Judge Jimmie Edwards, St. Louis’ new public safety director, works to heal a divided city

Nobody who knew Judge Jimmie Edwards thought he’d ever voluntarily leave the bench. Even after a quarter-century as a judge in the 22nd Circuit Court, he didn’t shrug on that black robe casually. He meted out justice and turned around lives—and at Innovative Concept Academy, which he founded in 2009, he headed off lives of crime for hundreds of kids. So when Mayor Lyda Krewson asked him to consider becoming director of public safety—in charge of St. Louis’ largest budget, its fraught police department, its corrections department, and its fire department—he initially said no.

What went through your head when you heard the proposal? I was thinking how much I love being a judge. And I have been so nonpartisan for so many years, why would I want to be partisan at this time? I told the mayor I was concerned that it was not a good fit for me, and that I admired her interest in me, and I admired her tenacity.

What changed your mind a few weeks later? Listening to people talk about their hopes and their dreams for our city. People I trusted, who were all over the place—good idea, bad idea. But what resonated with me was the question, “Do you think you can make a difference?” The mayor asked me that. All of my friends asked me that. I said, “Of course I can make a difference.”

How could you be so sure? Because I think I have the ability to communicate effectively, irrespective of anyone’s station in life. I listen with a great deal of sincerity. And I don’t mind making a decision. I make decisions in 28 minutes, not 28 days. And I make decisions based upon facts, upon the law, not upon assumptions.

You’ll have plenty to make. What comes first? This is an opportunity to change the narrative in our community—but, more important, to change the way we treat each other. It’s easy to have racial issues, to practice implicit bias, to do all of those things, in a time of comfort. It’s easy for all of us to be a mess when we are safe—or we believe we are safe. But in a time of urgency, of concern and conflict, I think the best of us will come out. If you’re dying and you want to live, you’re not going to ask the surgeon, “Are you gay? Are you lesbian? Are you Muslim? Are you black?” It doesn’t matter at that point: We just want somebody to save our lives. And right now, I just want to save our city.

In October, you opened a courtroom to protesters—why? A colleague of mine was so frustrated at the response to the verdict, so concerned with the outcry, that he said, “We need to do something.” For two years now, I’ve gone all over the country with the National Center for State Courts, asking African-American and marginalized communities, “What can judges do to restore trust and confidence in the nation’s court systems?” But I’ve never asked it in Missouri.

How did it go? The protesters came off the streets, and they were compliant with what is expected in a courtroom. Their attire: suit and tie. They were articulate; there were very well thought out comments. While I was interested in trust and confidence in the court, they wanted to talk about how to restore trust and confidence in the police. I reminded them that the police were under the auspices of the executive branch, not the judiciary. While they wanted to be respectful of the protocol I had set up, they still somehow pivoted to the police. So I gave them a great deal of latitude to have that conversation. And what I learned was that the protesters wanted the exact same thing as the police officers. They wanted peace, they wanted safety in their community, and they wanted to be policed the same way others are in our community. But they also talked about how sometimes the police don’t respect them. They said: Sometimes in our communities, we’re loud and we’re boisterous, but if the police officer is not culturally cognizant of that, they perceive it as being disrespectful, and we find ourselves on the ground or in handcuffs. Culturally, black and brown children have been taught to distrust police. So if a police officer drives up, they run—and that looks guilty. They have been taught, unfortunately, that they can die at any time in an encounter with the police.

Did the conversation stay with policing? No, the courts did not get a pass either. Anytime I’m in court, I have this nervous emotion, one said, and whenever I come to court, I expect to lose something—my liberty, a family member, something. And I had never thought about that. I’m an African-American male, grew up poor, no measurable difference at all between me and some of them. But because I’ve been in the system for so long, I never once paused to think that every time one of them walks into a courtroom, they expect to lose something.

What were you thinking at the end of that listening session? That we have to change the perception. We have to reform sentencings. We have to be more compassionate. Police officers are going to have to get out of their cars and walk the streets, and they are going to have to roll down their windows every now and then and say, “How are you doin’?” I hope to instill, through the new chief of police, a different culture, one of respect, decency, restraint, and thoughtfulness.

