ST. LOUIS — On Monday night, a panel of St. Louis city leaders answered community questions on issues of public safety.
The room was packed and filled two overflow rooms at the Urban League’s main campus.
911 System Updates
St. Louis Public Safety Director Charles Coyle says they have made some big improvements to the 911 system.
Last year, they were down 50 dispatchers and as of Monday, he says they are only down 16 dispatchers.
“We now are taking more calls. We have a national standard of within 10 seconds to answer 90% of our calls. This time last year we were answering the upper 50 and 60%,” Coyle said.
Coyle said it is a work in progress but they still need more dispatchers due to high turnover in the job.
“We began by raising their pay and did extensive background checks because they literally have critical information at their fingertips,” Coyle said.
St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Updates
While St. Louis Police Chief Robert Tracy says they are still down 300 police officers to respond to those calls; overall violent crime is down and the city has nearly reached a 10-year low on homicides.
“The homicides number was 158 this year. That’s progress but that’s not a celebration. That’s way too many homicides that we’re having,” Tracy said.
Tracy said this year SLMPD issued 32,662 ‘moving summons’ or traffic tickets.
“We are going to community meetings to discuss and learn where the areas of concern are,” Tracy said.
There is still a major issue with unregistered vehicles and expired tags.
“We issued 7,166 summons for vehicles that didn’t have proper registration,” Tracy said.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office Updates
Chief Tracy attributed some of their success to a good working relationship with St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore.
“If you have an environment in which people believe that they can commit violent crimes with impunity, you’re going to have more violent crimes. So I do think that our office stepping in and effectively prosecuting violent crime has had a direct impact in saving lives,” Gore said.
Gore says since hiring 44 people to the staff they’ve been able to more effectively work through the backlog of over 6,700 cases and start work on a new diversion program.
“We’re going to have people going into diversion without ever having to participate in the criminal justice system, and thereby avoiding the harms that can be caused by getting engaged with the criminal justice system like having to plead guilty to a felony,” Gore said.
Board of Aldermen President Megan Green committed that everyone who asked a question and provided an email would get an answer to their questions.
She also invited everyone to the board of aldermen meetings and hearings where she encouraged them to share these same concerns.