By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Missouri lawmakers regather in Jefferson City today to pick up legislation which became a priority of the coronavirus-shortened regular session.
Gov. Mike Parson called the General Assembly into special session to work further on anti-crime measures.
State Senator Tony Luetkemeyer of Parkville says the governor has been meeting with local government leaders on the increase in violent crime in Missouri.
“And one of the things that they talked about is that in many of their violent cases, particularly homicides, law enforcement is unable to bring these criminals to justice, because witnesses are intimated from coming forward to testify out of fear of retribution,” Luetkemeyer tells St. Joseph Post. “In other words, they’re going to get targeted by the defendant or gang members, who might harass or try to harm them if they were to come forward and testify.”
Luetkemeyer succeeded in passing his anti-crime bill in the regular session.
Luetkemeyer says Parson wants more, including a measure to protect witnesses.
“And, so, much like the federal government has a federal witness protection program where they can get people out of harm’s way, make them feel comfortable with testifying, Missouri just doesn’t have those tools right now,” according to Luetkemeyer. “And, so, whenever the police come forward and talk to somebody who may have witnesses a violent crime, the first thought in their head is well, I’m going to get hurt or injured if I try to help the police on this.”
Luetkemeyer says this special session will pick up where that left off. Luetkemeyer says though several legislators asked the governor to expand his call, the governor told lawmakers during a conference call he wants them to concentrate on one issue.
“And he specifically said during that call he’s not interested in broadening the call of the special session,” according to Luetkemeyer. “He wants to be narrowly focused on violent crime and making sure that we’re giving tools to prosecutors and law enforcement to be able to solve some of the violent crime spikes that we’re seeing in our metro areas.”
Luetkemeyer says lawmakers seem poised to adopt provisions to protect the witnesses of violent crime and the adjust juvenile criminal statutes. He says more contentious is the governor’s proposal to lift restrictions which require St. Louis police officers to live within the city limits.