ST. LOUIS — The I-Team’s Christine Byers sat down with St. Louis Police Chief Robert Tracy Thursday for his first one-on-one interview since he became the city’s top cop 30 days ago.
The interview was limited to 15 minutes.
Tracy answered questions ranging from his thoughts on embattled St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, officer pay raises, the battle for state control of the department and how he’s addressing traffic enforcement given the rise in accidents like the one that left 17-year-old Janae Edmondson without her legs Saturday.
Here is an edited transcript of that interview.
Q: Do you think Kim Gardner needs to resign?
A: My job is to make sure that we do everything right in policing to help reduce crime. I'll work with anyone in the criminal justice system. I have done that in three other cities, including this city. So we're going to continue to work with the Circuit Attorney's Office because we've got a job to do. We've got to do it professionally. So I stay more apolitical and just work with whoever's in office. So for me to make that decision, that's not my decision to make. My decision is to make sure my officers are bringing the best cases we can, and making sure we're doing everything constitutionally, fairly, the right way to do policing and bringing those cases forward. So professionally, that's not my position. I'm always going to continue work with whoever, whether it's Kim Gardner or anyone else in that office.
Q: What have you done here in the first 30 days to improve the department's relationship with Kim Gardner? Have you met with her? Have there been discussions? What has gone on? A: Well, I've had several conversations with her. There was some high profile cases her and I discussed. And we worked through a few things on it, and there wasn't that much of an issue where things have happened in the past, where I understand there might have been some issues and everything, I have to move forward. I'm a person that comes in with a clean slate. We talked about that and how we can move forward to make the best cases and to help bring crime down in the city of St. Louis. And that's what I'm going to continue to do. And so, yes, I have had conversations with her and some of them are very positive.
Q: Have you made any progress on the exclusion list, the officers that her office has deemed not credible to bring cases?
A: So there's two things. You talk about a Brady list, and then we talk about something that's called an exclusionary list. I've been meeting with some of our top command staff who have actually reviewed that with their office and and continue to review to see exactly where we're seeing some things that might be different from the Brady List. And I'm sure that's going to be that will be a future conversation I'm have, but it's certainly something that I am looking at.
Q: Are you in favor of state control of this police department? [00:03:15][2.1]
A: I only know local control. So every place that I've worked has been local control and we've had success. So to ask me, "Is it better under state or local?" You know, I don't think I'm an expert on that. I know I am an expert on local control, and we've had success with that. So when I'm asked about it, I believe in local control. And and so the thing is, that's what people are asking me about. So when you look at state control, I hear positives and negatives, but I can only work in the system that I'm in and I've got to do the best job that I can. And then that's what I plan on doing in the city of St. Louis, whether we are state or local.
Q: Do you believe St. Louis police officers deserve a raise?
A: I would like to make sure that and also would love to see officers paid more. Absolutely. There's always an ability to pay in what the city can and cannot pay. So you got to always look at the finances. Right now, we're in the middle of contract talks and, you know, we've got to see where that plays out between the union and also the city and the administration. But yes, I'm a second-generation police officer. I've come up through the ranks. Yes. Do we do a tremendous job and the type of work that police officers do? Would I want to be paid the best? Absolutely, what police chief wouldn't? Because that would help me with my department would help with morale. But there's always, always an ability to pay. And also making sure you're a good steward of money and with the taxpayers. So there's a balance there and that's why we have the negotiations. But, you know, I'm hoping to see some things out of this contract. And, you know, and also having a contract helps validate that the work that our officers are doing.
Q: What are you doing to combat the traffic deaths and pedestrian accidents that have been going on most recently with Janae Edmondson? What is the department doing to reduce the traffic accidents and the traffic crimes?
