Page renews push for Save Lives Now funding after months of Council inaction

It’s been a year since St. Louis County Executive Sam Page first came to the County Council seeking $1.7 million for Save Lives Now. The crime reduction initiative promoted by East-West Gateway Council of Governments was intended to be a regional collaboration between St. Louis city, St. Louis County, and St. Clair County.

But the council has failed to act on the funding request, and the county’s contribution to the initiative remains just a single employee. Thomas Crees came on board as the county’s director of violence reduction two years ago and spent his first year helping put together a plan for the county and its 50-plus police departments, based on the strategies developed by Maryland criminology professor Thomas Abt. As he’s been waiting for funds to hire more people, he’s jumped into the work personally, trying to work as a one-man interrupter of violence.

Page began making another push for money this month after a worker at Steak and Shake was shot on the job in Spanish Lake. “It is imperative we act swiftly,” he wrote on April 9. “As we know, when the temperature rises, violent crime follows. Every resident of St. Louis County deserves to feel safe in their communities, no matter what their zip code is.”

The funding request is on the agenda for tonight’s council meeting, but few people expect action. Councilwoman Lisa Clancy, who is Page’s lone ally on the council, has expressed support for the expenditures, but she’s alone at this point. (Page has suggested the money should come from the county’s portion of Rams settlement funds or the Legacy Project Fund, a part of the general fund that has not yet been allocated.)

Council Chairwoman Rita Heard Days says she just doesn’t have enough information about Page’s plans to spend the money. “There has been no plan presented as to how this money is to be spent,” she says in an email. “It is my understanding that 500,000 is to be used for programming but that process has not been determined. Each entity that is to receive funding must go through a RFP Process which has not been determined. My understanding is that this program is to help to curve the violent incidents among children but this program is not designed for juveniles. Until we can get a better understanding and clarification about how this money is to be spent I will continue to hold it.” 

Crees, however, says he has a documented history of attempting to engage with council members, including a meeting with Days and Councilman Mark Harder last April, as well as a formal presentation at the budget committee meeting last November where he also took questions from members. “The first, third, and fourth formal attempts each included a full program budget breakdown,” he says in an email. “That documentation was also made available at every community meeting and town hall our office hosted. Our office extended standing invitations to all council members for every community stakeholder meeting, town hall and advisory council session connected to this initiative, of which there were many.”

As Crees explains, this work is deeply important to him. A former police officer, he served with the St. Louis County Police for seven or so years. “And then found out I like hanging out with homeless people more,” he says. After working as the department’s homeless outreach officer, he spent a few years working for a homeless service provider before returning to county employment in 2024.

The Save Lives Now strategy has three prongs: focused deterrence, street outreach, and cognitive behavioral therapy or mental health. Because of what Crees diplomatically describes as “limitations we’ve had as far as funding and staffing,” he’s only been able to kickstart the first prong, which involves working to identify people at risk and, in his words, “engaging with them, hoping to break that kind of cycle of violence.”

For Crees, that has meant outreach to officers he used to work with in St. Louis County, as well as other departments around the county. The idea is that when violence breaks out where people might be tempted to retaliate (or be at risk of being retaliated against), Crees steps in to deescalate. “As I’m sure you can imagine, if a family member or a close friend or you got shot at, emotions are going to be high,” he says. “We’re going to make decisions that we may not want or think are the best long term, right? So a lot of what I try to do is disrupt that high emotional state and really bring them into identifying what’s really going on.”

Connections forged through his past jobs have made it easier to make inroads, even as a one-man office. “I already had prior relationships with many of these police departments, so they’re like, ‘Oh, the homeless guy’s now doing gun violence,’” he says. 

But he can’t save all the lives alone. Page’s proposal would devote $1.7 million annually to pay for both a Street Outreach program (which would deploy “credible messengers, individuals with lived experience in affected communities, to intervene in conflicts, mediate disputes, and connect at-risk individuals to support services”) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for at-risk youth (in order to “address the underlying trauma and reactive thinking that drives violent behavior,” in the words of the proposal). 

Crees says he’s determined to make the case for the money to the council. “In violence prevention, we had this idea of, like, relentless engagement,” he says. “We know that these people need support, and we’re not going to give up on them even if they close the door in our face and tell us to stop.” He says, “We’re going to keep that kind of relentless engagement with our elected officials.” 

He adds, “The only thing I know is that the longer that we take doing this, the longer we continue to draw out this process, the more and more people are getting killed.”