urbanSTL

Rick Prieto wrote:

urban_dilettante wrote:

dbInSouthCity wrote:There is no he said she said here.   The facts of the case were simple.   Gun fire broke out.  The lady hid under a car and the driver trying to get away from the gun fire drove away without knowing someone was hiding under his car

you're seriously suggesting she got down on the ground and crawledf under his car? if you were running from gunfire, would you take the time to get down on the ground and slowly shimmy under a car, or would you just duck behind the car?

and do you generally get out and check your grill for damage when you don't realize you've just plowed over a human being?

what are you doing?

How do you know which way was the car facing? What if she decided to hide in front of the car because the shooter was on the opposite side?  If I'm in panic trying to escape and save my life, perhaps I would disregard noises I would normally stop to. I don't know what happened, but I don't think it's a slam dunk. I need to see evidence before making up my mind.

i didn't say i knew which direction anything was facing. but DB said she was hiding UNDER his car, which is just nonsense:

Bentley ducked between two parked cars; she said a driver was sitting in the car behind her, and they locked eyes as she crouched to take cover.

"The driver never asked me to move out the way, never ushered to the side or anything," Bentley said. "He looks at me and just completely puts his foot to the gas. Never takes his foot off the gas, just accelerating and accelerating."

and even if she's embellishing about the eye contact, you don't get out and check your car for damage unless you think you've hit someone, yet he drove off anyway:

The car kept driving. Police said surveillance footage later captured the driver getting out of his car and inspecting its front end.

provable in court or not, i take issue with DB fabricating details just because he's annoyed that quincunx consistently points out how many people get murdered by drivers.

urban_dilettante wrote: ↑

Feb 14, 2025

Rick Prieto wrote:

urban_dilettante wrote: you're seriously suggesting she got down on the ground and crawledf under his car? if you were running from gunfire, would you take the time to get down on the ground and slowly shimmy under a car, or would you just duck behind the car?

and do you generally get out and check your grill for damage when you don't realize you've just plowed over a human being?

what are you doing?

How do you know which way was the car facing? What if she decided to hide in front of the car because the shooter was on the opposite side?  If I'm in panic trying to escape and save my life, perhaps I would disregard noises I would normally stop to. I don't know what happened, but I don't think it's a slam dunk. I need to see evidence before making up my mind.

i didn't say i knew which direction anything was facing. but DB said she was hiding UNDER his car, which is just nonsense:

Bentley ducked between two parked cars; she said a driver was sitting in the car behind her, and they locked eyes as she crouched to take cover.

"The driver never asked me to move out the way, never ushered to the side or anything," Bentley said. "He looks at me and just completely puts his foot to the gas. Never takes his foot off the gas, just accelerating and accelerating."

and even if she's embellishing about the eye contact, you don't get out and check your car for damage unless you think you've hit someone, yet he drove off anyway:

The car kept driving. Police said surveillance footage later captured the driver getting out of his car and inspecting its front end.

provable in court or not, i take issue with DB fabricating details just because he's annoyed that quincunx consistently points out how many people get murdered by drivers.

We have no idea how she was hiding. We have her word and his word. Never heard about any videos showing how she was hiding. She easily could have been under the bumper at least partially, and maybe she wasn't. Ive seen people on videos hiding under the front bumpers of cars. We simply don't know.

What we do know is that looking at your car for damage doesn't prove intent nor does it prove he knew he was dragging the victim on the ground for 3 blocks. All the prosecutor could do is ask him why he was looking for damage, they can't insinuate anything.

And then you throw in the fact it was an active shooting, the driver could have not even been thinking straight and just been fleeing. We simply don't know.

The Circuit Attorney would be taking a true 50/50 tossup if they were to move ahead with this case. Maybe they'd get a conviction, and maybe they wouldn't and would have wasted the court's time and the city's money.

And from 2022-2023 we had a 20% drop and a 45% drop since 2020.  Population isn’t down 45% nor the city population matter that much here due to our small geo. Half the suspects and victims aren’t city residents.  The most famous 2024 homicide in the city involved a hazelwood resident kidnapping a Clayton resident, driving her to the city to get money out of an ATM and shooting her in the city

Homicides are also just a .03% of total crime and 3% of violent crime. It’s kinda silly that people are bending themselves in a pretzel just because they don’t want to give mayor jones the credit for hiring one of the best police chiefs in the city’s history

stlgasm wrote:Came across this graph on X (posted by an urban data research org.)... kinda puts St. Louis's reduction in homicides into perspective.2023-2024HomicideRate.JPG
If these stats are accurate, the decrease in St. Louis's homicide rate between 2023-2024 is lower than pretty much all of our peer cities (STL's 2023-2024 homicide rate fell by just 6%).  Any reduction is obviously an improvement, but compared to most other cities it's not so impressive.  Also, does anyone have the actual per capita homicide rate for St. Louis in 2023 and 2024?  10 fewer homicides in 2024 is good news, but the city also lost population in 2024, so my hunch is the actual per capita homicide rate remained about the same.

I think if you look back a year or two further, our homicide rate decline is on par with or exceeds national averages and amongst our peer cities.

In terms of the per capita, our population is probably still declining 1%-2% per year, but that’s not enough to materially change per capita numbers from one year to the next.

I agree with those pointing out one year change is not particularly helpful. And it can be highly misleading. The most important comparative metric on homicides imo is where cities stand compared to pre-pandemic averages... we're fortunately among the limited number of larger cities that can say they have reached 10 year lows. Still a lot of work left to do, of course.

In terms of per capita homicide, our 2023 rate was approx 56.5/100,000 ppl.  With the additional 6.25% drop, 2024 should be under 54... we'll know next month. 
In 2020, it was approx. 87. 
In 2019, about 64.

