By Mark Schlinkmann
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS — A new regional effort aimed at cutting homicides by 20% over the next three years would focus efforts by police and social services on the relatively small number of people involved in many murder cases here.
The recommendation was issued Friday by a working group of about 30 law enforcement officers, elected officials, criminologists and others who met all week on the issue at the Washington University School of Medicine campus.
Many details still must be worked out and the proposal needs formal buy-in from local elected officials. But the basic idea is to use a strategy called “focused deterrence,” in which police and social service providers give people repeatedly involved in violence a choice.
“They will collectively confront these individuals and groups and give them a very simple message,” Thomas Abt, a Maryland -based criminologist who led the weeklong conference, said after Friday’s wrap-up.
“If folks want to make a change for the better, we will make those services available. If they keep shooting, we will follow up with targeted enforcement action,” he said.
St. Louis Police Chief Robert Tracy, who has used the approach in other cities, said such individuals could get help with addiction and mental health problems, job training, high-school equivalency courses and other programs.
Almost all of those singled out in such efforts already have criminal records, he said.
The proposal also calls for the hiring of “street outreach” workers, likely aimed at high-crime areas of St. Louis, St. Louis County and St. Clair County where more than 90% of the region’s murders take place.
Abt said various police agencies are “doing a little bit” of these kinds of things already. But the proposed new effort would be more focused and get agencies and governments across the area involved at the same time, he said. Moreover, there would be coordination by a regional steering committee.
The meetings this week were the outgrowth of a crime summit of top elected leaders and others last May, organized by the East-West Gateway Council of Governments.
An analysis of 198 homicides in St. Louis and St. Louis County released on Monday showed that 84% of suspects and 71% of victims had previously been arrested and that nearly a third of each group had been convicted of a felony.
The analysis also said people in defined groups — some in gangs but many who are not — were involved in at least 17% of murders studied in the city, county and East St. Louis and likely involved in an additional 13% across the three jurisdictions.
The same people made up less than 2% of the overall population in the three areas.
Another finding: 30% of homicides studied in St. Louis involved at least one victim or suspect who lived elsewhere. Non-residents were involved in 17% of the cases studied in St. Louis County and 25% in St. Clair County.
The Post-Dispatch tracks murders and other intentional killings in its Homicide Tracker database. In 2022, the database counted at least 366 killings in the St. Louis area. This year, there have been at least 302 killings through Sunday.
At Friday’s session, it was disclosed that two major business groups — Greater St. Louis Inc. and the Regional Business Council — had agreed to provide early financial support for the new initiative. So has the Municipal League of Metropolitan St. Louis.
Kathleen Osborn, the business council’s president and CEO, said improving public safety and reducing crime is a key to boosting the metro area. She said “it’s important there’s a sense of urgency in the plan moving forward.”
St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann said he’s concerned that the proposal doesn’t make dealing with the St. Louis police department’s chronic shortage of officers the primary focus.
“You’re going to take an understaffed police department” and give it additional work instead of focusing on traditional law enforcement functions, he said.
“I’m glad we’re no longer hearing talk about ‘defund the police.’ I’m trying to make sure we don’t get into distracting the police.”
In response, Tracy, the police chief, said departments across the country have faced officer shortages. And police, he said, can both enforce the law and work with others to try to get persistent offenders to change.
“It’s not either or,” he said. “They have to be done in combination.”
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