urbanSTL

Most cities aren't 62 square miles. Most cites at minimum can actually annex suburbs, which expands their population and lowers the crime rate. And actually a sizeable portion of cities are one with their counties. Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Nashville, Denver, New Orleans, Jacksonville, Miami, Louisville, and New York City take up the entire county or more (NY is 5 different counties).

One small correction in that - the City of Miami is actually pretty small relative to Miami-Dade County. So that wouldn’t count in the overall point you’re making, but still.

The biggest crime perception problem plaguing St. Louis comes from the fact that quite a few people know others who just don’t call 911 anymore to report crimes, so they go unreported. It’s an issue many of my friends are dealing with who continue to live in the City. They now only intend to call 911 if they’re witnessing a murder taking place since they’ve been put on hold recently, or never got an officer to respond. If people believe they can’t call 911 and get through right away, and even have a response, they won’t feel safe. Additionally, whenever I’m in town, a friend of mine has a police radio and the amount of times a higher up gets on there and says to not respond to calls because of the lack of officers is a bit alarming. We can celebrate changes in crime numbers, but we need to ask ourselves if the reduction is because of the faults in the 911 system (and reputation) or is it for real?

Ha new here.  But I agree with the last post about 911 wait times.  911 in the city is pretty ineffective.  It'd be interesting to see how many calls are answered in under 5 minutes, but I'm guessing 70%?  Not sure, but experience tells me its not great.   I think its fairly logical to say that people die because of this, but that's for another day.

But as a city resident, I'm not sure I really believe the crime statistics given the disincentive to call 911.  I mean the murder stats, stuff like that should be correct, but everything else?

I understand many crimes go unreported due to lack of 911 response. I just don’t know how that’s changed that drastically over the years. I think we had some unusual 911 response issues for a brief period around COVID, but other than that, it seems to be about the same as it’s always been. I wouldn’t have expected the police to respond quickly or at all to many non life threatening emergencies 10 years ago, and I wouldn’t expect it now.


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Don't get me goin!
His compatriots were all around him
They were basically IN SIGHT of Barnes
Yet he died
Waiting: https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/local/st-louis-911-system-failed-man-who-died-at-forest-park/63-cd1455b1-92d9-41ce-808d-f5be079ff88d

chris fuller wrote:Don't get me goin!
His compatriots were all around him
They were basically IN SIGHT of Barnes
Yet he died
Waiting: https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/local/st-louis-911-system-failed-man-who-died-at-forest-park/63-cd1455b1-92d9-41ce-808d-f5be079ff88d

That’s tragic, but anecdotal. No indication that our 911 response times are currently worse than they have been over the past 10-15 years we are comparing our current crime drop to.


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StL has seen a dramatic improvement in hold times. As of April 2024, 84% of 911 calls in St. Louis were answered within 10 seconds. The average wait time is 4.8 seconds.

Compare that to KC which is seeing hold times on average last nearly 40 seconds.

It’s more of the same. People looking at national problem and pretending it’s worse in StL than everywhere else because StL is the designated whipping boy.

mergerNeeded wrote: ↑

Sep 04, 2024

Ha new here.  But I agree with the last post about 911 wait times.  911 in the city is pretty ineffective.  It'd be interesting to see how many calls are answered in under 5 minutes, but I'm guessing 70%?  Not sure, but experience tells me its not great.   I think its fairly logical to say that people die because of this, but that's for another day.

But as a city resident, I'm not sure I really believe the crime statistics given the disincentive to call 911.  I mean the murder stats, stuff like that should be correct, but everything else?

City 911 has been answering 88-92% of calls within national standard of 10 seconds, since about fall of last year it’s been gradually working towards that 88-92%. The 911 thing is an old tire tale and fundamentally misunderstands how crime is reported, especially violent crime and it’s just pure vibes without any evidence.   Follow its logic when data shows crime is up, it means it’s probably done because police responded to all crimes?

Auggie wrote: ↑

Sep 04, 2024

Most cities aren't 62 square miles. Most cites at minimum can actually annex suburbs, which expands their population and lowers the crime rate. And actually a sizeable portion of cities are one with their counties. Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Nashville, Denver, New Orleans, Jacksonville, Miami, Louisville, and New York City take up the entire county or more (NY is 5 different counties).

There is little functional difference between STL City, which has County offices, and Philadelphia, Denver and New Orleans. All are principal cities of their metros and have rather small and constrained geographic size. San Francisco, Richmond, VA and Baltimore City are others within this group. Miami is a geographic speck in Miami-Dade County. Indianapolis is much larger in geographic size (although there are  a few other cities in Marion County with their own police forces and crime stats; Lawrence is the largest) as are Nashville and Louisville.

