Homeless in Pacific / Police Chief’s Call to Criminalize Homeless Raises Alarm Bells

By Pauline Masson –

Police Chief Scott Melies is trying to convince Pacific aldermen to make it illegal for anyone to reside in housing not connected to city water and sewers in Pacific. No tents, campers, RVs,  etc.  He is so invested in his view that he forcefully debated the issue with aldermen during an aldermanic discussion at the Sept. 7 meeting.

Make no mistake, the chief went beyond offering his professional view and pushed back repeatedly – arguing his position – when aldermen voiced opinions that property owners should be allowed use RVs on their property under certain circumstances.

The chief said he wants to “go after” property owners who now allow people to live temporarily on their property. He said Pacific has a serious transient issue of people unsheltered in our town and he and others in the police department want a strict ordinance that they can enforce. When aldermen decided to refer the issue to an aldermanic committee meeting, the chief said he wanted to attend the meeting, to have a say and offer insight on what his department is trying to do with this ordinance.

This focus on homeless in Pacific has set off resounding alarm bells for me.

For the past seven years I have championed the homeless families of our community, which, at first, focused on their children’s school life and needs and later grew to the needs of the entire family.

When I first learned in 2016 that there were seven homeless students enrolled in the MVR-III school district, I was stunned – stunned to learn that we had any homeless people living in Pacific. 

Dan McClain and I formed the Safety Net Committee and petitioned our circle of friends for donations to meet any needs that these students might have. We partnered with the MVR-III school district to dispense the funds because the district had the capacity to identify the homeless students and monitor their needs. We were quickly joined by Mary Beth Schmidt, a nurse with the F.C. Health Department and part owner of Pacific Care Center and Alderman Carol Johnson, who said they wanted to help look after the homeless students and their families.

To our surprise, the number of individuals that qualified as homeless grew to the hundreds.

During the Meramec River floods of 2015 and 2017, scores of families and hundreds of students were forced to vacate their flooded homes. It never occurred to anyone that they were not part of the community. As the flood water swirled, parents went to work and kids went to school. For the first several days after each flood, victims could find cots for sleeping, a washer and dryer to do their laundry, three meals a day and even dry clothes at the Tri-County Senior Center, which had been established as a Red Cross Emergency Shelter in 2015.

When the Red Cross deemed that the emergency was over and closed the shelter, flood victims had to find temporary dwelling as they faced the reality of their damaged homes. They were homeless. 

Families scrambled to restart their lives. They doubled up with relatives, living in spare rooms or basements, found temporary dwelling in rental apartments or trailers – or maybe less dependable housing, which the chief would consider illegal. They went about their lives and, except for their close relatives and friends, most of us assumed they were getting on.

Some of these families were faced with paying mortgages on their flooded property as they rented temporary living space. Some are still struggling to rebuild their lives after the loss of their homes and all their worldly goods. With COVID and the loss of jobs, the needs of families, many still struggling from the floods, compounded. 

Safety Net has provided temporary housing for families, paid for after school child care, distributed food cards that provided meals in local restaurants, winter clothing and transportation. At its most startling Safety Net assisted two single mothers who were sleeping in their cars with small children – in winter. 

After raising tens of thousands of dollars from within our community and helping countless families thrive in less than favorable conditions, Safety Net has grown into a service organization that reaches into every segment of the community – 50 individuals, seven churches and two civic groups have donated funds to help Safety Net to help the homeless. I have to believe that our community would try to help any homeless residents who want to be helped.

The police department focus on the homeless is particularly troubling because the police chief has targeted homeless people as a semi criminal element that would face fines and jail time for their substandard housing conditions.

We need to slow this campaign to kick the homeless out of our community until we determine who they are and what harm they have done.

Let’s be clear, I am not condoning any criminal activity. Any individual who steals, threatens or intimidates other individuals, burglarizes property or even trespasses should be detained by the police and face consequences. But to target all homeless people – and even visitors living in travel trailers on relatives property – as undesirable, goes a bridge too far.

While aldermen are considering traffic studies and surface water studies, let’s have a study of homeless people in our community – a real study that goes beyond the  single purpose view of a police chief, whose primary mandate is enforcing the law and preventing crime.

The chief has to do his job. Some readers will recall that I lobbied so hard for the elected chief to be able to do his job without interference from other government officials that I was kicked off my much loved history committee. But my belief in the rule of law comes first.

And the branch of government that makes the laws that serve the entire community is the board of aldermen – not the police. I am lobbying now for the alderman to look at the big picture here and come up with a law that reflects the heart and the will of the community.