ST. LOUIS — Several residents of a tiny southeast Missouri town said Monday that they don't believe the abrupt resignations of five of six members of the police force after the longtime mayor, a white man, lost to a black woman have anything to do with racism.
The bigger questions among many there: why Parma, a Missouri Bootheel town with just 700 residents, felt the need to have six police officers, and why residents seldom saw any of them on patrol.
Tyus Byrd got 122 votes in Parma's April 7 election, defeating incumbent Randall Ramsey by three dozen votes of more than 200 cast in the town, which is about 57 percent white and 42 percent black, according to the most recent Census data available.
Just hours before Byrd was sworn in last week, KFVS-TV has reported, three full-time officers and two part-time ones quit without notice, along with Parma's clerk, city attorney and the wastewater plant's overseer.
Ramsey told the station the departures were over unspecified "safety concerns." No resignation letters or the names of those who submitted them have been made public. A number listed for the Parma Police Department rang unanswered Monday.
Byrd, when contacted by The Associated Press on Monday, initially declined to discuss the matter by telephone but relented, saying she could comment after meetings that day. Subsequent calls by the AP to the City Hall went unanswered, as did calls to Ramsey's home.