Tishaura Jones was sworn in on Tuesday as the first black woman to serve as mayor of St. Louis, a city she hopes will move past its underlying racial tensions with a fresh examination of its criminal justice system.
Jones, 49, inherits a city grappling with surging violent crime and unrest at local jails. Couple that with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic in which COVID-19 infected more than 23,000 St. Louisans over the course of a year.
With a focus on social justice, on the same day that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all counts in the killing of George Floyd, the mayor said solving problems deeply rooted in her city will hinge on asking difficult questions.
“Why do we live in a city whose police department is supposedly understaffed but larger than any other city our size?” Jones said in her first mayoral speech, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Why do people who look like me and my son and my dad have a life expectancy that is a fraction of our white neighbors? Beginning to answer these questions will be crucial to our shared success.”
Jones is also the first mayor elected under a new nonpartisan election system, though like mayors before her since the 1940s, she is a Democrat.
One of her priorities will be declaring gun violence a public health crisis, according to a report by KMOV 4.
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Chauvin, a 45-year-old white man, was convicted guilty on all charges, including second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter, in connection to the May 2020 death of Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, after he was arrested on suspicion of using a counterfeit bill. Chauvin was seen placing a knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes as Floyd repeatedly said he could not breathe.
Demonstrators could be heard outside of St. Louis City Hall ahead of the Tuesday verdict, according to KSDK.
