ST. LOUIS, Missouri — Two expert homicide detectives are joining the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department in a push to improve the city's murder clearance rate.
The U.S. Department of Justice awarded $456,683 to the city of St. Louis under the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program, a fund designated to the memory of a slain New York police officer.
A portion of the funds will continue to pay for the Night Watch curfew program for juveniles, as well as expanded efforts to address problem properties in north St. Louis.
This year, the city will use the remainder of those grant funds to launch the new 'Homicide Criminal Intelligence Analysts' program. Department of Public Safety officials described the new efforts in a meeting at City Hall on Monday morning.
"There was a critical need there that we could address to immediately impact solving cases," Deputy Public Safety Director Heather Taylor, a former homicide sergeant, said. "What's always critical is giving victims justice."
The city will use federal grant funds from the Department of Justice to pay the full-time salary and benefits for the two new officers. Taylor described them as "actual detectives who actually had extensive investigative background."
In previous years, the Board of Aldermen allocated a large portion of the federal grant funds to pay for the Youth Empowerment Services program. That line item is no longer authorized under this updated program. The city will divert those program expenses to hire these two new homicide specialists.
The YES program recently shut down when the city moved its staff under a different agency.
"The staff and work of Youth Empowerment Services (YES) has been absorbed by the Office of Violence Prevention (OVP)," Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Nicole Franklin said in a Monday statement. "The Board of Alderman has been notified of our intent to apply for this annual grant but are not yet at the stage of introducing a Board Bill. Through this annual grant, the City has hired two criminal intelligence analysts, and we will continue to fund two problem properties attorneys and the Nightwatch program monitoring curfews that we already had in place."
A pamphlet provided by the Department of Public Safety describes their work as placing intelligence surveillance equipment in strategic hot spots across the city, analyzing the data they gather, mapping crime, and helping homicide detectives solve cold cases or chase active leads in open murder investigations.
The new reinforcements could help to reduce the workload on city police as they work to clear murder cases at a faster clip.
"Traditionally, the FBI statistics show that you want to have homicide detectives with five homicides per detective, but homicide detectives are averaging way above that," Taylor said about the recent post-pandemic surge in violent crime.
According to Taylor, one officer was hired last month and another is ready to join the force next month.
The police department has not yet responded to questions about the new positions.
