Fifteen percent of the department. The St. Louis Post Dispatchreports on a raucous city council meeting at which:
East St. Louis Mayor Alvin Parks announced that the city will layoff 37 employees, including 19 of its 62 police officers, 11 firefighters, four public works employees, and three administrators. The layoffs take effect on Sunday.
For budget reasons.
[Update: This is bit outdated. See comments.]
Dr. Moskos,
That story has evolved quite a bit since the layoff announcement. They rehired them at reduced wages, and just in the past week a judge said that they should be paid normal wages!
More interesting is this story:
stltoday.com/news/local/metro/article_b5ff5e58-1a15-5957-a9c4-bd51ee84ee6c.html
Crime is "down" 25% over three years. But strangely they started counting differently, and stopped independent audits in 2007, and stopped reporter access in 2008 to police department records. It's like, I don't know, some show I remember watching. And to top it all off, St. Louis Police are controlled by a governor's police board, not even the mayor.
Talk about messed up.
Thanks for the update. I didn't realize it was old news when I posted it. My carelessness.