The last week (and last month actually) has been probably the worst week crime wise since I've moved back to the city. I've just about lost track but it would appear that roughly a dozen people have been shot and of those, 7 or 8 have been killed. One particularly disturbing story is of a man who was robbed, beaten, and shot at 6pm on busy Gravois road near the intersection with Arsenal. Still, most of the recent up tick in violence is gang related, happens overnight, and occurs mainly in a few particularly dangerous neighborhoods on the northside. That doesn't make it acceptable, but it helps alleviate my nerves when crazy stuff is happening.
Naturally this leads to the constant questioning of what to do when crime is seemingly out of control? The truth is there are no easy answers. Over on UrbanSTL, I advocated for a more open city police department that laid out exactly what was happening and what the SLMPD were doing to combat it. Others didn't think highly of that idea based on the fact that it would be publicizing valuable gang intel and may scare people who may already be jittery about going into the city.
Fair enough. But something has to be done. I won't be so naive as to call on the mayor and police chief to "fix" this problem as if it were that simple. It does appear that Police chief Isom has taken some action in response , I don't know if it will be enough but one thing I have noticed from studying St. Louis crime rates, is that it is definitely cyclical. There have been long stretches this year with relatively few homicides or other high profile incidents. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the large majority of St. Louis neighborhoods have not seen any increase in crime and overall crime is down this year from 2009. I hope things stay that way and that we've seen the worst crime month we will see for a very long time.
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