Missouri: City disbands police force after struggling to recover from pandemic revenue losses

By Nassim Benchaabane
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

CALVERTON PARK, Missouri – The police force in this northern St. Louis County suburb will be disbanded this week and replaced by officers from the neighboring city of Florissant.

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Calverton Park city councilors voted Friday to disband the department by Aug. 1. Chairman Sean T. Gibbons said Monday the city can no longer afford the department because revenues have plummeted due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Calverton Park Mayor James Pauvonich did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

This makes Calverton Park the latest of several small communities to disband their police department and contract with a neighboring city, a police cooperative or St. Louis County.

Calverton Park is a suburb of about 1,300 residents. The police force employs four full-time officers and seven part-time officers, Gibbons said.

Florissant is the county’s largest city, with a population of about 52,000, according to public records, and a police department with over 90 employees, including dozens of police officers and several administrative staff.

Gibbons, Calverton Park’s chief, said the city has struggled to fund the police department since the COVID-19 pandemic amid declining revenues. The city took out a loan from a state program that provides financial help to local governments to stay afloat during the pandemic, but must repay the loan, Gibbons said.

“The courts were closed, nobody was buying anything,” Gibbons said. “That resulted in very little money coming in, but the same amount had to be spent to run the city.”

The closure of the police station was “disturbing,” he said.

“I was hoping to help continue all the good work we’ve done here,” Gibbons said.

Calverton Park officials were encouraged to apply to Florissant, he said.

Calverton Park is at least the third city to disband its police force this year.

Bel-Nor, a town of about 1,400 people, suddenly closed its small police department in April after three of the department’s six officers told officials in late March that they wanted to work in other departments. The city contracted out policing to St. John, a town of about 6,600 people.

The Velda City Police Department was abruptly shut down in March after three officers and its chief resigned. A contract for services with Hillsdale was narrowly defeated by the City Council by a 3-2 vote. Instead, Velda City eventually approved a police contract with Pagedale.

And in recent years, the Charlack Police Department closed in 2015, Pine Lawn followed suit in 2016, and Kinloch did the same in 2018.

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