By Antonio D. French
Filed Friday, January 27 at 4:00 AM
Claire Nowak-Boyd pointed out on the Ecology of Absence blog that Mayor Francis Slay published on his blog Wednesday the following statement regarding the recently released city crime statistics:
"As I have written before and as most of you know, many neighborhoods in the City are very safe places today. However, as the stats make too clear, a few neighborhoods are not."
Which neighborhoods are those, I wondered. Could he mean my neighborhood, located in the city's 6th district (in the northern most part of the city)? District 6 did have more homicides than the five districts that make up south St. Louis combined (35 compared to just 30 for districts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 9).
But what about District 1 (in the southern most part of the city)? While they only had 10 homicides, they had 29 rapes reported last year. And the 3rd District (bound by I-44, Kingshighway, and Chippewa) led the entire city in rapes (51). Even downtown had more rapes reported than all but one northside district.
As a matter of fact, the only "safe" place in the whole city seems to be district 2, which includes "The Hill" neighborhood -- the section of town where most of the city's police officers happen to live.
So maybe Mayor Slay's wink-wink to potential loft buyers might be a little misleading.
The city has a crime problem -- the entire city -- and the sooner we face that reality, the sooner we can address it, as a single community. Crime in one neighborhood is everybody's problem.
4 Comments:
Antonio,
You mentioned previously that you live in the O'Fallon neighborhood.
Are you in the 21st ward? Or the 3rd?
Do you know about the O'Fallon Housing Corporation, the Neighborhood Council, or the North Newstead Association.
They are all working to revitalize the neighborhoods of the 3rd and 21st wards.
7:28 AM, January 27, 2006
Cops living in the second district are rapidly moving to South County and St. Charles.
Even when they were required to keep their residence in the city, they didn't do much in terms of adding to neighborhood security.
One of our old neighbors was a cop; they were some of our worst neighbors.
People who think the police are going to solve their crime problems don't get it.
Crime will always be there. The cops are like the janitors who clean up the mess left behind.
5:57 AM, January 28, 2006
Anony #1, I live in the 21st Ward and I am familiar with those organizations. They do some good work (though there was some controversy with the North Newstead Association a few years back).
NPOs like those, as well as many individuals, have for years been doing what they can to stabilize these neighborhoods.
Do they get enough support from the state and local government? No. Especially the individual activists.
Are they winning the war? It's hard to say. Battles are won and lost. When stats come out that show nearly 100 young blacks were killed last year in north St. Louis, it's disheartening.
Some find victories in the rise in new home construction. Others, like myself, see the quality of those new homes and wish that more northside homes were being rehabbed.
But the most needed thing in north St. Louis -- and the word that St. Louis Democrats seem to have lost from their collective vocabulary -- is jobs.
Goob jobs create wealth, wealth creates a middle class, and a middle class makes a stable community.
6:55 AM, January 28, 2006
How many of these rapes and murders wouldn't be occuring if the prosecutors had the resources they need, instead of cutting their budget like Jim Shrewsbury has?
12:49 PM, December 20, 2006
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