Opinion | The author's opinion does not necessarily reflect Sarah Palin's view.
Police in St. Louis, Missouri, are facing significant challenges due to budget cuts and staff shortages in the aftermath of the defund the police movement.
Despite a reduction in homicides in 2023, over 1,000 murders from the past decade in the city remain unsolved.
The clearance rate for homicides in St. Louis is below the national average, with systemic issues affecting cooperation between the police and the community, particularly in the Black community.
“St. Louis is experiencing a lower clearance rate than the national average,” Murder Accountability Project founder Thomas Hargrove stated. “During most of those years, most police departments were experiencing something like 55% clearance rates, maybe approaching 60%. St. Louis is well below that but major inner cities, routinely reporting a clearance rate of less than 50%, so St. Louis is not particularly an outlier.”
“In the last three years, St. Louis has averaged about 6,000 fewer residents each year than the year before,” Hargrove said.
“They’re trying to do more with less, it’s a problem and honestly, homicides and homicide clearance rates are a function of available personnel and other resources,” Hargrove said. “It is not uncommon for major cities like St. Louis to be suffering a resource problem, and St. Louis has one of the worst.”
Dorn’s widow, Ann Dorn, told Fox News earlier this year that the defund the police movement was having a negative impact on the morale of the city, and as a result they are “losing officers left and right.”
Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., and St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones have both supported defunding St. Louis police. In 2021, Jones redirected $4 million from the police overtime budget to hire social workers within the police department and increase funds for affordable housing. Nevertheless, current police officers are getting a pay increase this year, ranging from 8% to 13%.
Bush and Jones’ offices did not return Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
“Nobody wants to come down in the city and be a policeman anymore. It’s out of control. We were never like that… until the last five, 10 years,” St. Louis resident and widow Ann Dorn said.
“We don’t have the ability to routinely go back and cull those numbers, and that’s the great benefit of the NIBRS technology. Those numbers are constantly updated to reflect those changes,” SLMPD spokesperson Sgt. Charles Wall said.
“As an agency, we have solved more, but we can’t easily quantify them. The way it’s being reported can be misleading and it’s unfortunate that that confusion exists.”
“Nobody wants to come down in the city and be a policeman anymore.”
“In most major cities, Black murders are less likely to be solved than White murders,” Hargrove said. “And the primary culprit for that is a refusal in the Black community to trust police and to be willing to come forward and be witness to what people have seen, which is the only way murders get solved. If there’s no cooperation between police and the community they serve, crimes are not going to be solved. It’s that simple.”
The city’s declining population and fiscal strain have exacerbated the situation, leading to concerns about public safety and the impact on solving crimes.
“We are always looking into new information and investigations to solve homicides,” Wall said.
“Our cold cases are always open. We will always peruse those cases and ultimately provide justice to the victims and the families of those victims of homicide,” Wall said. “One unsolved case is too many. Our investigators work tirelessly to get justice for the victims and the victims’ families.”
“Nothing good happens when most killers are allowed to walk the streets, killers are available to kill again,” Hargrove said.
“Uncaught killers also inspire others and they demonstrate that there are no sanctions to murder. Uncaught killers prompt revenge killing. A loved one may feel obligated to take the law into his own hands if police cannot make an arrest.”
“Murder can beget murder, especially unsolved murder,” Hargrove added.
