News/Commentary

Dem mayor says St. Louis business owners need to be ‘held accountable’ for crime on their premises

April 8, 2024 | | Print Article

“By any measure, St. Louis is one of the worst cities for crime in America.”

“The city received an “F” rating from CrimeGrade.org,” Blaze Media reports. “For years St. Louis has had one of the highest murder rates and violent crime rates in the country.”

Liberal St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones admits her city has “a lot of violence around convenience stores and gas stations.” But it’s not the criminals she wants to hold “accountable” for the carnage. And Jones certainly isn’t placing the blame on her progressive policies.

What Tishaura Jones wants to know is “How can we hold those business owners accountable and also bring down crime?”

“Some of the things [we] are already doing,” Jones told WMC-TV, “we’re finding other mayors are doing as well.”

Jones’s comments reportedly were made during a Memphis meeting of the Black Mayors Coalition on Crime in late March 28th.

According to the Memphis, Tennessee, government website, “Memphis Mayor Paul Young, in partnership with the African American Mayors Association (AAMA), announced the launch of the Black Mayors’ Coalition on Crime (BMCC), an initiative to harness the collective power of black mayors across the nation to fight crime.”

“For the first time in history, we have an unprecedented number of black mayors in some of our biggest cities: Mayor Adams in New York City, Mayor Bass in Los Angeles, and Mayor Johnson in Chicago, to name a few,” Young said, “not to mention hundreds of others, like myself who represent millions of Americans in small-to-medium and large-sized cities across the country. Many of these leaders come from the communities most affected by crime, so they have a unique perspective on solving it.”

According to WMC-TV, “Discussions with the Council on Criminal Justice and chats between leaders were all closed to the public and media.”

Jones “says she’s taking back strategies used in Atlanta for nightclub owners and eyeing ways to reduce crimes around convenience stores,” the outlet reports.

“In addition to the novel proposition that it’s important to hold business owners rather than city government officials accountable for crimes on business property, other meeting attendees suggested that the problem isn’t that crime is rising, but merely that people perceive that it’s rising,” according to the Blaze.

“We are solidified and resolved in the fact that we are stronger together,” the outlet quotes Young as saying. “The national crime data may show some decreases in overall crime stats, but what we discussed today is that if people don’t feel safe, then the statistics don’t matter.”

“In point of fact, the statistics suggest that crime in Memphis has gotten considerably worse in recent years, not better,” the Blaze reports. “As noted by WMC, the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission noted that overall crime, property crime, and violent crime all saw significant increases in 2023 compared with 2022.”

Reactions online to Jones’s plan have been brutal.

One user had what seems to be a logical suggestion given Jones’s comments: “Mayors should be held accountable for the crimes committed by those who elected them too.”

Melissa Fine
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