A: Well, you know, you see an incident like that, it does bring attention to a lot of the things that might have been missed as far as people being out of jail that should have been in. And when you take a look at the accidents, even this morning, the room that you're in now, you can kind of see it. I started the CompStat process and I'm building off what we already do here and where we've had success in other departments talking about what we're doing as far as in traffic reform. Where are we doing it? How are we doing it? Where are the high spots, the measurements, and how we can stay ahead of them in the follow up after we do, after we do give motor vehicle summonses? Tracking that to make sure we're in the right places and at the same time balancing that with other crimes that we're doing in the city. So it's always a balance as a priority. We prioritize everything. We talk about it in this room. We talk about it almost daily with our daily stand up crime calls. So we've got to measure it, make sure we're in the right places and, you know, try to prevent the next thing from happening and look at these type of cases to see what happened and where can we fix them.
Q: Do you think Mr. Wiley should have been in jail?
A: As a as a person that, For robbery?
Q: For all the violations.
A: Yeah, we're taking a look at that. In other places I've worked, if there's a GPS violation that that actually person gets remanded after that.
Q: And do prosecutors in other places pursue that revocation?
A: There's just different systems. It's not the same system, who looks at it. So it wouldn't be fair for me to say who looks at it. Sometimes it goes straight to a court administrator, sometimes it goes to the prosecutor, sometimes it goes to the parole probation. It goes to a different teams. Different cities have different ways of doing it. I'm trying to get my arms around it to make sure that how we're doing it, how can we be of help and how can we do it better and be part of the solution instead of trying to make if it's going wrong, how can we help correct it, get together collectively and find out something like this doesn't happen again?
Q: How many police officers do you think this department needs?
A: We have a budgeted strength. I can always use more police officers. There's not a police chief out there would say, "Hey, give me less police officers." Right now, there's a crisis in the United States, not just here in the City of St. Louis, about us losing officers and trying to attract people into the profession. My job is to make sure that we can try to make this as attractive as possible. I'm up against. we have a few we have two academy classes that are already in right now. One, I already spoke to both of them.
Q: And how many are in them?
A: First one had 18 that I was in and the second one had 19. But I think you usually lose a few if they decide that that's not what they want to do. So I don't know the exact numbers, but I know the numbers that they started with, which is outpacing attrition right now. So that's a small incremental win. So our attrition rates have slowed down from where they were a couple of years ago when we had a lot of people leaving not just St. Louis, but even my department and other departments that I worked in. So we have to find a way to slow that down, make it more attractive, make sure that my job is as a police chief to make sure that these officers are supported. Hopefully, we get this contract done. I got to look internally as far as promotions that have been slowed down because of lawsuits. There's things I can do internally to try to bring up this morale. Training. And then basically, if you saw me at the town hall on Dec. 6, they asked, "How do you build trust in the community?" I said, "Let's start with our police officers. Let's make sure they have the support. We're looking out for them. They have the respect and then we'll get external success from there." We'll work on both. But I want to make sure our our officers are respected. And you know what? This community I've been around for the last 30 days and it's been a whirlwind of visiting everywhere, including my officers. But all the community support our officers is a lot of people out there that really support our officers. There's a very small amount that don't. And, you know, we got to make sure we concentrate on the ones that really do care about us and even take care of the ones that don't.
Q: You have your budget strength, your authorized strength, if you will. Do you think that's enough?
A: Let's get up to that first. You know, right now we have to make sure that everybody's going to look to a new police chief. There's no surrender, there's no failing. You look to us to make sure that even though there's obstacles, like every other police department or a corporation or everybody is hurting for people. How do I find it out find a way as a CEO to make sure that we can get the job done with less police officers? That's my job. And I'm going to find ways to make sure we we do it, we do it responsibly and we try to get crime reduction with the amount of police force we have bring more in. I don't want to settle at this number. I want to bring more in, get it up, and then we can expand on some of those things. So I have to find those ways. That's why I brought in, and I was indeed brought in to keep them at this and bring more into this profession. And of course I want more police officers.
Q: OK. I wanted to offer you the chance. There were a couple of topics I think you want you wanted to discuss. What was your meeting with President Biden about?
