Murder rate in St. Louis lowest since 1962 level

ST. LOUIS -- In a city that averaged 145 killings a year over the past decade, police chief Joe Mokwa scribbled "99" on a scrap of paper and gave it to the head of the homicide unit, Harry Hegger. As Mokwa recalls it, Hegger gulped.

Neither man really believed keeping slayings in 2003 below 100 was possible.

But by year's end, St. Louis had done better than that. Far better.

The death toll was 69, matching the city's lowest total since 1962, which was also the last time St. Louis had fewer than 100 murders.

"We're seeing tangible results, and it's pleasing. We're sending a message that we're not going to tolerate that kind of behavior anymore," Mayor Francis Slay said.

How did St. Louis meet the goal set in 2002? Police, prosecutors and others say the chief explanation is that they put the squeeze on the city's most violent neighborhoods.

During the past couple of years, the city has added 100 police officers. Stepped-up patrols concentrated on the dozen neighborhoods that once accounted for half of the city's homicides. From there, police systematically zeroed in on specific streets and troublemakers.

Police now keep tabs on people they consider troublemakers. Authorities have cracked down on outstanding warrants to get "the worst of the worst" off the streets. And prosecutors have pressed for and gotten stiff sentences that put chronic bad guys behind bars.

"I don't think it correlated to more or less arrests, just smarter ones," said Jennifer Joyce, the city's prosecutor.

Some also credit state-of-the-art hospitals with saving the lives of victims who years earlier might have died of their wounds.

St. Louis' homicide toll has declined more than 60 percent in the past two years. Last year's total was a sharp drop from 113 in 2002, 149 in 2001 and 123 the year before that. It was a 74 percent decline from St. Louis' all-time high of 267 in 1993, when the city's homicide rate was more than eight times the national one.

Around the country, homicides also dropped sharply in Chicago in 2003, but not enough to keep the nation's third-largest city from regaining the title of America's murder capital. Chicago finished the year with 599 slayings, down from 648 in 2002 and the first time since 1967 that the total was below 600.

New York ended 2003 unofficially with 596 homicides, 12 more than the previous year. Los Angeles, which had the most murders in 2002 at 658, wound up last year with an estimated total of just under 500.

In St. Louis, killings, including innocents caught in the crossfire, swelled in mid-2001 in certain neighborhoods in high-crime north St. Louis. Specialized police units swooped in, snatching up several hundred people, seizing large amounts of drugs and warning the troublemakers that enough was enough.

Heading into 2003, Mokwa scrawled "99" on the slip of paper. Getting there, Hegger thought, was "going to be a struggle." The chief himself admitted it was not a realistic number at the time, "but I think having a goal keeps people focused."

Hegger charted the progress daily, comparing it against the same time the year before. He saw a drop-off every month except for last June, when the five killings were three more than in 2002 but a whopping 14 fewer than in 2001.

The bright spots were striking: In April of last year, there were three murders, down 10 from the same month in 2002.

As 2003 unfolded, police saw promise. By last August, Mokwa said, "we were kind of afraid to say it out loud -- that we could be able to get the number into the mid-70s." No one figured the tally would be 69.

In north St. Louis, one neighborhood that had 10 killings in 2002 had six last year. Four murders in another area in 2002 were cut to zero a year later. In still another neighborhood, six killings in 2002 plunged to just one.

The Rev. Earl Nance Jr., a black pastor and past president of the Metropolitan St. Louis Clergy Coalition, welcomed the drop in the homicide total, which was achieved largely by focusing on black neighborhoods.

He rejected any notion that the crackdown amounts to police profiling, arguing that those who were targeted by police already had criminal records and were "people who know they've done certain things."

"If you talk to people in the neighborhoods who deal with this all the time, they want violent offenders out," Nance said.

He added: "There's a new day in St. Louis. It's slowly coming around. The perception is that the city is a dangerous place, but that attitude is starting to change."

So how low can St. Louis' numbers go?

Said Joyce, the prosecutor: "To get to the point where 69 homicides looks like a large number -- that's where I want to get."