BY CHRISTINE BYERS • St. Louis Post-Dispatch| Posted: Friday, November 11, 2011

ST. LOUIS • The St. Louis Police Officers' Association now is supporting a ballot initiative to return control of the police department to the city from the state.

The group announced today that it reached a compromise with Mayor Francis Slay and representatives of A Safer Missouri, which is funded by retired investor Rex Sinquefield, to withdraw amendments filed in March that would have placed the question of local control of the St. Louis and Kansas City police departments before voters next year.

Instead, the group now will file a proposition for the November election that will mirror the compromise legislation that Slay, A Safer Missouri and the POA agreed to during the last legislative session.

"It'll be nice to have this issue settled once and for all," said Jeff Roorda, the POA's business manager. "This was never the approach we had in mind, but after having worked with the mayor's office closely on this, we're optimistic that we can have a good relationship with the mayor and other elected officials in city hall that will benefit our members and the citizens of St. Louis."

The POA has historically opposed any efforts to return control of the department to the city. Critics of the idea, including recently-elected POA president David Bonenberger have said the only reason to compromise now on the issue is due to the threat of Sinquefield's ballot initiative.

"I've been very outspoken about my concerns with the city controlling the police department," Bonenberger said in a prepared statement. "However, in the face of a constitutional amendment that we could not live with, reaching and accord on a statutory proposition that better protected the pensions and benefits of our active members, retirees and their families was our best case scenario."

The threat of Sinquefield's initiative became more real after a proposed bill supported by the association failed to move forward during the last legislative session. It was the POA that approached A Safer Missouri with the idea of a new ballot initiative, said Nancy Rice, A Safer Missouri spokeswoman.

"It would be disingenuous to pretend that A Safer Missouri's willingness and ability to go to the ballot and win didn't bring the Police Officers Association to the table," Rice said. "But this way, they have played a very significant role in crafting the final solution."

She called the agreement reached by all parties, "historic."

"This is a really big deal," she said. "This is a battle to return control of the police department to St. Louis for a very long time. Now the police officers, the city and A Safer Missouri are all on the same page and moving forward."

The St. Louis police department is run by a five-member board of commissioners, a system that dates to the Civil War era. The governor appoints four of the members and the fifth is the city's mayor.

Post-Dispatch reporter Jason Hancock contributed to this report