Saturday my Leadership St. Louis class looked at crime in St. Louis. In my case this examination had already  begun with my 3rd District ride along. We toured the City Justice Center (read that as jail) and heard presentations  by a university professor, women who had experienced incarceration, prosecutors from St. Louis and the Eastern district of Missouri, a judge and the police chiefs of St. Louis city and county. An impressive lineup.

What I learned:

• The police have a difficult job - I am certainly pleased that there are people willing and able to do this dangerous and important job - as they try and get the bad guys off of the streets.
• Prosecutors take a look at the cases brought to them  by the police and decide which of those individuals to try. They are proud of their work in keeping bad guys of the streets.
• The judge’s presentation helped us think about balancing individual needs and community retribution.

But the emphasis seemed to be on getting bad guys off of the street. We did not hear from any public defenders or defense attorneys. We did not hear from any criminal justice watchdog groups. What story would they have told? What would we have seen by looking at the system from the other side? I suspect something quite different.

As a nation we have the highest incarceration rate in the world - 1 out of every 100 American adults is behind  bars. For blacks the rate is 1 out of every 15. Clearly this "law and order" focus - let’s lock ‘em up to keep ‘em off of the street - is not working. We need a different way.

In their presentations to my Leadership St. Louis class both city and county police chiefs complained about the inadequate coverage they get from the local media. Based on this I was posed a challenge - that they make their information available to the citizenry who is paying for these services. They suggested that this information was available so I went looking.

St. Louis City - yes their data is available and easily found with a link on their home page. However, the data is in difficult to aggregate/analyze PDF files. Moreover, the data is summarized into neighborhoods. In my ride along I saw that the police collects a great deal of information. Reports, stops, calls, arrests, accidents - lots more information than is available to the public.

St. Louis County - their data missing in action. No links on their home page. No information using a search from their site. County interactive map - no crime data. No official information found doing a Google search. It seems that the county is not making any information readily available to those who are paying for its services. To be fair, the Missouri Highway Patrol has a web site with crime statistics that includes St. Louis County. But the data accessible only through their query system and is aggregated by county.

The Post Dispatch has recently had a a few articles about the nature of crime statistics (for example here and here) because of the recent CQ Press release of its 15th annual ranking of U.S. cities by crime. The Post has published some graphs and maps of the St. Louis homicide rate (though the graph should have been done using a more informative format the interactive map is quite nice - see my examples of how this might look).

By not making their detailed data available to the public, the police departments are trying to control our access to and understanding of what they are doing. They seek to spin the story to their benefit. By being closed they are easily buffeted by press coverage - it is the press’s interpretation versus theirs. There is no way to look at the facts as shown in the data. So, by not being accessible, by not making their data easily available to the public for independent analysis their complaint about poor press coverage seem rather hollow.

Why would we want this information? Well what about looking at the response time to calls into the police? Or the resolution of individual complaints by block? Or the impact of sobriety checks on accidents? All things that would help the citizens understand the effectiveness of our police force. Take a look at how this sort of information is used in Chicago. Here we have information rather than data. A platform for understanding the distribution of crime and in helping the citizenry deal with it. A system of criminal network knowledge discovery. This sort of resource does not have to be, and probably should not be, created by the police. Rather the data should be made available to the community so that it may make unique uses of that information. As described in the Federal government’s guidelines for its departments’ web sites:

Visitors to federal public websites, and many web-based services, may want to manipulate data that is made public for their own purposes. New uses of your agency’s data may become a valuable public resource that would be out of the scope of your own website, such as helping to keep the public informed about the work of your agency and supporting civic education and participation. You should facilitate the public’s ability to make new uses of your data by providing it in open, machine–processable formats.

Government has gotten a bad name. There is a constant drone to reduce its size - to eliminate programs - to be lean and mean (though the code word is efficient rather than mean). Yet government is the word we use when we want to do something together. What we need is a transparent government. A government that provides all with access to the information about what we are doing together and how effectively (or not as the case may be) we are at doing it. Let’s start this in the St. Louis region by making our detailed crime data widely available.

On Friday our Leadership St. Louis class focused its attention on poverty. Splitting into groups we met in various agencies around the region. I went to the Lessie Bates Davis Neighborhood House in East St. Louis. This 100 year old institution began its life serving the immigrant Bohemian-Slavonic population, working in the local stock yards, and continues today serving the predominantly African-American residents of the area. 

We had been to East St. Louis before but our tour today focused more clearly on the community.

The work being done by the Neighborhood house was very impressive and their facilities were organized and attractive. Their day-care and preschool program would not have been out of place in a much more affluent section of St. Louis. Yet, in the end, I was left with a feeling of sadness.

