You’re Playing With Fire!
Jeff Roorda is the business manager for the St. Louis Police Officers Association.
It should be shocking to no one that a proposal to create a civilian oversight body to monitor police in St. Louis has turned into a total debacle.
On the one hand, civilians and most city officials have expressed support for a civilian review board after the unrest following the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and all the chaos that followed.
On the other hand, area police officers and their representatives from local police associations say that the creation of any such body, whether it has any real power or not, will create an environment so hostile to cops that a majority of them could walk off the job in protest.
So, what does Jeff Roorda, the business manager of the St. Louis Police Officer’s Association, see happening if the citizens critical of police and the elected officials don’t back down?
“They’d answer their calls when they got them, but as far as interrupting criminal behavior on their own, why in the world would they do that when their employers aren’t even supporting them?” Roorda told reporters. “They would be incredibly reluctant to do their jobs, and St. Louis would be a much more dangerous place than it is now. Nobody wants to be the next Darren Wilson.”
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