Violent Crime In St. Louis County Fell In 2021, But Remains Elevated Overall

WHAT’S GOING ON WITH CRIME? Is it up or down?

And what about violent crime — not just murders, but things like robberies and assaults?

Questions like these are getting asked a lot these days. In St. Louis County, the most populous county in the region, violent crime fell modestly in 2021 from a spike in 2020, with homicides down sharply, according to data compiled by the Missouri State Highway Patrol and reviewed by McPherson.

Police departments across St. Louis County recorded a total of 4,159 violent crimes last year.

The good news: That was a decrease of 4.7% from 2020, a year in which violent crime rose all around the country. Murders in St. Louis County plunged last year to 81, down 30% from 2020’s record-setting total of 116 and about even with the level recorded in 2019.

The bad news: With 417 violent crimes occurring for every 100,000 county residents, the 2021 crime rate still comfortably exceeded the rates of just a few years earlier. And the 2021 rate was significantly higher than a decade or so ago, when there were around 300 violent crimes per 100,000 residents each year.

Last year’s steep drop in homicides, which paralleled a similar drop in St. Louis City after the especially murderous year of 2020, appears to make St. Louis County an outlier compared to other areas of the country, said Richard Rosenfeld, professor emeritus at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a nationally recognized expert on crime who conducts research for the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank.

“In part it could be because both places, both the city and the county, saw such big spikes the year before,” Rosenfeld told McPherson. “I hesitate to say it had anything to do with improved policing, that sort of thing. While that’s possible, I’m not aware of evidence that policing changed all that much, or in ways that it didn’t also change in other places.”

Parsing the numbers

The highway patrol’s Criminal Justice Information Services database offers a view into crime levels across the fragmented landscape of law-enforcement jurisdictions in St. Louis County. (St. Louis City, an independent municipality with its own police force, is not included in the county statistics.)

The database, which McPherson drew from in a story last year on long-term crime trends in the county, compiles statistics from the St. Louis County Police Department and about 55 separate municipal departments. Those municipal departments cover big suburbs like Florissant and Webster Groves as well as small municipalities with fewer than 5,000 residents.

The county police department patrols unincorporated areas as well as municipalities including Jennings, Valley Park and Wildwood that contract for its services. It’s the biggest department by far and the county police often assist smaller police forces with homicide investigations. Even so, the jumbled patchwork of municipalities in St. Louis County means the county police patrol fewer than half of the county’s 523 square miles.

Earlier this week McPherson asked to speak with county police officials about the 2021 figures, but a spokesman for the department said a police lieutenant was not available.

For 2022, the highway patrol’s database showed 1,781 violent crimes in St. Louis County as of Thursday, including 34 homicides. These figures lag the real current total, however, since it can take a month or more for police departments to report their data. (A separate homicide tracker from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch shows 51 total killings in the county in 2022, based on the newspaper’s reporting through June 29.)

Earlier this month St. Louis County Executive Sam Page said violent crime in 2022 is down compared to last year.

A July 6 news release from Page’s office said homicides were down 15% and aggravated assaults involving a firearm were down 13% in the areas patrolled by county police. Assaults involving other dangerous weapons as well as robberies were down too, according to the release, although it did not provide specific figures for any of the crime categories mentioned.

Page signed a bill earlier this year investing $4 million to upgrade the county police department’s 911 dispatch system, and he noted the county is spending nearly $38 million to build new police precincts in North County and Affton.

Recent, detailed crime data for the county and St. Louis City police departments has been hard to come by, as both departments grapple with the transition to stricter reporting requirements by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (see details at the end of this story under “About the crime data”).

A crime-mapping page on the county police department’s website greets visitors with this notice: “This dashboard is currently under construction! Please check back soon for updated 2021 data.”

Primary colors

In a statement to McPherson on Thursday, Page said: “Public safety is a priority for our residents and for my administration. The decrease in crime comes from better communication between city and county departments, police leadership committed to putting resources where they are needed most and more communication with residents.”

