{"id":57197,"date":"2020-07-22T22:21:20","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T03:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=57197"},"modified":"2020-07-22T22:21:50","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T03:21:50","slug":"57197","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=57197","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Gateway to the Wild West<\/a>
\nThe accelerating collapse of St. Louis, the most violent city in America<\/em><\/p>\n

St. Louis, famously known as the Gateway to the West, has become America\u2019s reigning murder capital and a symbol of urban decay\u2014trends accelerated in recent years by a soft-on-crime mayor and a social justice-minded prosecutor. Last month, the\u00a0images of Mark and Patricia McCloskey<\/a>, both armed, confronting protesters in front of their restored mansion in the historic Central West End district of downtown St. Louis previewed what a defund-the-police era may look like. In the aftermath of George Floyd\u2019s death in police custody in Minneapolis, St. Louis, like other American cities, faced a crisis of public order. Businesses were burned to the ground, and looters roamed freely. Four St. Louis police officers were shot in one night. Civic unrest was so widespread that first responders took\u00a0nearly 30 minutes<\/a>\u00a0to reach a 7-Eleven set aflame by rioters. The city\u2019s elected leaders have seemingly\u00a0abandoned<\/a>\u00a0the police.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

St. Louis\u2019s current condition reflects a decades-long tumble from growth and prosperity to decline and disorder. Back in its heyday more than a century ago, St. Louis simultaneously hosted the World\u2019s Fair and the summer Olympics. In the later twentieth century, it remained a\u00a0thriving center<\/a>\u00a0for business and culture. While the city retains elite universities and a handful of Fortune 500 companies, its population is less than half its mid-twentieth-century peak, and its crime rate consistently places it within the top-ten most homicidal metropolises\u00a0in the world<\/i>. Many large companies are\u00a0looking to relocate<\/a>\u00a0from the area, and city residents have accepted that violent crime is now a part of daily life. Nationally, the region\u2019s civic standing has dramatically eroded, making headlines mostly for bad news, especially, in recent years, high-profile police officer shootings\u2014most notably the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, a small jurisdiction within St. Louis County.<\/p>\n

Over the past four years, violent crime in St. Louis has\u00a0skyrocketed<\/a>, rivaling\u00a0record-high levels<\/a>\u00a0spanning from the 1970s through the 1990s. In\u00a02019<\/a>, the city recorded 3,044 burglaries, 2,998 vehicle thefts, 349 car-jackings, and 265 sexual assaults. As of July 15, St. Louis, with only 300,000 people, has logged 119 homicides, which translates to an annualized rate of more than 70 murders per 100,000. Over the July 4 weekend, four children in north St. Louis were\u00a0shot within one hour<\/a>, in three separate incidents; the youngest of the victims was a four-year-old boy struck in the head by a stray bullet. Last week, former Missouri governor Eric Greitens\u00a0rendered first aid<\/a>\u00a0to two young men riddled with dozens of bullets near the campus of St. Louis University. Violent crime is so ubiquitous that the city is\u00a0considering<\/a>\u00a0surveillance planes to combat it.<\/p>\n

With a situation this grim, the city desperately needs competent and determined crime-fighters, but St. Louis Circuit Attorney (chief prosecutor) Kimberly Gardner remains focused not on law and order but on social justice\u2014and on bizarre self-aggrandizement. During her short tenure, the circuit attorney\u2019s office has had more than\u00a0100 percent turnover<\/a>, the equivalent of losing 470 years of collective experience. In January 2020, Gardner\u00a0filed<\/a>\u00a0a federal civil rights suit against the City of St. Louis, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, and the St. Louis police union, alleging a racist conspiracy to oust her from office, in violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. Gardner soon\u00a0appeared on PBS<\/a>\u00a0to declare St. Louis \u201cground zero\u201d for criminal-justice reform efforts and likened any attempt to hold her accountable to a \u201cmodern-day night ride.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most crimes referred to Gardner\u2019s office for prosecution are not charged, and conviction rates\u00a0are falling<\/a>. According to the SLMPD, Gardner\u00a0charged<\/a>\u00a0only 1,641 of the 7,045 felonies referred for prosecution in 2019. Of those charged, records show just\u00a054 percent of cases<\/a>\u00a0resulted in a guilty verdict, in contrast with the\u00a084.5 percent conviction rate<\/a>\u00a0that prosecutors achieved in Missouri\u2019s largest city, Kansas City, last year.<\/p>\n

The crime wave has not spared St. Louis\u2019s wealthier neighborhoods. The affluent and progressive Central West End neighborhood has witnessed a series of high-profile violent incidents. In 2015, a St. Louis police sergeant was\u00a0shot<\/a>\u00a0outside a local coffee spot frequented by Washington University students. In 2016, Missouri\u2019s former first lady was\u00a0robbed at gun point<\/a>\u00a0outside a popular restaurant. Mayor Lyda Krewson shouldn\u2019t need reminders that the crime problem can penetrate even comfortable enclaves. In 1995, she watched her first husband get shot lethally in the neck during an attempted car-jacking and robbery.<\/p>\n

Days before the incident at the McCloskey residence, Krewson had\u00a0publicly revealed<\/a>\u00a0the names and addresses of advocates calling for defunding the police department, which provoked city-wide outrage and drew bipartisan calls for the mayor\u2019s resignation. The protesters with whom the McCloskeys clashed in late June were marching to Krewson\u2019s house nearby; more recently, a mob returned to\u00a0tear down<\/a>\u00a0the police barricade protecting her residence. The McCloskeys have\u00a0now been charged with unlawful use of a weapon<\/a>, as Gardner remains more focused on headline-grabbing cases than on quelling the city\u2019s crime epidemic.<\/p>\n

The McCloskeys were trying, they said, to protect their home. Whatever one thinks of their methods, their home and neighborhood remain relatively safe. The same cannot be said of St. Louis.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gateway to the Wild West The accelerating collapse of St. Louis, the most violent city in America St. Louis, famously known as the Gateway to the West, has become America\u2019s reigning murder capital and a symbol of urban decay\u2014trends accelerated in recent years by a soft-on-crime mayor and a social justice-minded prosecutor. Last month, the\u00a0images … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57197"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57199,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57197\/revisions\/57199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}