MISSOURI WATCH: THE CRISIS WE DARE NOT IGNORE: THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING

As noted in a recent column, Missouri has a crisis that most citizens are, at the moment, choosing to ignore, either because they lack sufficient information or because they have become traumatized by its troubling reality.

Either way, the danger of continuing to sublimate the cascading presence of virtually unchecked crime and its threat to public safety in our towns and cities means that too few remedies will be sought and inadequate steps will be taken in the weeks and months ahead.

Any Missourian who believes he or she is safe from criminals who roam, almost at will, the sidewalks and streets of every community in the state is engaging in little more than self-delusion. A recent state Highway Patrol statistic should relieve us of our complacency: every hour four citizens in the state are murdered, raped, robbed or assaulted!

Ten years ago, such a statistic was unthinkable, but even then, the threat of violence in our neighborhoods was emerging as a public order crisis. In this 10-year period, only a handful of solutions have been offered and even fewer remedies have been taken.

Whether we are willing to pay the price for additional protection is a question that still remains unanswered. Perhaps a couple of statistics can help readers reach a conclusion:

Missouri has experienced a sharp decline in the strength of its police forces. In the 1960s the United States as a whole had 3.3 police officers for every violent crime reported per year. In 1993, the state had 3.47 violent crimes reported for every police officer.

What this means, in statistical terms, is that we have less than one-tenth the effective police power the state had 30 years ago. Putting it another way, each law enforcement officer in Missouri must now deal with 11.45 times as many violent crimes as his predecessor 30 years ago.

Perhaps the crisis can be seen in clearer terms if we recognized how our state stacks up in terms of threat to personal safety. While both St. Louis and Kansas City were experiencing increases in violent acts against citizens as recently as the mid-1970s, neither registered rates that were above the urban norm. By 1994, the state saw both of its metropolitan areas on the list of the 10 most dangerous cities in the nation.

Missouri's official reaction has been the typical one, provided by public officials in virtually every state: longer prison terms which, in essence, really mean more prisons. There's absolutely nothing wrong with longer prison terms as long as they meet the principal criteria: will they reduce crime?

Unfortunately the answer to this appears to be that more prisons not only fail to reduce the incidence of violent activity but they are extremely expensive and deplete the state's ability to provide acceptable remedies.

The truth be known, the only viable solution is more trained police officers, a shortage of which (as noted above) fails to halt the steady increase of younger and younger criminals who are more and more violent. In the earlier column, statistics provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation brought a logical conclusion: teen-age crime will increase even more rapidly in the next 10 years than it did in the preceding decade. The teen-age and young adult population in Missouri actually declined over the past decade, as it did nationally. But crime has been rising because this smaller population has grown more violent. Now it is about to get larger in size, and as a result, the state will soon witness an epidemic of teen-age crime, both in its urban and rural areas.

That's a statistic Missourians can take to the bank.

If you are reading this from the safety of your own home, then there's a decided inclination to believe it can't happen to you. The door is locked, there's no one visible outside your home, you have 911 service and perhaps you even have an electronic burglar alarm connected to the nearest police station. Safe? Of course you are. But consider this U.S. Department of Justice estimate: 83 percent of all Americans will be victims of violent crime at least once in their lives. Furthermore, say the experts, about one-fourth of all Americans will be victims of three or more violent crimes.

It's now believed that much of the violence to which the nation is subjected goes unreported. The statistical estimate of unreported crime ln New York City is four times the number reported, and while that might decline somewhat in our state, numerous assaults, robberies and rapes are never called to the attention of authorities by victims. The day in which most if not all homicides were solved has also gone. Every year the police make arrests in a smaller proportion of murder cases, and in our largest cities officers now make arrests in fewer than three out of five cases. In other words, two out of every five killers are completely untouched by the law.

Are we simply paying lip-service to our demands for expanded law enforcement? Consider this: in 1990 federal, state and local governments combined spent about $8, 921 per person . According to the FBI, these governments spent $299 per person, which is 3 . 3 percent of total public expenditures, on all civil and criminal justice activities, including $1 28 per person on domestic police protection. On national defense and international relations they spent $1 ,383 per person.

Spending on national defense has historically risen to meet perceived threats from hostile nations. If the nation today faced an enemy that threatened the lives and personal safety of 83 percent of all Americans, how much would we be spending to keep that enemy from our shores? I can tell you the figure would be much higher than $128 a person.

Missouri can continue to build more prisons, with their resultant expenses for maintaining a population that will double in a decade, but we will not restore safety to our towns and cities until we stop crime before it stops. That can only be done in the same way we would repel a foreign aggressor: through adequately trained and well equipped troops. Troops, in the form of police officers, are our only line of defense.

Missouri must do more to provide this defense.

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