session solely intended to boost his flagging prospects for election to a full term,” said a statement from House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat.

No one should cheer the failure of the special session to pass substantial anti-crime legislation. Bloodshed plagues Kansas City and St. Louis, and is growing in other parts of the state. A year ago we urged Parson to call a special session to deal with crime, a proposal he rejected.

He tried again this year, as the election loomed. Again, little progress.

There is much lawmakers could do to help reduce crime. They could give local authorities in urban areas the right to restrict gun ownership. They could approve additional spending for mental health resources in the state. They could increase money for the public defender’s office, which is once again sagging under the burden of cases and clients.

And it could return control of the Kansas City Police Department to the people it serves.

Lawmakers, led by the governor, took none of these steps. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Jefferson City is largely uninterested in taking real measures to reduce crime in our city.

That means it’s up to us. Kansas Citians must do what lawmakers won’t: Reduce poverty and homelessness, ensure fairness in law enforcement, and yes, support legitimate policing efforts in our community. Those are the challenges ahead.

Voters in Kansas City should also take notice of what just happened in the state capitol, and cast their ballots accordingly in November.