St. Louis seeks more police with recent increase in crime
ST. LOUIS (AP) - As St. Louis leaders make their pitch to spend nearly $10 million on an extra 160 city police officers, they often point to last summer's fatal shooting of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson as a catalyst for the recent spike in violent crime.
Looting and arson first broke out in August after the unarmed black 18-year-old was killed by a white police officer, and protests spread from the suburb to the city. Violence again erupted in November after a St. Louis County grand jury declined to indict Ferguson officer Darren Wilson.
St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and Police Chief Sam Dotson acknowledge that proving a strict cause-and-effect relationship between the events in Ferguson and increased city crime rates is impossible. But both argue there are enough connections to demand a personnel increase.
"Life has changed in the St. Louis region, and I think throughout the entire country, since Ferguson," Slay said at a news conference this month after six homicides were reported in a 12-hour span. "What's happened here has been horrendous ... Without any question, crime is the absolute number one issue in the city of St. Louis right now. Nothing is even close."
The number of robberies in the city increased by 7.1 percent in 2014 compared to the previous year, with aggravated assaults rising by 5.7 percent over that same time period. The city also saw 159 homicides in 2014, its highest total since 2008 and second-highest in 19 years.
An Associated Press review of St. Louis crime statistics indicates pronounced increases in robberies and aggravated assaults in the months after Brown's death.
Richard Rosenfeld, a University of Missouri-St. Louis criminology professor Richard Rosenfeld who advises city police on crime trends, agreed with city leaders who linked those crime surges to Ferguson. But he said it's difficult to draw a link regarding homicides, because many of them involved domestic disputes or drug-related disputes turned deadly.
In building their case for a 13 percent increase in the city's police force, both Slay and Dotson cite a 2001 police shooting in Cincinnati that also sparked riots and preceded a spike in violent and property crime that lasted several years.
St. Louis leaders say it'll cost $8 million to boost the 1,255-officer department, with related training and community outreach efforts bringing total costs to $9.4 million. They expect to ask voters to support a 5 percent tax increase at city parking garages while also relying on fee hikes for business and motor vehicle licenses and income from traffic-camera tickets, contingent on a favorable state Supreme Court ruling.
Protesters have received the proposal with skepticism, including one group that shut down City Hall on Jan. 15, the day of Slay and Dotson's joint news conference.
"We have buildings falling down. We have a fire department without equipment, and we're going to spend $8 million for more police officers?" activist Arthurine Harris said at a mid-December City Hall budget session during which Slay's request for more officers was first discussed publicly.
Darrel Stephens, a retired police chief in Charlotte, North Carolina, who now leads an association of big-city chiefs, said he's not surprised the St. Louis force finds itself spread thin from having to deal with the Ferguson aftermath while also receiving additional training in constitutional law and tactics on responding to civil disobedience.
"That has an enormous impact," said Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. "If you're constantly policing demonstrations, those resources are focused on those issues and not on day-to-day policing."
Dotson suggested that some officers stung by persistent public criticism of police tactics may have become overly passive - what he calls "depolicing."
"They don't want to be the next Darren Wilson, the one to cause the next round of civil disobedience," he told the AP.
St. Louis isn't the only law enforcement department in the area seeking reinforcements. St. Louis County Chief Jon Belmar wants to hire 120 new officers over the next four years, a roughly 15 percent increase to the 850-officer force. That boost would allow county police to assign two officers to each squad car patrolling Ferguson and other high-crime parts of North County - a change Belmar has said would likely have prevented Brown's death.
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