urbanSTL

From Captain Leyshock, 3rd District Patrol in an email to the various district neighborhood listservs.

"We are having a challenge here in District 3 to stop the “knock-out” groups and their criminal activity. I think it is important to give some history…. this phenomenon started around 2006 in the Carr Square area just north of downtown. After 4 or 5 such attacks, and really without any significant arrests, the attacks stopped. In late 2007, there were several similar attacks in the Dutchtown area. There were a couple of significant arrests and the activity stopped. This is not a gang initiation. It is simply the thrill of trying to punch someone hard enough so that they are knocked off of their feet. It is cowardly but the youth participating think they are showing their prowess of toughness by slugging unsuspecting people, usually older males walking alone. These groups are formed of boys and girls ranging in ages between 12 and 18.

Now, and for the last 15 months, we have been experiencing this “knock-out game” activity in different areas in District 3. Some of the activity has been around the far south end of TGSouth and it has stretched to the Shaw neighborhood on the north border of District 3. The most horrifying incident happened in District 1 in late spring near the area just south of Chippewa and Grand. As you recall an elderly gentleman was murdered after being punched and stomped after he hit the ground. The suspect in that case has been jailed and is waiting trial.

Simply increasing police presence on S. Grand or any particular neighborhood is not going to stop these attacks. This trend of sub-human behavior defies predictive analysis because the attacks happen in different places, on different days, and at different times. We have identified members of potentially three different groups who are engaging in this type of activity. In two different attacks in September we made arrests and the suspects are still being held on high bonds. There was an attack in September near the Botanical Gardens and we have identified the main culprit in that incident. He is on the run but we will catch him and I anticipate a high bond also for him. We have added District 3 bike patrols on S. Grand and Tower Grove. We consistently have officers walking foot beats on S. Grand; some of those hours are funded by the South Grand CID. Rachel Smith from the Circuit Attorney’s Office is actively working with the St. Louis Police Department to help in prosecution and information sharing.

The main way we will stop this series of attacks will be from intelligence gathering which is something we have been involved with for the past few months and we have made great head-way. Our goal is to identify young males and females who find this activity alluring. We have formed a special squad of some of our best investigators working primarily in the evening to pursue and arrest these individuals we think may be responsible for the latest attack.

We have a great relationship with Terry Houston, the principal from Roosevelt High School . He has the unfortunate burden of having quite a few of our suspects attending school at times (many have been suspended for fighting). He is constantly funneling us names of potential members of some of these groups.

Crime Stoppers is offering $1,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any culprit involved in Friday night’s attack.

If you want to get more involved in what is happening in the community of District 3 please consider getting involved with your neighborhood association. At least two of our neighborhood associations are active in Citizens on Patrol. I communicate with all of these neighborhood groups and you are welcome to attend the meetings and hear more about what we are doing to curb criminal activity in this district. My Officers partner well with the entire neighborhood groups in District 3. If you are interested in finding out more about our neighborhoods check out WWW.SLPD3D.ORG.

Lastly…if you have information on anyone involved with this type of criminal activity please call me at 444-0125.
Sincerely,
Captain Jerry Leyshock"

Commander-District 3

P-D: Scrap metal sales get tougher; St. Louis aldermen pass new bill

Scrap dealers will be required to track sales and sellers in a database available to police, and sellers will be paid by check rather than by cash. Licensed dealers can be paid on the spot; all others will have a check mailed to the address on their ID. The new law is designed to cut down on drug addicts stealing metal for scrap to support their drug habit.

If the new system is successful, maybe it will be extended to brickyards?

Insert applause emoticon here.

I attended the fundraiser at Joanie's last night for Matt Quain--the gentleman assaulted by teen thugs in the "knockout game" a few weeks ago.

It really was a tremendous outpouring of support from his family, friends and coworkers.

The mayor showed up as well.

I left last night feeling better about the city, knowing that it's citizens aren't taking these assaults lightly and will come together to support someone who was attacked for simply walking home.

I know this thread contains a lot of negative stories and frustration, but this event really showed the positive side of the community in response to a senseless crime.

So our office recruits from Nodre Dame and we found this one outstanding undergrad. We offered him the position two weeks ago and he turned it down. We followed up with him, and he said his main problem was that his parents said they do not want him to move to st. Louis because it is too dangerous. The are from Wyoming.....

This is happened a lot. We have such a hard time recruiting people who actually want to work IN st. Louis. So one less young professional being added to st. Louis.

^ so the job is going unfilled? I also feel bad for a young person who can't follow his own way.

Do the new CQ Press crime rankings come out again about now? They usually like to publish them right after St. Louis wins a World Series.

I hope the mayor is in attack mode. I think he should point out that if one uses their methodology, [of dividing anything in core cities of a large metro area by only the core city limit population instead of all the users of the core], you get badly distorted results for places like St. Louis and Cincinnati where the core city populations are a fraction of the metro area that uses them. Their methodology does nothing to normalize out this distortion, which may be intentional in order to diminish developed rust belt towns and feed the ambitions of developing Western cities.

If you check the crime positions of "city" rankings vs their corresponding "metro" ranking, St. Louis and Cincinnati are the two cities with the biggest delta between the two lists among major cities. This is clearly due to the shoddy methodology, and not because suburban crime in these two metros is drastically lower than suburban crime in other metros. It is totally driven by where you draw the core city limit political boundary within the metro area, and has nothing to do with personal safety in either the core or the suburbs.

And the city ranking distortion is magnified even more when the they try to rank small core metro cities against cities whose stats are distorted the other way due to extensive city limits, like Oklahoma City and Phoenix.

