Not until they figure out that they either need to stop being against toll roads or raise the gas tax. They can't have it both ways, especially with the rise of non-fossil fuel vehicles. I'm also content to say that their were more factors at play in both of those examples than having or not-having state control.
I have no idea what a toll road has to do with the idea that the state coming into help our police force is a bad thing.
If you want to keep more state money & control out of STL's police department becuase they wont raise the gas tax, well - I just dont agree with you nor understand that argument at all.
A police officer was shot in the head yesterday in Baltimore. It was headline news on the today show trans they reported that Baltimore has had over 300 murders for the 3rd year in a row.
300!
^ they have double our population though so still a lower rate than STL City...
but the land size is 80sq miles vs 62 sq miles so it's not much bigger.
^ Definitely STL and Baltimore are in a homicide crisis. STL had 309 homicides back in 1970 when we had 622,000 people, about Baltimore's current population; unfortunately our per capita homicide rate is greater now than in 1970.
I do wish I had a homicide map from back then and how it compares to today..
^ what is so stark to me is the change in geography of homicide so far this year.... a big drop in South City, holding the same in Central Corridor and yet another big jump north of Delmar. Not sure if that will hold in the future (and hopefully it will drop throughout the City) but I do think there is some of the larger patterns of increasingly divergent "cities within the city" at play here with homicide.
How can leaders enjoy their holidays knowing such a disastrous increase in shootings/homicides is unfolding RIGHT NOW? A 75% increase in homicides since 2013. Unbelievable.
How can leaders enjoy their holidays knowing such a disastrous increase in shootings/homicides is unfolding RIGHT NOW? A 75% increase in homicides since 2013. Unbelievable.
Eric? Lyda? Steve?
They can enjoy their holidays because they know their careers are not in danger at all. Lyda knows there is an army of public employees who will always dictate the results of an election. The police know that they can simply raise a sufficient stink and throw out some apocalyptic prediction, and the useful idiots in the city will vote them another tax-based raise.
Meanwhile, nothing changes. Except the tax rate gets ever higher. Because people refuse to hold downtown to any measure of real accountability.
They know this. This is not a secret. At all.
None of this is correlated to performance. They know this. The only people who don't seem to know this are the people (on this board and off) who fool themselves over and over again into "voting while holding their nose".
Its always easy to blame the leaders however the real answer comes from home. How can these parents allow their children to live in such a madhouse. This is not how children should be growing up and parents today have parenting all wrong. With social media and incredible rise in violence in our everyday presence the plethora amount of guns /drugs available and visible to our children the real question is to all of us. What kind of lifestyle do you choose to allow you and your families to live in. North St.Louis wasn't created over night however the families that live within those boundaries are the real answer. What do you expect the mayor and the police chief to to do? Lay in the middle of the intersections @ Kingshighway and Natural Bridge Rd hoping for change? They can only do so much and to be honest i don't even think Ms. Jones as mayor would have an answer either.
These young men and women have no respect for everyday life such disregard for everything. Has nothing to do with leaders or ethnic background.
I cringe when i hear about another life lost over something so petty.
Sadly arguing always seems to lead to another life lost.
plenty of excuses to go around but the real answers are not determined by the mayors and chiefs in office.
You can't expect to put bandages on wounds and expect them to heal without real solutions of proper healing.
Blame is on all of us as one nation we're better than this but some reason most of us don't think so.
God this forum is full of crybabies. The defeatism is as pointless as it is annoying.
OK, let's put a positive spin on the increasing murder rate. How about: each additional murder means we simply have more "opportunity to improve" next year.
God this forum is full of crybabies. The defeatism is as pointless as it is annoying.
OK, let's put a positive spin on the increasing murder rate. How about: each additional murder means we simply have more "opportunity to improve" next year.
How'd I do?
There are a lot of things that seem beyond our power to change, but that doesn't mean we need to basically concede that the City of St. Louis is dead and that we should all abandon it for greener pastures. We're going through tough times, but St. Louis has been through tough times before, and I don't see any reason to write off hope for the future. It would be one thing if people in this thread had ideas for what we could do to decrease the number of people being murdered, but sadly, no one, including me, seems to have any credible ideas. What is left is people (many safely from the suburbs) screeching about how the City of St. Louis is corrupt and dying and needs to burn itself to the ground to start over. I'm not terribly interested in that line of thought, so forgive me for being blunt.
God this forum is full of crybabies. The defeatism is as pointless as it is annoying.
So...we should just not care that 190 people have been killed? I can't be horrified that the mounting death toll in our city?
