The good news: St. Louis moved from No. 3 to No. 4 on the FBI's list of America’s most dangerous cities with populations of more than 200,000.
The bad news: The statistics are compiled from 2013 numbers; the city’s murder rate actually climbed in 2014, and it's on pace to top 200 this year.
It's important to note that unlike many other metro regions on the FBI rankings, county-wide crime statistics are not included for St. Louis. If they were, the murder and violent crime rates per person would be lower. In the city in 2013, there were 38 murders for every 100,000 people; if you included murders in St. Louis County (eight in 2013) and its population of more than 1 million, the region would not be in the FBI’s Top 10.
Detroit topped the FBI's list, followed by Oakland, Memphis, St. Louis, Cleveland, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Birmingham, Newark, N.J., and Kansas City.
During the first six months of 2013, the crime rate in St. Louis dipped by an encouraging 20 percent. Chief Sam Dotson told Law Street Media in March 2014 that the improvement could be credited “to the police department’s hot-spot policing strategy, which was created to better allocate department resources.
“Hot-spot policing is not a program; it is the way we do business every day,” Dotson said. (Just three months into 2014, he didn’t know that violent crime—especially murders—was going to escalate during the rest of the year.)
In 2013, the city recorded 120 murders. In 2014, that number climbed to 159. In the meantime, it fell in Kansas City—there were 78 murders in Kansas City in 2014, the lowest total since 1972.
Through eight months of 2015, according to St. Louis Metropolitan Police, there have been an alarming 136 murders in St. Louis. Of those murders, 96 are listed as “open incidents,” meaning no one has been charged.
When comparing crime during the first seven months of 2014 and the first seven months of this year, a trend of more violence in the city is apparent. According to police statistics, murder was up 58, percent with 112 murders compared to 71. Robbery is up 40 percent, aggravated assault is up 21 percent, and burglary is up 10 percent. The number of rape reports is down 8 percent, and arson is down 3 percent. In two other categories, vehicle theft and larceny, there have been respective increases of 15 and 12 percent.