You have a healthy respect for law and order, but you’ve also said our system of criminal justice needs to be overhauled. Why is it so rare for a judge to hold the center, not tilt left or right? Some of us come into this job with a philosophy of being results-oriented, and if you’re results-oriented, you can’t do this job. For a judge—and I’ll quote Shirley Chisolm—it’s important that you be unbought and unbossed. I have always tried to be so predictable that any lawyer who appears in front of me can advise his or her client, “This will probably happen.” Judges can often be put into categories: plaintiff-oriented, defense-oriented, prosecutor-oriented—and they tend to play in that sandbox. But that’s not judging.

You’re famous for giving second chances. Different chances. Obviously, I have to look at the offense committed. I try to look at the root causes of why the person did something. I had a young man on probation to me for stealing—stealing food. Three months later, he was back in front of me for stealing food. The probation officer advocated for prison time. And I thought, yes, it’s a crime. Yes, I will follow the law, and he will be brought to justice for stealing. But the discretion of sentencing resided with me. Was he stealing because he was a nuisance in our community? Because he was lazy and taking advantage of other people’s property? Or because he was hungry? I try never to send someone to prison because of their status, their poverty. If you’re poor and you rob somebody, you’re a crook. But it’s another to steal a can of tuna fish from a grocery store and sit on the curb outside to eat it and you’re arrested in the middle of that meal. That’s our problem as a community, not the defendant’s problem. No one should ever have to steal a can of tuna—and moreover, be locked up for it.

Before the Jason Stockley verdict caused such outcry, were there aspects of public safety you thought should change? I saw the distrust among the police officers. I’ve known that policing in different communities was different. I’ve seen the disparate treatment inside courtrooms. All of those things existed, but never to the point that they exploded. While there was a horrible tragedy in Stockley, because of the loss of life—the deceased probably would have ended up in prison, but nobody has the right to execute anybody on the street—while I think it was the most horrible thing that has happened in our community in a long time, I think that that decision, coupled with what happened to Michael Brown and VonDerrit Myers and Kajieme Powell—out of the ashes of all those terrible things, we now have an opportunity to fix it. And sometimes we don’t fix situations until we are at our lowest. So I’m hopeful. We can’t fall off the ground! I’m hopeful that we will do better, and quickly, and we will be the shining example of resilience in this country. When people look at St. Louis, they will say, “They understand. They’ve acknowledged. And they’re fixing.”

Why do you love St. Louis so fiercely? The only thing I’ve ever known has been St. Louis. Everything I received in life was because of the generosity of people in St. Louis. When I grew up, we had nothing. People gave us clothes, toys. Sr. Betty Brucker, who became president of St. Mary’s Hospital—I’ll never forget it. My siblings and I were sleeping on the floor, and my mom was at work at St. Mary’s, and Sr. Betty delivered a mattress for us to sleep on. And we were the beneficiaries of food and housing, and I was lucky enough to go to a public school, the greatest institution in America, because it doesn’t turn anybody away. Education gives us an opportunity to have hope, to dream, to go to work and to have a decent paycheck. With education comes all of those things. So I got that free. And then I went to Saint Louis University, and they taught me that it’s what you do for others that matters most. I wanted a good life. I wanted a corporate life, and I got a sweet, sweet taste of that at Southwestern Bell. But I was yearning for something different. So when Gov. John Ashcroft gave me the opportunity to become a judge, I took it. I gave up comfort and money to do a job of service. And again I find myself—I’m just now realizing this as I say it—givin’ up comfort!

What did your family say? My wife’s such a trouper. She said, “Let’s do it. Let’s make a difference.” My daughter said, “Will they still call you ‘Judge’?” I said, “That and a whole lot more.”

What will be hardest? To get people to accept that we all have a responsibility to save each other.

See also: An in-depth look at Judge Jimmie Edwards’ Innovative Concept Academy