A new bill introduced at the St. Louis Board of Aldermen would give police the power to boot the cars of drivers they deem “reckless.” Ward 8 Alderwoman Cara Spencer says the move is necessary to prevent more pedestrian deaths in the city.
Spencer introduced Board Bill 221 Friday, February 23, at the aldermanic meeting where it was referred to the Public Infrastructure and Utilities Committee.
The legislation states that the pedestrian fatality rate in the city is three times that of the national average. Already this month, four pedestrians have been killed by cars in St. Louis County, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
If the bill becomes law, it would give police the authority to place a boot on a person’s car if they believe the person is driving recklessly. It gives police a wide berth to decide what is and isn’t reckless and leans heavily on the legal term “probable cause.”
“There's going to be some discretion, what we're going to lean into our police department for is a policy to put forward that can really direct our police officers when to use this,” Spencer says. “Our intent here is to have this apply to people that are driving a vehicle in a manner that is specifically endangering the lives of the community — and this is not to be applied otherwise.”
The bill defines reckless driving as operating a motor vehicle “in a manner that creates a substantial and unjustifiable risk of harm to a person or to property, or drive a motor vehicle carelessly and heedlessly in willful or wanton disregard for the rights or safety of persons or property, or without due caution and circumspection and at a speed or in a manner so as to endanger or be likely to endanger any person or property.”
After police apply the boot and issue a citation to the driver, the driver would be required to post a bond for the boot to be removed and to ensure that they show up to court, Spencer says. If the person driving the car is not the owner, the person who is will be able to show up with proof of ownership to have the boot removed. They'd have five days to show proof of ownership or the vehicle will be deemed abandoned and will be impounded.
Spencer says the goal of the bill is not to fine or incarcerate those who drive recklessly, but to stop them by taking away their access to the vehicle. Despite this, the language of the bill allows for the possibility of up to 90 days in jail and fines of $500.
The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, of course, has its own history of reckless driving, with numerous single-vehicle accidents in recent months, including a high-profile incident where police crashed their SUV into an LGBTQ bar and then arrested the bar’s owner.
They also have a disparate traffic stop rate for Black and white drivers, according to the most recent analysis by the Attorney General’s Office in 2022. The state found that SLMPD stops Black drivers at a rate nearly double that of their white counterparts.
White drivers were stopped at a rate of 9.75 (out of the number of stops divided by the population, times 100) while Black drivers were stopped at a rate of 17.86.
Asked how she would ensure this measure isn’t enforced unfairly, Spencer says the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department would be directed to establish “policy and standards” to track and record the number of stops, the area they were made in, and the race and gender of those stopped. The data would be reviewed annually — and if police aren’t doing a good job, she says, aldermen would repeal it.
“Laws can be repealed, they're repealed every day,” Spencer says. “So if this becomes problematic, we have a remedy. That's why the Board of Aldermen continues to meet on an ongoing basis. I'm going to be down here for the next three years, I'm not going anywhere. So if this is a problem, we're going to address it, no doubt.”
Spencer’s bill is meant to answer two questions, she says. The first is what can we do about reckless driving, and the second is what entity should enforce it.
“I cannot come up with another entity that would be appropriate to stop somebody from endangering the lives of others,” Spencer says.“ And so at the end of the day, we're going to have to parse through these concerns, because the alternative is to do nothing.”
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