Missouri State Senator Jamilah Nasheed (D) represents the fifth district of St. Louis City and has recently turned in a petition to the St. Louis City Election Board. The contents of the petition included 44,000 signatures of people in favor of dissolving the Recorder of Deeds Office. Nasheed’s plan is to take away the recorder of deeds and replace it with body cameras for St. Louis Metropolitan police officers.

Junior Bethany Paul speculates as to why so many St. Louis citizens have signed the petition.

“I believe that all those people signed the petition because they want all the cops to be safe and prepared with what’s been happening lately, “Paul said.

Nasheed teamed up with conservative businessman Rex Sinquefield, which many have called an unlikely bond because Nasheed is a liberal while Sinquefield is a conservative, but they have looked past the separation of the aisle and teamed up.

The Recorder of the Deeds office has been around since before America was America. In 1764 the French decided to found an office that would handle, mainly, marriage disputes as well as land or property disputes. While, today’s office’s main function is to house records pertaining to land, marriage, births, and deaths. The current Recorder of Deeds is a woman named           Sharon Quigley Carpenter; she has been the recorder for many years.

The current budget for the office is around $2.8 million per year. Around $2.5 million of that is made up of salaries and benefits. If the proposed plan is voted into action, a few people will lose their job, including Sharon Quigley Carpenter, as well as some of the other people who work with her.

A lot of people are wondering if it is really necessary to totally dissolve an office that is actually required to be in place by a statute in the Missouri Constitution.

“I feel like they could find money elsewhere then the Recorder of Deeds because I feel that’s important,” said Paul.

Junior Julia Peiffer speculates whether or not the city could make room in its budget for the cameras,

“No, because we need to use our money for better things,” said Peiffer.

Nasheed’s current plan is to outfit all St. Louis metropolitan police officers with body cameras to monitor their arrests and interactions with citizens on their daily patrols. Some citizens are questioning whether or not all cops would need body cams, or only some on certain patrols.

“I feel like not all of them [police officers] need them [body cameras], most do, but not all,” said Paul.

Currently St. Louis Metro police officers make about $8,000 less than their counterparts in the rest of the nation, causing their morale to be lower than their counterparts. The city currently employs 1,300 officers, they are short 600 officers.

The launch of the body camera program, if it goes as Nasheed’s plan, would cost roughly around $6 million. Extra costs would be added in too, about every three to five years, because the cameras would need to be updated and upgraded. Also, all the police officers that are going to be outfitted with the cameras would need training on the proper uses with the cameras and how to use them. It would take around a total of 24 months for the cameras to be phased into the police department.

The chief of police, Sam Dotson, says that he is in favor of the body cameras, and says that they would aid in proving the legitimacy of what his police officers do on the day-to-day.

The presence of body cameras on St. Louis City officers would most likely change the way the citizens interact with the police officers. Most times, people are better behaved when they know a camera is rolling and recording their every word and move.

“It [the body cameras] would improve the safety of our community because the police would be more equipped to do their job,” said Peiffer.

While there is still some time before the citizens of St. Louis vote on this proposal, there are definitely some kinks to work out. Nasheed’s proposed solution to the statute that required the deeds office is that another city office will absorb it, most likely the City Assessor’s Office. The Police Union must also agree for the police officers to be outfitted with the cameras.

Nasheed says that her proposal is not out of hate for police officers, but for the improvement of their jobs. Some disagree with that, though, because in 2014 during the Ferguson riots Nasheed was arrested for possessing a firearm.

This proposal, if voted into action, will change immediately change the way the city works and how city police officers do their jobs. St. Louis County Police Department currently has body cameras on half of their offices and hopes to equip all of their officers with cameras soon.