Mo. town disbands police force after city struggles to bounce back from pandemic revenue hit

By Nassim Benchaabane
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

CALVERTON PARK, Mo. — This north St. Louis County suburb’s police force is disbanding this week and will be replaced by police from the neighboring city of Florissant.

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Calverton Park aldermen voted Friday to dissolve the department by Aug. 1. Chief Sean T. Gibbons on Monday said the city can no longer afford the department because the coronavirus pandemic caused revenues to plummet.

Calverton Park Mayor James Pauvonich did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment.

The move makes Calverton Park the latest of several small municipalities to disband their police department and contract with a neighboring city, police cooperative, or St. Louis County.

Calverton Park is a suburb of about 1,300 people. The police force employs four full-time officers and seven part-time officers, Gibbons said.

Florissant is the county’s largest city, with a population of about 52,000 and a police department of more than 90 employees, including dozens of police officers and several administrative workers, according to public records.

Gibbons, Calverton Park chief, said the city had struggled to fund the police department amid declining revenues since the COVID-19 pandemic. The city took out a loan from a state program providing local governments financial assistance to stay afloat during the pandemic, but has to pay the loan back, Gibbons said.

“The courts were closed, nobody was purchasing anything,” Gibbons said. “It caused there to be very little money coming in, but the same amount of money had to go out to run the city.”

The closure of the police department is “upsetting,” he said.

“I had hoped to help carry on all of the good work that we’ve been doing here,” Gibbons said.

Calverton Park’s officers were invited to apply for jobs with Florissant, he said.

Calverton Park is at least the third city to disband its police force this year.

Bel-Nor, a city of about 1,400 people, suddenly closed its small police department in April after three of the department’s six officers told officials in late March that they planned to take jobs at other departments. The city contracted St. John, a city of about 6,600 people, for police services.

Velda City’s police department shut down abruptly in March after three officers and its chief resigned. An agreement to contract services to Hillsdale was narrowly defeated on a 3-2 vote at the board of aldermen. Velda City ended up approving a police contract with Pagedale, instead.

And in recent years, Charlack’s police department shut down in 2015, Pine Lawn followed suit in 2016, and Kinloch did the same in 2018.

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