Anyway, at the end of the day, while the expansive boundaries of cities like Indy, Nashville, KC and OKC etc. benefit their crime stats, there are many cities that are relatively the same size as STL City in terms of square miles (some are somewhat smaller, others are somewhat larger), and they all report crime stats. But the HEC segment wants you to believe that practically all report crime differently.... specifically, at the Metro level. 

STLrainbow wrote: ↑

Sep 04, 2024

Auggie wrote: ↑

Sep 04, 2024

Most cities aren't 62 square miles. Most cites at minimum can actually annex suburbs, which expands their population and lowers the crime rate. And actually a sizeable portion of cities are one with their counties. Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Nashville, Denver, New Orleans, Jacksonville, Miami, Louisville, and New York City take up the entire county or more (NY is 5 different counties).

There is little functional difference between STL City, which has County offices, and Philadelphia, Denver and New Orleans. All are principal cities of their metros and have rather small and constrained geographic size. San Francisco, Richmond, VA and Baltimore City are others within this group. Miami is a geographic speck in Miami-Dade County. Indianapolis is much larger in geographic size (although there are  a few other cities in Marion County with their own police forces and crime stats; Lawrence is the largest) as are Nashville and Louisville.

Anyway, at the end of the day, while the expansive boundaries of cities like Indy, Nashville, KC and OKC etc. benefit their crime stats, there are many cities that are relatively the same size as STL City in terms of square miles (some are somewhat smaller, others are somewhat larger), and they all report crime stats. But the HEC segment wants you to believe that practically all report crime differently.... specifically, at the Metro level. 

It's not about the difference between offices, or whatever that means. It's about the difference of how crime is reported. St. Louis is 62 square miles- Philadelphia is 134, Denver is 153, New Orleans is 169. If STL could be the average of these three, we'd be 152, our population would be around 670,000 and our murder rate would drop to around 33 using last year's stats vs 60. 

There's no denying that there's a major crime, mainly murder, problem in St. Louis and that has deep and historic reasons that no one seems interested in talking about, but the idea that St. Louis should be anywhere near lists with the "top 10 most dangerous cities in the world" is just ridiculous and it unfairly hurts St. Louis' brand. Indianapolis doesn't have a "crime ridden" brand despite having 229 murders last year vs St. Louis City + County's 252 (it's difficult to find the county's crime data laid out clearly, so I can't guarantee this is right). This makes Indianapolis' rate 23.65/100,000 and ours 19.84/100,000. Regardless of how exact the stats are that I hastily searched, the point is that our brand is "one of the most dangerous cities in the world" while Indianapolis' is a "great growing city" that has Super Bowls and March Madness when in reality, both have very similar crime stats (and neither is actually dangerous).

^ I'm trying to be understanding but have you even viewed the segment? Do you agree with it's core assertion that other cities report crime at the metro level while we don't? There's no defending that!  

The land size issue really is a separate discussion, but again we aren't unique. There's a number of large cities that have less land than we. And there's a big difference between expansive cities like Indy and KC that are say 300+ sq. mi. plus and have grown largely through annextion and/or consolidated greenfields and suburbs beyond their post-war borders, and smaller city's like Philadelphia, which is less than half the size and has been landlocked for even longer than we have.

STLrainbow wrote: ↑

Sep 04, 2024

^ I'm trying to be understanding but have you even viewed the segment? Do you agree with it's core assertion that other cities report crime at the metro level while we don't? There's no defending that!  

The land size issue really is a separate discussion, but again we aren't unique. There's a number of large cities that have less land than we. And there's a big difference between expansive cities like Indy and KC that are say 300+ sq. mi. plus and have grown largely through annextion and/or consolidated greenfields and suburbs beyond their post-war borders, and smaller city's like Philadelphia, which is less than half the size and has been landlocked for even longer than we have.

Yes I watched the video and it hits the nail squarely on the head regarding crime stats. I didn't take it as "other cities report crime as a metro", I took it as "other cities represent a higher % of population."

Philadelphia is 26% of their metro's population, Denver is 24%, and New Orleans is 30%. St. Louis is just 11%. If we were just the average of those three, (27%), we'd have 747,000 people and a crime rate that's far lower than the one we have right now.

^ I appreciate that; it helps explain where people were coming from. But if you listen to the segment again, it indeed claims that almost every other city reports at the metro level. (I first listened to it late last night and wasn't quite sure if it said the metro or county level; both would be wrong but it says metro.)  And here's HEC's own video description: 

In recent years, published studies have labeled St. Louis at the top of the list, or near the top of the list, of the most dangerous cities in America. But because of St. Louis's unusual city/county government separation, ranking the city at the top of the list is not a fair comparison because almost every other city on those lists report their crime statistics for their entire Metro area. The Truth About Crime in St. Louis is it's dropping.

