MISSOURI WATCH: SOS: SAVE OUR CITIES

There is always a certain degree of comfort for Missourians who live in the isolated safety of suburbs and small towns as they read the crime statistics that daily hint of the unsafe world existing within the state's largest cities. The comfort is not in the pleasure of seeing others subjected to the constant threat of violence but in the knowledge that our lives and those of our families are not subjected to the same stresses of urban, inner-core-city lives.

Most Missourians have some glimmer of knowledge that life in many neighborhoods of St. Louis and Kansas City is pretty awful, although we ask to be spared the worst details because they might disturb our sense of security that we realize deep down is not totally realistic. Several months ago I wrote about the drug-infested environment along certain sections of St. Louis' Jefferson Avenue. A few days later, a woman living in a small community in a county adjoining the metropolitan area wrote complaining about having to read such disturbing information. She stated, without equivocation, that such conditions were the result of the urban environment and could not possibly occur in her more civilized community. About three weeks after she wrote her letter, her home town was the scene of one of the largest drug raids in a Missouri high school, with 13 boys and girls being charged with illegal possession.

Within the lifetime of most Missourians, our cities have been transformed from desirable places of residence to neighborhoods that more closely resemble poverty stricken, crime infested Third World countries. Imagine, if you will, the despair faced by literally thousands of families that only a short generation before purchased a comfortable home in what seemed to be a comfortable neighborhood in St. Louis and Kansas City. The family, if unable to sacrifice the economic investment as well as the emotional investment, remains trapped within a dwelling that has virtually no resale value and which has become, in a relatively short time, a barricade against the daily violence on the sidewalks just outside the front door.

Whether other Missourians want to recognize it or not, this is the dilemma faced today by thousands of families that are trapped with no better alternative than to risk injury or death in a neighborhood which once provided safety and security. Not only are the adults disillusioned and traumatized, their children are prey to the unacceptable choices of joining a gang that earns money by selling drugs or facing up to their peers who are armed with illegal guns, even assault rifles.

The mayors of the state's two urban centers concentrate most of their efforts on trying to resolve the problems of the decay they inherited from past indifference and neglect. Their unenviable assignments have no easy answers and only a few very difficult ones, none possible without outside understanding and assistance. Reading over the 168 bills enacted in the just adjourned General Assembly, one cannot find a single measure dealing with the plight of the urban poor except in slight funding increases for existing programs. The truth is the state doesn't consider inner-core residents any differently than any other population segment, despite the much-higher death rates, the inadequate medical facilities, the absence of even minimum wage jobs and the constant state of decaying amenities of everyday life in hundreds of neighborhoods. It is these areas that contribute virtually all of the statistics that rank both of our largest cities in the nation's top 10 unsafe cities.

There are basic, fundamental problems facing metropolitan slum areas: loss of employment opportunities, crime and illegal drugs, declining tax bases, racial isolation, loss of neighborhood responsibility and pride, not to mention a growing recognition by the environmentally trapped that no one is coming to their assistance tomorrow or a year from tomorrow.

Before our metropolitan areas become even worse than those in the Third World, Missouri's elected officials must come to grips with the awful realities facing a growing percentage of the 5.1 million men, women and children of our state. Jefferson City may argue that St. Louis and Kansas City should solve their own problems, but they can't because they are unable to command the resources, the dedication and the intensity required.

Missouri must undertake a major effort to rescue its most endangered citizens. Surely these Missourians deserve as much effort and support as was given the Los Angeles Rams.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of the Missouri News and Editorial Service.