Most dangerous city in America.
There's a title that tourism bureaus aren't exactly fighting over.
I am guessing the folks in St. Louis won't be too hot to smack that baby on their convention and visitors brochure or make big buttons to pin to your lapel. But the truth's the truth. City Crime Rankings, an annual reference book of crime statistics and rankings puts St. Louis, Mo., at the tippy-top of its Most Dangerous Cities collection -- depending on the year, it swaps spots with Detroit, Mich.
Lest you think all the crime happens in the city of St. Louis, while all those suburbanites out in St. Louis County are frolicking happily along the sidewalks of their strip malls, I'd say THINK AGAIN. I'd say, pick up a paper and read the headlines.
Kirkwood, Mo., a town my brother-in-law described as "one of the nice suburbs," has been in the news in the past year for a laundry list of particularly icky crimes. Among them:
-- A judge sentenced Kevin Johnson on Feb 1 to die by lethal injection for the murder of a 20-year-veteran Kirkwood police officer and father of three on July 5, 2005.
-- Creepy Michael Devlin, the pizza delivery guy who kidnapped, sexually abused, and threatened to kill young Shawn Hornbeck for four years (and last year also snatched Ben Ownby), did so in the fine community of Kirkwood.
-- And then, last night, some apparently disgruntled citizen marched himself into a Kirkwood City Council meeting and shot to death five people, including two cops, a city councilwoman and the public works director. He also shot the mayor and a reporter, before cops gunned him down.
Then there was the senseless rape and murder of my former mentor Nancy, which I blogged about previously. She lived in Chesterfield, a few miles away, another of those "nice" suburbs.
Earlier this year, the mayor and police chief of St. Louis city held a press conference to brag and gloat and pat themselves on the back, trotting out statistics that showed a nearly 16 percent decrease in crime for 2007. They insist that the negative reports twist numbers around and they continue to dispute the rankings.
Talk about spinning the data, though. "Yay. Sis boombah. Hoorayhooray. Crime is down." Yeah, in every area except one...MURDER. The number of homicides actually jumped 7 percent since 2006 to 138 last year.
I don't care if the crime's happening in North St. Louis or the Central West End or Downtown or Webster Groves. It's happening, whether people want to deny the headlines or not. I have family and friends who live in St. Louis's various neighborhoods and burbs. I'd like them to continue to be citizens. And not statistics.
There's a title that tourism bureaus aren't exactly fighting over.
I am guessing the folks in St. Louis won't be too hot to smack that baby on their convention and visitors brochure or make big buttons to pin to your lapel. But the truth's the truth. City Crime Rankings, an annual reference book of crime statistics and rankings puts St. Louis, Mo., at the tippy-top of its Most Dangerous Cities collection -- depending on the year, it swaps spots with Detroit, Mich.
Lest you think all the crime happens in the city of St. Louis, while all those suburbanites out in St. Louis County are frolicking happily along the sidewalks of their strip malls, I'd say THINK AGAIN. I'd say, pick up a paper and read the headlines.
Kirkwood, Mo., a town my brother-in-law described as "one of the nice suburbs," has been in the news in the past year for a laundry list of particularly icky crimes. Among them:
-- A judge sentenced Kevin Johnson on Feb 1 to die by lethal injection for the murder of a 20-year-veteran Kirkwood police officer and father of three on July 5, 2005.
-- Creepy Michael Devlin, the pizza delivery guy who kidnapped, sexually abused, and threatened to kill young Shawn Hornbeck for four years (and last year also snatched Ben Ownby), did so in the fine community of Kirkwood.
-- And then, last night, some apparently disgruntled citizen marched himself into a Kirkwood City Council meeting and shot to death five people, including two cops, a city councilwoman and the public works director. He also shot the mayor and a reporter, before cops gunned him down.
Then there was the senseless rape and murder of my former mentor Nancy, which I blogged about previously. She lived in Chesterfield, a few miles away, another of those "nice" suburbs.
Earlier this year, the mayor and police chief of St. Louis city held a press conference to brag and gloat and pat themselves on the back, trotting out statistics that showed a nearly 16 percent decrease in crime for 2007. They insist that the negative reports twist numbers around and they continue to dispute the rankings.
Talk about spinning the data, though. "Yay. Sis boombah. Hoorayhooray. Crime is down." Yeah, in every area except one...MURDER. The number of homicides actually jumped 7 percent since 2006 to 138 last year.
I don't care if the crime's happening in North St. Louis or the Central West End or Downtown or Webster Groves. It's happening, whether people want to deny the headlines or not. I have family and friends who live in St. Louis's various neighborhoods and burbs. I'd like them to continue to be citizens. And not statistics.
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