A: Oh, my meeting with president, I had a few meetings with President Biden. The last one I think we put out a picture. I understand that of my last meeting with President Biden. And that was one of my last few days that I was in uniform in the Wilmington Police Department as a chief, almost six years there. And as everyone knows, that's his hometown. And I was fortunate enough to be there when he got elected president to the Democratic National Convention. But he his people and he asked, "Hey, we want to get our hometown chief a picture with the president before he moves out to St. Louis." So he thanked us for the crime reductions and the way we turned around a city that was sort of like this, everything the same issues that were going on that I heard six years ago. And we've had some pretty good success. Still a lot of work to do there. But he also thanked me for the work and he sees good things for St. Louis and he wished me luck.
Q: Some of the strategies you talked about bringing here were CompStat and ShotSpotter. We've had that here for years. So how are you planning to use them differently or make improvements?
A: Well, you know, you can have the best Tupperware in the world, but how are you using it? You know, how are you leveraging the technology can have ShotSpotter and how we using it and operationalize it that we can get the best results out of that? And you know, I've done that in other places. The last place had ShotSpotter as well. And I didn't believe we will leverage it in the right way. I'm still evaluating how we're doing it, how we're doing it through the CompStat process and then also CompStat. You know, every police department, the United States or a lot of police departments in the United States, say they do CompStat. But it's also it's almost like pizza in Chicago, New York, here in St. Louis, we call it the same name. It's not made the same way. So what I'm trying to do is bring the CompStat methodology that I came up with through New York and had great success with great success in Chicago, obviously leaving Wilmington, that was called Murder Town USA when I walked in as the first outside chief in the 200-year history, and after almost five and a half years we had a 58% reduction in murders, 50% reduction in shootings and an over 35% reduction in overall crime even after coming out of the pandemic. So it can be done. And with this methodology that I'm bringing in, there's such a great base of knowledge and great police officers in this in this department pulling it together. I'm just a new coach coming. If you use football platitudes, it's bringing a little bit of a different playbook, but with very talented players. And I think we can get to where we need to be.
Q: Do you think you can turn St. Louis around?
A: I think we have to do it together. If we can pull everybody together and we get everybody working in the same direction, yes. I think it has to start with us. We're a very big part of it in policing, but we're not the only reason for public safety. We have to bring the criminal justice system along. We have to bring community along. We have to bring elected officials along, the business community, civic associations, all those successes I talked about. Yes, a lot of hard work by our police officers, but it was done with community engagement. It was done with the Office of Violence Prevention. It was done with intervention, prevention and rehabilitation. All these things matter. If you can get everybody going and coordinated instead of in silos. I think there's so much potential in the city to get us where we need to be. Yes, the answer is yes.
Q: OK. Is there anything that you want to point to specifically in your first 30 days? I know it's been a short 30 days. Is there anything you want to point to, specifically, that you've been able to accomplish in a short amount of time that you think is making a difference?
A: I think getting out there, although we're just starting to do these media interviews now, but I have been out there in the community. I have been out there. I was at the Urban League the other night talking about the plan. Getting to meet me, making sure that they understand where we're going to be going with these things. But meeting with our officers, meeting with faith-based community leaders, meeting with the Baptist Convention, being at Martin Luther King Jr. events just going out. There's going to be a ground game and I have to be out there. Last night, I was at the at the officers' union meeting last night at the union hall. So talking to them, they're in a safe setting, asking me the questions they need to ask. And, you know, I'm taking it right to them so they can hear directly from me, not to the news by not for someone else, but they can ask me those questions. And I think it's going to be a ground game. I think getting to know me, understand what I'm going to do and seeing how we're going to get there. It takes time. This is the Show-Me State, right? So I can say a lot of good things, how we need to get there. But I have to show people and by leading by example. And I think that's how we're going to get there, how we've done a lot of things in such a short time. You know, it's going to continue. It's not going to stop.
Q: I heard in that union meeting you were saying that Mr. Riley was connected to some other crimes.
A: Well, you also could see it everywhere else if you if you do your homework as an investigative reporter. Yes, that's public record. There are a few things that are in there, and I think it's already been put out in the paper. Yes, that's he may be we still have to investigate some of those things.
Q: It was put on KSDK.com.
A: OK. There you go. Well, you are an investigative reporter. So the thing is, I can't compromise a case, but you might be right.