I think everyone cares quite a bit that our fellow City residents are being murdered, but caring doesn't really amount to much in the end. Certainly doesn't help out the people being shot.
There are a lot of things that seem beyond our power to change, but that doesn't mean we need to basically concede that the City of St. Louis is dead and that we should all abandon it for greener pastures. .... I'm not terribly interested in that line of thought, so forgive me for being blunt.
i'm not a fan of incessant defeatism either, but i don't think Chalupas' comment expressed that at all. where did he suggest that we abandon anything? (one pessimistic note, though: there's no "before". St. Louis has been going through tough times--consistently--for decades. i understand how it sometimes seems insurmountable. i don't think it is insurmountable, but it often feels that way.)
God this forum is full of crybabies. The defeatism is as pointless as it is annoying.
So...we should just not care that 190 people have been killed? I can't be horrified that the mounting death toll in our city?
I think everyone cares quite a bit that our fellow City residents are being murdered, but caring doesn't really amount to much in the end. Certainly doesn't help out the people being shot.
Telling people to stop complaining about it is kind of the ultimate form of defeatism.
God this forum is full of crybabies. The defeatism is as pointless as it is annoying.
So you don't offer any solution to the problem, at the same time you accuse others of defeatism? I certainly don't have any solution to the problem, but at least I don't judge other people for complaining about the fact that they live in one of the most violent cities of the Northern hemisphere.
Almost none of the posters on this forum live in one of the most dangerous cities in the world. If you look at the homicide maps, there are essentially 2 Cities of St. Louis: the one where people are shot at an alarming rate, and the one where people are very seldom murdered. Almost all of us on here, myself included, live in the latter, and the people that live in the former are, for the most part, not posting on urbanstl.
In terms of solutions, I'm not really sure there are any. We've essentially had 2 race riots in St. Louis over the last 5 years and the increase in people shooting each other is a direct consequence of that. There is no way to go back in time and prevent them from happening, and so people are going to continue dying. It's not pleasant or pretty, but things can have unintended consequences and I think if you subtitled our city it would be St. Louis: Unintended Consequences. People on both sides are totally unwilling to consider anything that the Ferguson Commission had to say, to make any changes whatsoever, so essentially we are left with waiting for the violence to burn itself out. We can all be certain that St. Louis will still be here after everyone is done shooting each other.
A few thoughts as someone who has admittedly been somewhat consumed by the increase in crime in our scrappy city. First, it’s a terrible problem that likely has snowball effects for our reputation across the country. While our fragmented region argues within itself about what to do, other cities who have figured it out more are gaining on us. At what point will people in West County and St. Charles realize that we rise and fall together, as a region? A WaPo article from September or October said that save for 3-4 cities, homicide rates are declining. Why do cities like STL and Baltimore have in common? Why is our violent crime rate increasing in a time when others are going down? Where is the political leadership?
While people aren’t murdered in my neighborhood every day like they appear to be up north, we get to deal with teenage criminals with guns trying to steal my neighbors’ cars, among other issues. Certainly not the same, but nonetheless terrifying and causes me and especially my wife to question if the city, where we’ve lived since 2008, remains the place for us and our young daughter.
I’m not ready to let someone drive me from my home yet, though. I wrote a strongly worded letter to Krewson this morning about this same topic. If her administration has ideas and/or a plan, I haven’t heard anything. She campaigned as tough on crime, but I haven’t seen anything yet, other than asking the poorer among us to pay higher sales taxes. What about a significant increase in social workers in schools? Providing support and guidance for struggling parents? How do we get these individuals more invested in society so that they and their families have more to lose by engaging in criminal behavior?
Almost none of the posters on this forum live in one of the most dangerous cities in the world. If you look at the homicide maps, there are essentially 2 Cities of St. Louis: the one where people are shot at an alarming rate, and the one where people are very seldom murdered. Almost all of us on here, myself included, live in the latter, and the people that live in the former are, for the most part, not posting on urbanstl.
That's why I said the Northern Hemisphere, not the World. St. Louis is one of the most dangerous cities (if not the most, comparing large cities) when you consider North America + Europe + East Asia. If we have to start including non-OECD countries to look good in the rankings, then it becomes pretty sad that we are not amongst the most violent only when countries like Somalia and Honduras are considered.
And as the other poster has said, violent crime is not just murders. Am I afraid of being murdered? No, but then again that's a pretty low bar. Am I afraid of being carjacked, robbed at gunpoint, or beaten by a band of roving teens? Yes., because these things happen regularly in mine or adjacent neighborhoods. As I said before, I think that my love of the city's architecture and urbanity is enough to keep me here for now, but I don't think I would like to raise my children in an environment like this.
