At 4 a.m. Monday morning, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department's force reduced its number of precincts from nine districts to six.
It was the first change in precinct totals since 1962, even though the police force has dropped in number and so has the city’s population. In 1960, the U.S. Census reported St. Louis had just more than 750,000 residents, and the police force was about twice as large as now.
Police Chief Sam Dotson says the change should help with “hot spot” policing, reduce response times, and put more cops on the streets.
Unfortunately, it was too little, too late for three city residents who were killed on a deadly weekend just before the landmark change. According to police, 22-year-old Kiram Manley was gunned down in the 1500 block of Preservation Place at 8:11 p.m. Minutes later, police reported finding the bodies of Corey Brown, 22, and Darell Claiborne, 19, in a vehicle in an alley in the 3200 block of Mount Pleasant.
The shootings brought January’s homicide total to 12. January’s murder total does not mean that St. Louis is in for huge spike in murders, but it is a foreboding start. After six months of 2013, St. Louis was on pace for its lowest number of murders since 1962. But the pace picked up as summer rolled on, and it continued as fall turned to winter. St. Louis closed 2013 with 120 homicides. (There were 113 in both 2011 and 2012.)
The city of Chicago, population 2.7 million, had 415 murders in 2013, but it was the lowest total since 1965. There have been 16 murders in Chicago in January. The city of St. Louis has just more than 318,000 residents, and the homicide total is already at 12.
While St. Louis saw temperatures reach 60 degrees on Sunday, when the three homicides were recorded, it’s alarming that the mayhem of the year’s first month has come during one of the region’s most bitter cold snaps in decades. Ice Cube rapped about St. Louis in "My Summer Vacation” in 1991. The song tells the saga of L.A. hoodlums coming to St. Louis to violently take control of drug-dealing and its profits. The rapper somehow knew of the city’s penchant for not letting bad weather halt violence.
Hopefully, the change in precincts, having more police on the streets and reduced response times, will help cut the murder rate in the city.
Police will say the change is a tremendous success if the murder rate goes down. I have no idea what will be said if it continues to follow the first several weeks of 2014.
Commentary by Alvin Reid
