The Missouri legislature ended its session Friday night having passed virtually none of the changes activists sought in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown.
Activists had been tracking more than 100 bills related to criminal justice and policing but said just one of substance had made its way out of the legislature.
“This was such an opportunity for the Missouri legislature to step up and do the right thing. The people of the state called on our lawmakers to fix this broken system,” said Denise Lieberman, a senior attorney for the civil rights group Advancement Project and co-chairwoman of the Don’t Shoot Coalition, which was formed to address policy reform after Brown’s shooting.
When the session began in early January, advocates had high hopes for, at the least, a fruitful discussion. They were encouraged, they said, by word from the legislative black caucus that legislative leaders and the governor were supportive of their efforts. But in the end, several expressed frustration with the course the legislature took.
The scores of bills — introduced mostly by the legislature’s few Democrats — offered a menu of changes. They would have developed standards for eyewitness identification, required body cameras, restricted police from racial profiling, required diversity and sensitivity training, and modified state rules governing the use of lethal force, something Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon threw his support behind in his State of the State address.
The legislature did pass one bill that advocates sought, which was aimed at limiting municipal reliance on fines for revenue, a practice highlighted in a scathing Justice Department report on Ferguson released earlier this year.
The bill lowers the cap on how much revenue a municipality can generate from traffic tickets from 30 percent to 20 percent statewide and to 12.5 percent in St. Louis County, which is plagued by excessive traffic violations and is home to Ferguson.
The bill also bans courts from jailing individuals over minor traffic offenses.
“We’re not going to have a ‘Ferguson agenda’ here in the House,” said Republican House Speaker John Diehl at his opening-day news conference Jan. 7. “I think that the Senate has indicated the same thing. I view the situation of Ferguson as really a reflection of decades of bad government policy,” he said, adding that the chamber would look at issues related to economics, educational opportunities, and the role and function of government.
Diehl resigned Thursday after The Kansas City Star uncovered what it described as “sexually suggestive texts” with a 19-year-old intern.
Though their efforts might have largely failed, proponents of reform said they will continue their fight. “Long-term policy change takes time,” Lieberman said.
Advocates plan to use the recommendations of a state commission on Ferguson, expected to wrap up its work in the coming months, to engage lawmakers during the summer.
