Tishaura Jones wants to reimagine policing in St. Louis. With rising crime and a push to ‘defund,’ can she do it?

ST. LOUIS – Mayor Tishaura Jones peels off her bedazzled facemask while standing outside downtown’s St. Patrick Center, preparing to address the crowd about the facility’s new women’s center.

On one side of a 6-foot black steel fence closest to the Catholic-based homeless shelter’s entrance are clergy, dignitaries and other stakeholders.

The other side is home to a large gravel lot where about a dozen homeless people – mostly men – sleep, wander and watch the mayor.

“I don’t believe there is a one size fits all approach to public safety,” Jones said to the roughly five dozen onlookers within earshot of two loudspeakers.

“There are segments of the population who are more deeply affected by societal norms and pressure, stigma, and must be approached with an eye towards equity.”

St. Louis must focus on its most vulnerable populations to address core problems first, Jones told the crowd, “rather than respond to people’s needs with arrest and incarceration.”

Jones, who took office April 20, repeats this message wherever she can find a microphone. It has helped put her in the national spotlight, since her second bid for mayor in three years made her the first Black woman to win the seat last fall.

As Congress looks to craft bipartisan legislation aimed at tackling police reform, Jones is among the elected leaders coming into power in the wake of national protests in 2020, where millions of demonstrators called on officials to cut police budgets in favor of funding social services.

She is challenging St. Louis’s leaders, residents, police unions and community activists – not to mention the rest of the country – to rethink what a safe city means.

“I feel like the voters felt like we were stuck and they are ready. They were ready for progress.” Jones told USA TODAY in an interview. “Our population (is) declining, closing schools, we (have) African Americans leaving our city at a higher rate than any other race and people felt like we can’t get any lower than this, so it’s time to do something different.”

“I think what’s at stake is that we will be able to show the country that it’s possible,” she added.

But Jones faces myriad challenges as she works to reform her home city: an entrenched political establishment, from St. Louis City Hall to the Missouri legislature and police union, that remains skeptical of her vision; an alarming homicide rate that could derail reform efforts among key constituencies; and a cadre of restless activists who have been in the trenches for years demanding radical change instead of small reforms.

And she isn’t just facing local pressure – Jones is in the national spotlight as both the leader of a major U.S. city and among the first class of progressive Democratic candidates who in the aftermath of the 2020 protests ran on promises to end cash bail, curtail mass incarceration and hold police accountable.

“I’m definitely worried about the Obama effect when it comes to Tishaura,” said St. Louis organizer Tory Russell, founder of the International Black Freedom Alliance, a pan-African racial justice group in the city. Barack Obama’s historic presidency paralleled some of the most high-profile police shootings in American history, Russell said, as well as the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

It won’t be easy for Jones, 49, to overhaul a system that she and others – especially younger Black voters and activists who are more wary of Black elected officials than before – contend has for generations been permeated by racism.

Russell said while Jones’ win is point of pride – especially in St. Louis’s predominantly Black north side – her ascension must come second to the movement’s goals, crafted largely by poor and working-class Black residents.

“I show my daughter the picture of Tishaura and say, ‘maybe this could be you’ but we also have to understand modern history,” Russell said.

“We have Lori Lightfoot (of Chicago) and Keisha Lance Bottoms (of Atlanta) — you got a queer Black woman, you got a cis hetero Black woman,” Russell added. “Still neo-liberalism, still black people getting gentrified, still the police is beating us up and killing us, still no substantive change for the Black community.”

If the early days of the Jones administration were an indicator, her campaign rhetoric wasn’t just empty political talk.

On her first day in office, Jones supported a spending plan that eliminated funding for one of the city’s two jails – the Medium Security Institution, better known to locals as “The Workhouse” – that would allow about $7.8 million in savings for other priorities.

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