urbanSTL

Robbery and shooting at Morgan Ford and Beethoven.

http://www.ksdk.com/news/crime/article/ ... n-hospital

Wonder if the guy holding his nuts on this 'street view' image was casing the joint. ..

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&sugex ... CBkQnwIwAA

^Couldn't agree more!!!

Great post DogTown. The media is making such a big deal about this, yet they showed, over and over again, Marshall Perry's body being carried to the ambulance and announcing that he was dead, then retracting that info, before the family even knew the real case. So people get to see a dead LEO being carried while hearing he is dead, then hearing he's not dead, then it ending up he is dead.


Anyone else see the pic? They show worse on tv, it's just a lot of blood.

Why mayor Slay continues to report crime rates to the FBI is beyond me. Why mayor Slay, why?

In the United States, police department accreditation requires reporting UCR statistics to the State. The only way to stop reporting and keep accreditation would be to convince the State to stop reporting (which is not going to happen, because then Missouri State Highway Patrol would lose their accreditation).

On the three ways for changing the analysis... St Louis County Police reports statistics separately for each jurisdiction they patrol. Simply patrolling a new area would do nothing to change St Louis City's stats unless the department decided to aggregate all stats for areas they patrol. CQ Press seems to be hit and miss on whether or not they drop cities that aggregate stats with other areas. The City does have some leeway to change how they report, and if they really wanted, could probably adjust their stats to a method that CQ Press would not accept. I doubt that would happen though; look at the amount of flack the department took just for changing property crime reporting to the method used by virtually every other city in the country, solely because that changed caused reported rates to drop.

Hey, speaking of crimes, did you all know that encrypted notes found at the scene of an unsolved murder in St. Louis in 1999 have completely stumped the FBI's cryptanalysis unit for more than a decade? They have even posted the notes online in an effort to crowd-source a solution. Check it out: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/ma ... sis_032911

Can people please stop thinking of mathematical equations to "lower" our crime rate? St. Louis has a lot of violent criminals. We've had several Police Officers shot and some killed. Instead of figuring out ways to make the city crime problem seem less, well, problematic, let's think of ways to combat the very real crime that plagues a lot of areas. The "Most Dangerous" ranking doesn't need to be inferred as "If you step outside of your home you'll get gangraped and shot". Let's take it for what it is. This ranking is for the CITY, not the metro. Stop saying, "Well, if we include the county then we aren't that bad". It's not like the study is using crime statistics from the entire metro and applying it only to the city limits. Obviously we city residents know the entire city isn't engulfed in a gang war. The only people who take that scenario from these rankings are obviously very irrational.

Unfortunately, these rankings do create a very real perception that St Louis (the whole region) is a gang war engulfed danger zone. I certainly had plenty of relatives that were extremely concerned about me moving to St Louis County because of St Louis City's crime rankings. (And this after I lived in both south Chicago near the University of Chicago and exposition park/south central Los Angeles).
So, while the rankings do not matter as much for people who live here and should understand the real issues, they are very significant for people (and businesses) that could move here. The inaccurate picture portrayed by the rankings could very well justify gaming the numbers for a more appropriate ranking.

I agree. For most people around the country, this ranking may be the only thing they hear about St. Louis year after year. So it is all they know. This and Anheuser Busch.

We recently hired a post-doc from Ireland. When he or anyone he knew unfamiliar with St Louis looked it up, what did they find out? Luckily for us he knew people who lived here and knew the people he'd be working with.

Worse when he got here everyone would bring up crime. He knew enough about statistics and big cities to be skeptical of such rankings, but when we all talked about it, it certainly didn't help. It is as much a hang-up amongst ourselves as it is what gets projected about us around the world. It's a psychological block that keeps us from stopping crime in a more coordinated fashion or tackling other problems (i.e. the City can't become a part of the County because all that crime will come with it or all is lost in the City; it's the most dangerous after all)

It doesn't bother me any. Parts of the city are pretty damn dangerous. Look at the SLMPD Crime Mapping service and find out which areas are safer than others. If you wish to change perceptions, educate people or help reunite the city and county.

Just don't lie about crime statistics. We all learned when we were young that lying is wrong.

Disclaimer: I'm not trying to defend Boles here, just make a broader point about why I think the cops who took/forwarded the picture did a bad/unprofessional thing, so please don't accuse me of "taking the side of the criminals over the cops," because that's not what's going on.

gone corporate wrote:

Tony Johnson, who lives nearby, explained why he thinks many in a crowd of about 100 people were growing increasingly angry as they waited outside the home..

"Complete anger," he said. "People around here don't like cops."

Source: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... 2bc8b.html

I think this highlights the problem with police officers taking cell phone pictures that get forwarded, especially out of the department. Part of the solution to high crime is increased cooperation from the high-crime neighborhoods. The neighborhood-at-large needs to have a good relationship with the police if they are going to trust the police. Obviously in this particular neighborhood people do not have a good relationship with the police, and I think taking a picture of a dead guy, regardless of who he is and what he did, and forwarding it around comes across as unprofessional and disrespectful not only to that guy but to his family and the community. It's certainly not going to improve the community's opinion of the police, which is something I think is an important component of "solving the crime problem." I don't think anyone should lose a job over this, but I think it should be made clear that this is unacceptable.

As far as why the media can show the pictures, I think they have a pretty different responsibility than the police.

^^

disrespectful not only to that guy but to his family and the community.

Besides the Boles family, local thugs and thug sympathizers, nobody in that neighborhood gives a damn about Boles or his picture being passed around, nor do they care about disrespecting him. I can say that because I know several people that live in that N'hood. A large portion of the people in that area want their neighborhood back from the thugs and would be happy to see that picture on a "this could happen to you" billboard.
Just because some random thug sympathizers got on the news and ranted about distrust, anger towards the "Po-Po's" does not mean those few speak for the entire community.

Let's be realistic, officers taking pictures of crime scenes is not something that ONLY happens within the STLPD. It happens everywhere. It just so happens, that one careless officer, sent a picture out to the wrong person and they got caught. You are naive, if you think this only goes on here.

Also of note: This outcry from these few thugs and the Boles "family", and the SLU pansy complaining to police about the photo, prompted this over reaching investigation by internal affairs in an effort to appease some taxpaying citizens (Boles' family I'm sure pay their fair share of taxes). I don't get how this is happening with the apparent lack of "accountability" claimed by the pro-local control crowd.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... 0f31a.html


Bank robbery with shots fired, police chase with suspect shooting at the cops, cop gets shot, both suspects shot, and now bomb squad is deployed because of possible explosives in the suspect's truck.



Maybe this will be counted as 1 count of bank robbery, I don't want it to "appear" that this was a gun battle with mutiple people shot. That wouldn't look good.

One down, one to go. I hope they both get the chair.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... f6878.html

A 72 year old Asian man was beaten and killed by 4 people near 3800 S. Spring last night.

http://www.fox2now.com/news/ktvi-man-di ... 1126.story

Those damn mohawk sporting, tattooed, all black clothes wearing, punkrocker peckerwoods are at it again!

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metr ... c0a43.html

I'm sure alot of new immigrants are shocked to find out it's more third-worldy in parts of St. Louis than where they came from.

^ This is truly one of the most disgusting, despicable crimes we've had in the City. This and the LaSalle Park home invasion are crimes that, to me, are very disturbing and unsettling for residents in the City. You have a solid understanding of the risks in the North City. To some extent, you accept some risks living near the Gravois Park area. But this crime is so wrong.