The former mayor of Parma, Mo., on Tuesday said that he believes numerous police officers and city officials resigned from their positions when the town’s first black female mayor took office because they believed they would be fired.
Randall Ramsey, who lost his bid for re-election as mayor to Tyrus Byrd, told TPM over the phone on Tuesday that there were “lot of rumors that they were going to be fired.”
According to Ramsey, Byrd only asked one Parma official — the city treasurer — to stay on in the new city administration.
“And that’s the only person they asked to stay. They didn’t ask anybody else to stay,” Ramsey said. “So assumptions were made that they were going to be fired.”
Ramsey said that it’s fairly typical for there to be staff turnover when a new elected official takes office. But he said that that wasn’t the case when he started his term as mayor. Ramsey, who served as Parma’s mayor for a total of 37 years, told TPM that he specifically asked city staff to stay when he took office.
Byrd said that she never suggested that she would fire any city officials, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I never said anything about cleaning house.”
In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, one of the police officers said that he resigned because he was concerned that Byrd would interfere with his work.
“Rather than put my life in danger more than I do now on a daily basis, I decided to walk away,” Rich Medley, the former assistant police chief, told the Post-Dispatch.
Ramsey told TPM that he wasn’t aware of any unusual tension between the Parma police department and the community. He mentioned that he had been aware of an an incident cited by the Post Dispatch, in which a police officer used a stun gun on the son of Byrd’s cousin. Ramsey defended the officer’s actions.
“He did the right — correct thing. He did the thing he was trained to do,” Ramsey told TPM.
According to the Post-Dispatch, Parma saw double the city’s typical voter turnout for the mayoral election. Ramsey told the Post-Dispatch that higher turnout among black residents in the community may have contributed to his loss.
“I have always had a good rapport with the black community as far as I know,” Ramsey told the Post-Dispatch. “But it wasn’t good enough.”
Upon taking office as mayor, Byrd claimed that she could not find certain city records. According to the Post-Dispatch, the city treasurer kept certain documents in a separate office.
Ramsey told TPM on Tuesday that he kept all records at the city hall office and noted that he built a library of records while serving as mayor.