^ You're welcome. 

We'll see how this year winds up, but so far it's off to an encouraging start. With 150 homicides last year, repeating last year's 6% drop would put us below 2010's 144 homicides. But hopefully we'll have an even larger decrease. A 20% decline would put us at 120; that would be below 2010 in both homicide total and per capita rate.  That might be difficult to reach, but it's certainly possible.

Last homicide was on the 5th or 6th, which is good but the real benefit is it gives detectives time to solve other homicides, which are usually the cause of future homicides

^True. 6 of the 11 have been double homicides thus far so really only 8 incidents of investigation.

Shotspotter also really shows hotspots that we can hopefully get ahead of to avoid any upticks in any of those areas. Without even taking much time, you can pick out several problem spots that you could focus on. I think shotspotter is a helpful tool. As lefty liberal as I am, I thought it was a poor choice to get rid of it in Chicago and hope we don’t follow suit at any point.

STLrainbow wrote: ↑

Feb 16, 2025

I agree with those pointing out one year change is not particularly helpful. And it can be highly misleading. The most important comparative metric on homicides imo is where cities stand compared to pre-pandemic averages... we're fortunately among the limited number of larger cities that can say they have reached 10 year lows. Still a lot of work left to do, of course.

In terms of per capita homicide, our 2023 rate was approx 56.5/100,000 ppl.  With the additional 6.25% drop, 2024 should be under 54... we'll know next month. 
In 2020, it was approx. 87. 
In 2019, about 64.

To build from this, I'd argue its important to look at crime from a regional perspective.  We all know this already with the crime rankings and STL's fragmentation making us look worse.

However, if city crime/murder is down, is crime/murder up in St. Louis County?  

To be frank, I don’t give a damn about crime in the county. The County has done nothing but denigrate the city for 6 decades wrt to crime. And now that they are taking it on the chin demographically (SoCo and NoCo getting poorer and more violent while money once destined for T&C and Chesterfield now chooses western St. Chuck Co.) it will only get worse.

If the County wants to get serious about regionalism, I’ll consider their crime issues but not a moment before.

JaneJacobsGhost wrote:To be frank, I don’t give a damn about crime in the county. The County has done nothing but denigrate the city for 6 decades wrt to crime. And now that they are taking it on the chin demographically (SoCo and NoCo getting poorer and more violent while money once destined for T&C and Chesterfield now chooses western St. Chuck Co.) it will only get worse.

If the County wants to get serious about regionalism, I’ll consider their crime issues but not a moment before.

I thought the mantra on this forum was always that crime is a regional issue that requires regional solutions?

Homicides are down regionally as well

Debaliviere91 wrote: ↑

Feb 18, 2025

JaneJacobsGhost wrote:To be frank, I don’t give a damn about crime in the county. The County has done nothing but denigrate the city for 6 decades wrt to crime. And now that they are taking it on the chin demographically (SoCo and NoCo getting poorer and more violent while money once destined for T&C and Chesterfield now chooses western St. Chuck Co.) it will only get worse.

If the County wants to get serious about regionalism, I’ll consider their crime issues but not a moment before.

I thought the mantra on this forum was always that crime is a regional issue that requires regional solutions?

The City of St. Louis is not the entity that stands in the way of regional solutions. When the County and other suburban counties genuinely push for a regional approach to crime (which means a regional approach to its causes) I’ll be the first to advocate signing on.

18 days in. 2 homicides in February

Stop talking about it!

I have found this swath of the city interesting. As unlikely as it seems, this is probably the largest contiguous area of no crimes - west of NGA. Which I probably would’ve labeled one of the 3-4 most dangerous areas in the city just based on reputation. I suppose it’s pretty empty but still nice to see. Appears I need to get out more myself

JaneJacobsGhost wrote: ↑

Feb 19, 2025

Stop talking about it!

-RBB

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Feb 18, 2025

Homicides are down regionally as well

Great sign.  Any data to back it up?  And, in a related point, it seems that city crime is down at a disproportionately higher rate compared to STL's peer cities. If we include regional data, does that trend remain or is the STL MSA just like any other metro then?

rbb wrote: ↑

Feb 20, 2025

JaneJacobsGhost wrote: ↑

Feb 19, 2025

Stop talking about it!

-RBB

It is a curse. Everytime it’s talked about here, it’s like people hear us and go tally one up.

delmar2debaliviere2downtown wrote:

rbb wrote: ↑

Feb 20, 2025

JaneJacobsGhost wrote: ↑

Feb 19, 2025

Stop talking about it!

-RBB

It is a curse. Everytime it’s talked about here, it’s like people hear us and go tally one up.

There was actually two last night. Another off Minnesota in South City.

Debaliviere91 wrote: ↑

Feb 20, 2025

delmar2debaliviere2downtown wrote:

rbb wrote: ↑

Feb 20, 2025

-RBB

It is a curse. Everytime it’s talked about here, it’s like people hear us and go tally one up.

There was actually two last night. Another off Minnesota in South City.

That’s a real bummer. We coincidentally had 2 the same day after the last report here.

It’s also odd that the snow has coincided the shootings this year

delmar2debaliviere2downtown wrote:

Debaliviere91 wrote: ↑

Feb 20, 2025

delmar2debaliviere2downtown wrote: It is a curse. Everytime it’s talked about here, it’s like people hear us and go tally one up.

There was actually two last night. Another off Minnesota in South City.

That’s a real bummer. We coincidentally had 2 the same day after the last report here.

It’s also odd that the snow has coincided the shootings this year

Yeah I wonder if the snow leads to more domestic issues with people being stuck inside.