My overall impression of the area is of its emptiness. Whole blocks have only a smattering of building left sanding with the majority of lots being grass and weed covered. Driving through the center of town we saw few people, many boarded up store fronts, and beautiful empty buildings with trees growing out of the upper stories. There were new buildings and housing - but they were few and far between.

A Jobs program is an importing offering of the Neighborhood House. But our guide indicated that when the program was successful and its graduates could find better than minimum wage employment, the individuals and their families left the area. So even a successful program serves to further concentrate the needs of this community.

In the afternoon our class participated in a poverty simulation. We gathered in one, two, three, and four person groups. Each group has a packet of instructions - describing their family members, detailing their income and expenses, and providing a few transportation tokens and other "valuables" (e.g., a TV, refrigerator, stove). We then had four 15 minute weeks in which we were to get money, pay our bills, send our children to school, and feed our families.

I played a female high school graduate with a 4 and 5 year old. As we calculated our budget it was clear that we had more expenses than money and some things would go unpaid. At the start of the week we rushed to the bank to cash our TANF check then on to the quick mart to get some more transportation tokens so we could go to other sites (we each needed a bus token to get to any location). We stood in long lines and - more often then not - the business or agency would close before we could get to the front of the line.

At the end of our four - 15 minute - weeks we had managed to get cash, pay the rent, and purchase two weeks worth of food. We were out of bus tokens so we could not go anywhere. We had no cash (and the pawn shop would not buy any of our "valuables").

This simulation did a number of things for me. First, it made my intellectual understanding of the morning’s East St. Louis experience much more emotionally real. Second, I understood at that same emotional level, that as the head of a poor family there was no way for us to win - indeed just surviving required a tremendous amount of energy and ingenuity. Third, that I did not make use of my neighbors to join in collective community action to deal with my difficulties (for example we might have set up a shared day care arrangement). Yet trying joint help did not even occur to me because I was trying to help my family survive.

The experience was eye opening and emotionally impactful. Indeed, I would like all Americans, but especially some of my relatives, to experience a poverty simulation before they talk about the "welfare cheats" or vote against programs to support these individuals. My family is fortunate to not be in the shoes of these individuals. This sort of experience - as well as the current economic meltdown - should make us all more understanding of and generous to those in need.

As part of learning about law enforcement in the region the Leadership St. Louis class had the opportunity to ride along with either the city or county police. I signed on with both interest and a bit of trepidation. After all, I grew up in the 60’s when the police did not seem particularly friendly.

I chose to ride in the city. The station was right across the street from where I work and even though it had been there for many years I had never before entered. (Which seems like a good thing.)  My guide, an officer in his first year out of the academy was involved with a case and it took a while for him to arrive. He had not had any warning that he would have a passenger nor did he know of our group. Nonetheless he took me under his wing.

We talked about his experiences and job and how he had gotten into force. We drove around in the third district (the Soulard area) and he explained what he could and could not do. He apologized that there was nothing really exciting happening and that I had missed a shooting earlier in the evening. (I was just as happy to have missed that experience.)

What struck me was the amount of time officers spend just driving around looking for problems - it seemed like a much more boring job that I would have ever imagined. We did, however, have enough action for my taste. We pulled someone over for making an illegal left hand turn (the also got a ticket for driving on a suspended license), went to investigate a reported burglary (it seemed that the reporter was not quite "with it" and had over reacted), dealt with a serious  but non life threatening accident caused by someone running a red light, and finally pulled another car over (they got off with a warning). Yet most of the time we drove about the city quietly.

I met a variety of other officers during the course of the evening. Each introduced themselves and treated me with respect and interest. Each wore a black band around their badge in respect and morning for their fallen brother from University City.

What impressed me most? Well the lights on the roof sound like grating sand, the computer that gave the officer information was old and the different state’s databases it accessed presented information in idiosyncratic formats making it difficult for the officer to find what he was looking for. He had to spend a lot of time hand writing tickets when it should have been quite simple to have a computer generate the forms automatically. It seems that we need to be spending more money, which I am sure is money that we do not have, to make our officers more efficient and improve their equipment.

But the most important thing I learned I did not understand until a few days later. I read in the paper about an young officer being shot on the east side. I wondered if that was my young officer. It was then that I realized that from now on I would put a much more personal face on those that are protecting us and enforcing our laws. Seems like a good outcome for an evening ride.

In the St. Louis region, and probably other places as well, we like living in places where our opinions matter and have sway. We like the feel and identity of a small community. That is why we have more municipalities in the St. Louis region than you can shake a stick at.

Yet we also know that there is great redundancy across these communities. We have a multiple police and fire departments, school systems, library systems, road maintenance crews, … These small units can not easily benefit from the economies of scale. They need to duplicate what others do. They need to spend a more time coordinating with their sister agencies in neighboring communities.

Our small communities are more effective at attending to their citizens. Yet larger organizations are more efficient. What governmental or organizational structures exist that could do both?