The county executive also pointed to a December 2020 report from consulting firm Teneo which was hired by area business leaders to review both the city and county police departments.

“The Teneo report has been a valuable guide on how to improve public safety and we’re beginning to see the results of those actions,” Page said.

Attorney Jane Dueker, Page’s opponent in the Aug. 2 Democratic primary for county executive, has been sharply critical of his record on public safety.

“According to these same numbers, violent crime is up 15% since Sam Page became county executive in 2019. Additionally, murders have doubled since 2012,” said Ed Rhode, spokesman for Dueker’s campaign, referring to the Highway Patrol data.

“Jane Dueker is the only candidate running for county executive with a unique understanding of public safety issues and can effectively address the St. Louis County crime issue which is why she has been endorsed by the St. Louis County Police Officers Association, Missouri Fraternal Order of Police, and Missouri Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 15,” Rhode added.

The winner of Tuesday’s Democratic primary will face State Rep. Shamed Dogan, a Republican from Ballwin, in November’s general election. (Editor’s note: After this article was published, Dogan lost the Republican primary in an upset by Katherine Pinner, a barely-known candidate from south St. Louis County. McPherson apologizes for the oversight regarding Pinner’s candidacy.)

In a brief telephone interview with McPherson, Dogan blasted the lack of current crime data on the county website.

“I think this is kind of typical of this administration. Instead of transparency, you get opaqueness…you get a lack of sharing information and you get a lack of honesty. All you get is spin,” Dogan said.

He also questioned the highway patrol statistics, noting the Post-Dispatch recorded a higher number of homicides for 2021. (The Post’s tracker shows 90 killings in the county, versus the highway patrol’s figure of 81. The reason for this discrepancy wasn’t immediately clear, although part of the explanation may be that county police normally subtract what they call “justifiable homicides” from the figures they supply to the highway patrol, according to information the police provided to McPherson last year.)

“[Sam] Page is now trying to claim violent crime is down, and I think people in the county can see with their own eyes and ears that crime is completely out of control in the county, and he’s trying to act like ‘There’s nothing to see here,’” Dogan said.

About the crime data

The crime statistics for St. Louis County referenced in this story are available from the Criminal Justice Information Services Division (CJIS) of the Missouri State Highway Patrol. CJIS provides crime information to the public at https://showmecrime.mo.gov/CrimeReporting/CrimeReportingTOPS.html

Since 2001 every law enforcement agency in the state has been required to report its crime data monthly to the Highway Patrol. (Some agencies fall short of this requirement.) The Highway Patrol maintains and analyzes the data, and provides appropriate information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the FBI’s nationwide Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.

The UCR Program contains databases for both violent crime and property crime. Violent crime categories include murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.

The CJIS Division updates its Show-Me Crime database continuously as it receives updates, corrections, late reports or other edits from law enforcement agencies around the state. The 2005-2021 violent crime statistics for St. Louis County in this story were current as of July 28.

In addition to the St. Louis County Police Department, St. Louis County has about 55 municipal police departments. The CJIS statistics include data from any department that has the power of arrest. For the cities of Eureka (mostly in St. Louis County) and Pacific (mostly in Franklin County), the statistics are recorded for the county where the incident/arrest was made, according to the Highway Patrol.

Population figures (used to calculate crime rates in the county) are annual estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau, which McPherson accessed via the FRED database of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Effective Jan. 1, 2021, the FBI required law enforcement agencies to report all data using the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which provides more detail about crime incidents than the previous system. For a particular incident, NIBRS requires the reporting of all separate and distinct offenses (up to 10) within that incident. For example, in an incident involving shots fired at a group and one person being killed, the old system captured only the homicide, while NIBRS captures the homicide and all other assaults.

This change makes it likely there will be a slight increase in the number of violent crimes reported, particularly in the category of assaults. Some police departments transitioned to NIBRS ahead of the deadline; the St. Louis County Police Department, for example, switched in January 2020. This means the number of violent crimes reported in St. Louis County beginning in 2020 may be slightly inflated compared to previous years. –McP–

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