St. Louis Is Not Missouri’s Only Crime Problem

Complicit politicians continue to distort a situation they helped create

BY RAY HARTMANN

Victory has a hundred fathers, and defeat is an orphan.”

That was one of President John F. Kennedy’s many great lines, uttered in the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. And although Missouri’s state government is not home to much success these days — it’s a perpetual Bay of Pigs — the words are apropos in at least one respect.

That would be crime in Missouri. It is an abandoned orphan in this state.

Public officials in Jefferson City — mostly but not exclusively Republican — have elevated the volume of their fear-and-resentment politics to ear-shattering decibels on this subject. Almost exclusively as it pertains to the City of St. Louis.

It’s an essential talking point these days, with a bullseye on the city in general and its Democratic leadership in particular. Whether it’s about re-seizing control of the city’s police department or removing Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, the message is unmistakable: “Those people” are running their city into the ground and the state must act to protect its white people. Sorry, scratch that. That’s what they’re thinking. They’re actually saying intervention is necessary “to protect the rest of the state’s citizens from getting dragged down financially by the impending failure of the city.”

It’s a breathtaking case study in obliviousness. The very politicians whose actions and inactions contribute to crime — not only in the city but throughout Missouri — are the loudest to proclaim their indignation about it all.

The proven causes of crime read like a laundry list of what’s coming out of Jefferson City. Poor education? We got it. Underfunding health care for the poor, and mental health services for everyone? Snicker at social services? That’s us.

How about underpaying and undertraining police? Yep. Why, we’re in the bottom 10 in state troopers’ salaries nationally. That’s part of our proud status as the cheapest state in America when it comes to compensating its workforce.

And then there are our guns. We are the most firearm-crazed state in the nation, at least from the standpoint of our politicians. We stand alone as the only place where police departments can get defunded for the crime of cooperating with federal authorities to enforce federal gun laws.

When it comes to packing heat, we have no age limits. Missouri is the one state where your toddler can protect her binky with an AK-47.

So, let’s look a little closer at Missouri’s statewide crime problem. As just one example, Wallet Hub ranked us the 43rd safest state not long ago. We should have celebrated.

Let’s start with some definitions. In part due to lazy journalism, we have a national fixation on the homicide rate in cities across America. More often than not, it’s the only statistic people seem to care about.

By the metric of homicide, the City of St. Louis tragically ranks at or near the top of national statistics. It is often described as “the murder capital of the nation,” and one cannot argue with that.

But homicide isn’t the only crime tracked by the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies. Statistics are also gathered for categories such as rape, robbery and assault. They are as available as they are ignored.

The best online source I’ve found on the subject — one that relies upon the official crime statistics but localizes and presents them effectively — is Neighborhood Scout. It has been around nearly two decades and describes itself as “the most comprehensive database of hyper-local real estate data available today.”

Crime statistics represent just a part of the data it provides about cities, so it’s not clickbait. And it reports the categories to which I alluded: murder, rape, robbery and assault.

On each city’s page, there is a metric — based on those categories and presented in all caps — that I find quite significant:

“MY CHANCES OF BECOMING A VICTIM OF A VIOLENT CRIME.”

For the state of Missouri that number is “1-in-187.” In a vacuum, that doesn’t tell us anything. But start comparing cities, and it comes to life.

Here are three examples that you mind find enlightening:

• Springfield, Mo.: 1-in-63

• St. Louis city: 1-in-67

• Kansas City: 1-in-69

This is not just a function of population density. Columbia tracks as safer than the statewide average at a 1-in-196 chance of becoming a victim of a violent crime. Independence is just below the state average at 1-in-181. Cities vary widely. St. Joseph is 1-in-152. Cape Girardeau is 1-in-148.

Most suburban cities fare better. Chesterfield comes in at a stunningly low 1-in-1,420, Clayton 1-in-1,412. The cities in St. Charles County, which often lead with their safety as a selling point, perform better than the state average, although not so dramatically. St. Charles is 1-in-369, St. Peters is 1-in-395 and Wentzville 1-in-421.

Perceptions about crime vary as greatly as these statistics. But while most of the conversation centers around murder in the city, when it comes to the real story, the other Big Three crime statistics are not the Big One.

Violent crime is as much an unacceptable problem in Springfield and Kansas City as it is in St. Louis. No matter what the news says.

Yes, a resident of Springfield is much less likely to be murdered than a resident of the City of St. Louis. But a woman is more than twice as likely to be raped in Springfield — in per-1,000 statistical terms — than a woman in the city. Why is that not relevant?

Imagine if the homicide rate dropped to zero in the City of St. Louis in 2024, but the city recorded the worst rates of rape, robbery and assaults in America. Would that make people feel safer while they are being assaulted or victimized by carjackers or otherwise held up at gunpoint?

The point here is hardly to minimize the city’s crime crisis. The homicide rate most certainly will not be dropping to zero anytime soon. It is one of the most dangerous cities in which to live in both the state and the nation.

But St. Louis’ problems are not unique.

Springfield is located in Greene County, where a Republican named Dan Patterson has served as the prosecuting attorney since 2010. I don’t know much about the man other than that he graduated from the University of Missouri Law School — which I like — and that one person told me he’s a good guy.

I can’t imagine blaming him for Greene County’s violent-crime problem. Kansas City is booming in many ways, but crime reduction is not one of them. Its police department is controlled by Missouri’s state government.

That would be the same government run by the same people who are now proclaiming that the only way to save St. Louis is if they reseize control. You know, from “those people.”

Personally, I think it would be a better use of our time to help the orphan of crime find his biological parents. n