That's just a diservice to the public.  

Also, I might add that even if we look at the issue from the perspective of what a city's share is of the overall metro population, the question has to be asked... to what extent is any change in that share due to a city's crime rate? e.g. has STL City's declining share of metro population over the past 7 decades been due in significant part to a higher than normal crime rate? Have other peer cities been able to maintain a larger share due to lower crime rates?  

I heard that not the entire metro, rather St. Louis City has a police department which reports crime, and St. Louis County has a police department which reports crime.  For comparative purposed nationally, these are kept separate.  Then, other cities have a more consolidated police department that reports the crime?  This I am not sure, so I went to the FBI web site to see if I could find how the data was reported.  Not as easy as I had hoped, but often I hear the source for this comparative data IS the FBI.  It seem to make sense that St Louis city reports it's crime, as does St. Louis County county.  Maybe we need to consolidate this office first

I have said this before and was told I was incorrect.  I read the FBI uses county statics to report crime and that is often used by a lot of these reports.  I can not find support for this, but looking at their site, St. Louis is separate from St. Louis County, and Kansas City is NOT separate from Jackson County, though for each of the counties I see municipalities listed (though not all are).  I was trying to quickly research examples to either prove or disprove this:

https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/ ... /crime/shr

If anyone else can confirm the data used for cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, NYC, or those that are part of multiple counties please let me know.

There's multiple crime reports out there. Mainly the UCR and NIBRS. The FBI publishes data, but it fully relies on the municipalities to report it- at least that's what criminal justice majors are told. When I look for crime stats, just go to the individual municipality you're looking for and they will typically have a good and clear report. SLMPD is pretty good and I've personally never struggled finding crime data from them, and since they adopted CompStat it's gotten better. St. Charles City Police also has a pretty clear report for 2023. Not sure about month to month though. Chesterfield re-directs you to the Missouri Highway Patrol's "MIBRS" (NIBRS but for Missouri) website. 

Crime Insight (mo.gov)

Municipalities report the crimes, not the counties. But the counties report the crime in unincorporated areas. Chicago Police report crimes in the City of Chicago, Cook County does not report Chicago's crimes and Chicago doesn't report crimes outside of its city limits.

Glad the call response times have dropped because I have waited 10-15 mins in the recent past. 

They have to work on police response time as well. Waited over an hour for an officer to show up to write up an accident report a month ago.

Car accident reports should probably be handled by a non police agency, maybe the treasurers office since they have people out and about enforcing parking . (I know a law change at state level would probably be needed). Seems like such a waste of SLMPD time and resources to write fender bender reports.

If there are no injuries and all involved parties remain on site, SLPMD often doesn't even respond to car crashes to write reports. They leave it to the insurance companies to decide what to do. Which has apparently become quite common all across the country.  Reporting this from first hand experience.

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Sep 04, 2024

mergerNeeded wrote: ↑

Sep 04, 2024

Ha new here.  But I agree with the last post about 911 wait times.  911 in the city is pretty ineffective.  It'd be interesting to see how many calls are answered in under 5 minutes, but I'm guessing 70%?  Not sure, but experience tells me its not great.   I think its fairly logical to say that people die because of this, but that's for another day.

But as a city resident, I'm not sure I really believe the crime statistics given the disincentive to call 911.  I mean the murder stats, stuff like that should be correct, but everything else?

City 911 has been answering 88-92% of calls within national standard of 10 seconds, since about fall of last year it’s been gradually working towards that 88-92%.  The 911 thing is an old tire tale and fundamentally misunderstands how crime is reported, especially violent crime and it’s just pure vibes without any evidence.   Follow its logic when data shows crime is up, it means it’s probably done because police responded to all crimes?

Good to see that the response times are better, seriously.  And i don't doubt that murders get reported.  But I'm certain the lack of response led to some decline in lower level crime being reported.  Me personally?  Up until learning those stats I'm not sure I would have called to report graffiti for example, because what's the point?  But again, if we're actually at 90% that's great and should change behavior.

MattnSTL wrote: ↑

Sep 05, 2024

If there are no injuries and all involved parties remain on site, SLPMD often doesn't even respond to car crashes to write reports. They leave it to the insurance companies to decide what to do. Which has apparently become quite common all across the country.  Reporting this from first hand experience.

The other driver was arrested because he had warrants. Don't know why he stayed. 

What you're saying is not a good sign though. They already don't enforce any traffic rules. They don't seem to want to enforce anything because it will lead to arrests. 

I think we are at least 7 days without a homicide

dbInSouthCity wrote:

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Sep 11, 2024

I think we are at least 7 days without a homicide

We are 36 hours away from 2 week homicide free.

Nah someone got killed in Hyde Park last night.


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