ST. LOUIS — St. Louis City leaders, including the St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore and St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Tracy, on Monday night addressed the downtown community at a town hall meeting.
Between July 4-7, St. Louis police received more than 3,792 calls for service, of those 472 were fireworks related and 198 were ShotSpotter or shots fired calls. In that same period, 24 people were shot in 16 different shooting incidents. Officers also arrested 37 people downtown, with 15 arrests involving firearms. A total of 39 firearms were seized.
Tracy said the department was already reviewing the incidents that unfolded over the July Fourth weekend.
“We have hundreds and hundreds of events. Everything goes very, very well," Tracy said. "This one towards the end, we had to get additional officers together, we had to put a good plan together and we had to move them out safely. We'll adapt. We'll do an after-action review like we do on every event, and we'll make sure that we're taking a good look at this, that this doesn't happen again next year."
July 4-6, 19 juveniles were booked for weapon law violations, fireworks, simple assault and destruction of property.
“Holistically, we have got to find out what's going on, why are juveniles downtown? Why are young adults coming down after, nothing good happens after midnight. We're going to continue to push people out of the parks,” Tracy said.
Tracy said as far as juveniles go, the department is going to take a look at the agreement it made with the juvenile detention center to make sure kids aren't just being released to their parents, which happened with a couple of them this weekend.
“Things did change," Tracy said. "We're going to do another review to make sure things haven't gone back to the way they were. And we're actually in conversation, we're having a meeting to make sure that we're doing everything we can."
James Page with the Downtown Neighborhood Association said what happened this weekend was disturbing.
“The wanton use of illegal fireworks, the mass shootings that took place: Those are disturbing to me and other residents of downtown St. Louis,” Page said.
He said he wants to see more collaboration between all city leaders.
Mayor Tishaura Jones’ Chief of Staff Jared Boyd said everyone does have to work together.
“I think the police, from a tactical standpoint, can reduce these types of instances, but they can't work alone, we have to work collaboratively, not just across departments but across the region," Boyd said. "We know that a number of young people came from outside of the City of St. Louis. So those young people need more resources in their community so that they don't come into the City of St. Louis, for bad reasons."
5 On Your Side’s Laura Barczewski asked Boyd, “Do you think the police dropped the ball here?”
“I don't think the police dropped the ball," Boyd said. "I think the police can learn from the actions that occurred this weekend, and they've already made adjustments to some of their weekend tactics. And I think as a result, you saw less issues on Friday and Saturday, but I must reiterate that the police cannot do this work alone."
Gore told the crowd at the town hall meeting that his office is working well with St. Louis police to hold people accountable and will continue to do so.
“The officers who are on the job, who are out there every day working to serve the citizens of St. Louis, say the one thing they really appreciated is they now know that their work will have an impact that when they apply for warrants and bring cases to our office that they will be acted upon,” Gore said.
Alderwoman Cara Spencer said things downtown were feeling lawless.
“We've got to get a handle on it," Spencer said. "So, first step really is to recognize we have a problem. We have at the Board of Aldermen, recently OKed a budget that includes the hiring of a couple 1,000 additional city employees, we have the budget for that. So we need to go out there and fill those positions to be able to do the job that our citizens expect that we can do."
Spencer said she commends the police for their presence during Celebrate St. Louis, "But, I do think that we could have done a better job of preparing for the aftermath. We saw this happened last year, and we, frankly, should have expected it."
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