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In St. Louis, the new year began like too many days in 2017: with spent brass and spilt blood. Two 32-year-old men were found dead of gunshot wounds in a crashed car on the city’s North Side. St. Louis had just finished a year with 205 homicides, the most since 1994. And even though St. Louis’ homicide count increased by 9 percent from the previous year’s, murders in the 30 largest U.S. cities (not including St. Louis) declined by an estimated 5.6 percent last year, according to the New York University School of Law.
Just a week before the New Year’s Day shootings, hundreds stood in the 30-degree weather outside the Omega Center, a mile from the crime scene. They were enticed by the promise of cash for guns with no questions asked. Funded by the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis and other private donors, the first buyback program held here in nearly a decade offered $100 for handguns, $150 for shotguns and rifles, and $200 for assault-style rifles. One North Side resident said he could barely feel his feet after waiting three hours in line to sell a handgun for holiday cash.
“Some of the mothers in line said they took them out of their sons’ rooms,” says Chief John Hayden, who was named head of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, after a months-long search, the week after the buyback program.
A 30-year veteran of the department, Hayden served as major of the North District for years. He’s all too familiar with what he calls “menacing weapons,” including semi-automatic rifles styled like military assault weapons. He says there may have only been a handful of those turned in at the buyback, “but hey, the point is, one of those weapons could be at the root of numerous incidents. What you can’t measure is how many lives you save, or how many people you prevent getting shot.”
One of Hayden’s first steps as chief: focusing on a swath of North City where nearly two-thirds of the city’s homicides were committed last year. He plans to send units specializing in anti-crime measures, community engagement, and other disciplines into the area bounded by Goodfellow, Vandeventer, Dr. Martin Luther King, and West Florissant.
“A lot of the guns that are in circulation in some of these distressed neighborhoods are stolen guns,” says Hayden. Last year, city police seized more than 1,000 guns, many from felons and others that were stolen. “A lot of times, people bring weapons to a venue—they will want to go to the stadium, for example, and you can’t take weapons into the stadium, so they leave them in the car. Well, people who specialize in theft from vehicles know that. They go gun-hunting.”
Hayden recommends that firearm owners properly secure their weapons to prevent more weapons from ending up in the wrong hands.
But it will take a citywide effort to reduce gun violence, says Mayor Lyda Krewson, who supported the recent passage of Proposition P, a half-cent sales tax hike to help fund raises for police officers and first responders and provide $1.3 million annually for the circuit attorney’s office. A corresponding use tax increase will fund about $4 million per year for job training programs and recreation, social and mental health services, and the demolition of vacant buildings in the city.
“All of those things contribute to a safer St. Louis,” says Krewson.