Following our trip to the east - our Leadership St. Louis class traveled to St. Charles to learn about our neighbors to the south and west. The three counties surrounding St. Louis (viz., St. Charles, Franklin, and Jefferson) are exceedingly homogenous with regards to race. According to the 2000 census less than 2% of their residents of the are black. This compared to more than 27% for the residents of St. Louis city and county and11% of the residents of Missouri as a whole. One of the presenters mentioned that many of his residents came en masse from Florissant which itself had previously benefited from a similar diaspora fleeing the arrival of blacks in north St. Louis.

The area leaders were proud of their accomplishments and growth. They highlighted the generosity of the community by its self-imposed tax support of the Community and Children’s Resource Board. They toured us through the area on busses and showed clean, orderly, and affluent communities.

These leaders also made a point to address the "s" word - sprawl - claiming, through a creative historical argument, to not be an example of this negatively tinged phenomena. As we learned more, however, their protests did not seem to ring true. For example, they talked about how the lure of the area was for attractive and  affordable housing and that they had benefited greatly from a massive home building boom. Yet the St. Louis region is not really growing and growth in one section comes at the expense of another. Another example given was the creation of a new urban community, New Town at St. Charles, in the middle of a corn field. Essentially trying to remake what is already available in our rich diverse urban community with a homogenous population miles from anywhere.

This visit really got some members of our class thinking that these were examples of more-or-less isolated communities and fragmented governments competing with each other, taking from each other, and all without benefiting the whole.

It was exactly what we had seen the previous day in East St. Louis and Southern Illinois. This area is an example of what the east side looked like in its boom days. The St. Charles area is still riding the wave of prosperity - though the current economic bust has really stopped them cold in the last months.  Yet they still seem to lack an adequate appreciation or the wider difficulties which result from their actions.

These experiences are going to lead me to ask other leaders these questions.

What are you doing to reduce political/cultural/economic fragmentation in the St. Louis region?

What are you willing to do to reduce political/cultural/economic fragmentation in the St. Louis region?

I know that the reduction of fragmentation is extremely difficult. Yet it seems to be a central stumbling block to regional growth. How might we start? What about the regional support the Metropolitan Zoological Park & Museum District. This tax district (currently comprised of St. Louis City and county) pays for the Zoo, Missouri Botanical Gardens, History and Art museums, and the Science Center. These free services are clearly something people from the surrounding communities enjoy and clearly make St. Louis a great place to live.  Broadening the base of support has been discussed for a long time and it would be a significant first step for the surrounding counties as they support the region as a whole.

Before they follow the example of East St. Louis the surrounding counties to the west and south have the opportunity to join with others in the region to move the whole - not just the backyard.

In our first in the community experience weekend in our Leadership St. Louis year we visited and heard from leaders from south western Illinois, just across the the river from St. Louis. We heard two stories.

The first trumpeting the tremendous growth of the area - nurtured in large part by the cooperation between various jurisdictions, particularly Madison and St. Clair counties. This was capped by a presentation about East St. Louis which was passionately portrayed it as an ideal location ripe for economic development. That presentation had me ready to move in for the great views of St. Louis from the high end (but yet to be built or even planned) condos. These presentations had me worried that soon the Illinois tail would be wagging the St. Louis dog.

The second was by individuals working in the East St. Louis area with its large number of poor and marginalized residents. These folks told the well know story of East St. Louis. Of how the area’s major industrial employers incorporated their own company towns to avoid paying taxes to support East St. Louis and its infrastructure. That that lack of support made the town focus on residential and entertainment - which during the post WW II boom seemed good enough. However, with the exodus of manufacturing jobs from this country in general and the southern Illinois river bottom in particular,  East St. Louis, and its surrounding communities lost their status, their jobs, and their residents. As the years went on they fell further and further into disrepair and, for some at least, ill repute.

East St. Louis was described as the hole in the donut. That little of the economic boom we heard about in Madison, St. Clair, and the other surrounding counties actually got to East St. Louis. This is not universally true. For example, in the following class discussions it was pointed out that public transportation carried many East St. Louis residents to the new warehouse jobs in the east side. But on the whole the area is rather sad. For all of the impassioned presentation about East St. Louis the list of city tasks they shared with our class were simple and practical - getting street signs on every corner, cleaning up vacant gas stations, …

When the counties spoke of their successes they said that they were the result of cooperation between the small towns that make up their communities. It was of sharing and of joining together in common purpose. There are undoubtedly a legion of reasons why East St. Louis is the hole. One serious and obvious underlying cause for this is the historic lack of cooperation and sharing between it and the other southern Illinois communities. Without that cooperation success and prosperity are not widely shared to the detriment of the whole region. While I understand those as historic reasons - what it the excuse for this today?