As pointed out here before, if you apply this same flawed methodology to a "tallest buildings" ranking, using data from skyscraper.com, St. Louis ranks ahead of Chicago in number of skyscrapers per person in the city. Are we skyscraper city? Or is the CQ Press methodology flawed?

Have recruits check the Forbes list where they normalize out the wildly varying core city limits distortion by comparing only metro to metro stats.

zink wrote:So our office recruits from Nodre Dame and we found this one outstanding undergrad. We offered him the position two weeks ago and he turned it down. We followed up with him, and he said his main problem was that his parents said they do not want him to move to st. Louis because it is too dangerous. The are from Wyoming.....

This is happened a lot. We have such a hard time recruiting people who actually want to work IN st. Louis. So one less young professional being added to st. Louis.

This is the only reason I care about these silly rankings...because sometimes they do real damage. I know it's why people in Springfield, Ill. are upset about an equally flawed survey which claimed that it was America's 3rd most dangerous city based on "statistics". It's perhaps even more of an issue in Springfield because it is a city of 120K people in a metro area of 200K people, and it is heavily dependent on tourism now that the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum anchor other attractions dedicated to our nation's 16th president. That said, I'm not sure how much can be done to convince people that are so easily swayed by one news story. "Fair and Balanced" went out the window a long time ago, and I don't just mean at Fox News.

zink wrote:So our office recruits from Nodre Dame and we found this one outstanding undergrad. We offered him the position two weeks ago and he turned it down. We followed up with him, and he said his main problem was that his parents said they do not want him to move to st. Louis because it is too dangerous. The are from Wyoming.....

This is happened a lot. We have such a hard time recruiting people who actually want to work IN st. Louis. So one less young professional being added to st. Louis.

What makes this worse is that South Bend, Indiana isn't exactly a crime-free utopia. In fact, once you step off campus, it's a pretty cruddy rust-belt town.

Seems like the CQ Press rankings usually come out just before Thanksgiving, when news is slow and city leaders are thinking about turkey rather than combating the results. Unless they can ride a wave and stick it to some cities in the news like in 2006 when St Louis and Detroit were at the top and just in the World Series. So I guess we and Arlington aren't 1st and 2nd this year.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... f6878.html

Man shot and killed in broad daylight on up and coming Cherokee Street. It's the same old story....a couple of guys have one too many PBRs and start arguing about who's ironic tshirt is the tighest. I suppose it could have been facial hair motivated too. It could have been me....or you.

There are a rash of car break ins going on in Dogtown and in the 2nd district as we speak. The Clayton Tamm Secretary's Car was stolen from Graham street, and 5 others are missing from the 2nd district as of 10am. Burglaries are occured between 8 and 8:30am this morning. Be on the lookout for white CRV, firefighter sticker on the back. Please inform all neighbors to lock their doors, be on alert and call 911 immediately with any suspicious behavior!!

***Source.....Clayton-Tamm Neighborhood Association

Knockout Game player arrested.

A teen was charged Tuesday evening with second-degree assault in another in a string of "knockout game" attacks, according to charging documents.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... f6878.html

This, from the totally under-reported department.

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

On a sleepy street right off Russell a gay couple were attacked, tied up and robbed at gunpoint after violent predators shot the lock off the door in the middle of the night. Obviously, they were targeted. I heard this from friends of friends, not the quiet little article. The suspects were described as being "Norwegian", kidding.

Nowhere in modern Western Civilization (except large, degraded American cities) would this be what amounts to a non-story.

this ranking bullsh*t is getting out of hand. this one puts us at #3 IN THE WORLD, and the only U.S. city on the list. granted it's on a site that specializes in "funny and lively pictures" and gives no author or source or methodology, and they're just posting this drivel to get clicks, but there are lots of people who will take this at face value. and sure, those people are morons but they still effect the city's rep. i mean, look at the pictures for all the other cities: war zones, mobs and assault rifles in the streets. the pic for STL is a generic police crime scene. f*cking insane...

http://www.livelypic.com/top-10-most-da ... ment-14761

Surprised nobody beat me to this one yet:

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/coup ... f6878.html

A couple was robbed at gunpoint and a diamond engagement ring was among the items stolen early Sunday morning in downtown St. Louis, police said.

A woman and man were walking home near Washington Avenue in the 1500 block of St.Charles Street about 12:30 a.m. when they were approached by a man driving a white Dodge Intrepid, police said.

The man demanded money and jewelry, police said. The man escaped with a wallet containing $75 and two rings.

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/coup ... z1fgTQgxYH

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... mode=story

Great news, sort of. Thug Mario Coleman is going to prison for good, along with his buddy who committed this heinous crime. I say 'sort of' because the death penalty is a more appropriate sentence here. At least 2 more animals are off of the streets
and can no longer hurt anyone.

I don't know but if the man was killed outside his own home it doesn't sound too random to me.

I guess it's possible, but I'll wait for the police report on this one. So far the only folks saying it's random are the "experts" on STL Today comment section. They are city haters who are pitch a tent any time a murder happens in the city hoping it's a random attack as it further justifies their irrational fears. I wouldn't trust them if they said the sky is blue.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... f6878.html

He died.....

Looks like the city is 4th and the metro is 89th according to our friends at CQ press. Interesting they don't have a ready-made high to low ranking pdf. Also it appears they aren't using the new census numbers. Chicago is left out, but other IL cities are listed this time.

http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2011/cc1112.htm

quincunx wrote:Looks like the city is 4th and the metro is 89th according to our friends at CQ press. Interesting they don't have a ready-made high to low ranking pdf. Also it appears they aren't using the new census numbers. Chicago is left out, but other IL cities are listed this time.

http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2011/cc1112.htm

I don't think their press release this year is getting much traction. At least not so far. It was dated December 7, but I've seen scant attention paid to it by the media so far.