Today's news is reporting that while FBI crime statistics still show St. Louis at the top of the list of US cities for major crimes per capita, crime is nonetheless way down in the City, with August crime the lowest since 1990. When you consider our city's skewed crime statistics due to our odd city not in a county status, it's hard to get too excited about the city's crime ranking.
The list I'm waiting for is Steve Wilke Shapiro's 50 things he'll miss most about St. Louis. That should be an interesting list. Given that we are twice relocated to St. Louis (we came, we left, and came back again), we know first hand how it feels to miss St. Louis.
When we moved away, we felt that pang of missing St. Louis every day. In fact, we missed it so much, we eventually moved back. Of the things we missed, most of all, it was the people. Next was the quality of life.
3 comments:
Do you think Newark, NJ or Compton, CA make the lame argument? "Well if we were part of New York or Los Angeles, our statistics wouldn't be so bad." I don't buy it. Instead of Mokwa, Slay, et al making excuses, how about trying this: get us out of the top 10. The police are defenseless in stopping crime; therefore, we continue to be in the top 3. The city has not made this a priority.
"Not getting excited" was a poor choice of words. We are all concerned about crime in the city.
The fact is, our crime statistics are skewed upward compared to other areas, by the quirky separation of our urban core and surrounding communities.
The good news is that no matter how it's measured, the rates are going down.
There are crime fighting strategies at work in the city, especially efforts to get repeat offenders off the streets.
Those efforts appear to be working.
I, along with everybody, hope that the crime statistics go down. But I agree with you when talking about missing St. Louis. I've never left(I'm only 17), but everytime I get tired of hearing about streetwalls and density and streetfront entrances blah blah blah I take a trip to the city and again fall in love with it because of the real people that live real lives. So yes I hope the crime rate goes down, but moreso for the real people that it affects and not just so St. Louis looks better.
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