FFrom 2014 to 2020, St. Louis had the highest homicide rate in the country among cities with a population of more than 250,000. St. Louis Public Radio and APM Reports have spent nearly two and a half years trying to obtain public information about the police department's efforts to address the killings. Here are five highlights from our report.
St. Louis Police Department detectives have solved less than half of the city's nearly 2,000 homicides in the past decade
For the better part of a decade, police struggled to bring the perpetrators to justice. A review of data and records reveals some of the reasons police fail to solve so many cases, including poor quality detective work, a lack of resources and eroding community trust.
But things are starting to look up. The analysis showed homicides dropped in 2022 and 2023, with the department solving 56% of murders that year, the highest rate since 2013.
The department did not have anyone available to discuss the findings and did not respond to a written request for comment.
Racial disparity in cases detectives solve
Between 2014 and 2023, police solved less than half of the cases involving black homicide victims but two-thirds of the cases involving white victims.
Police officials said a lack of witness cooperation made the murder case more difficult to solve. But in communities where murders are high and arrests rare, cooperating with police can lead to deadly retaliation.
Meanwhile, black community leaders say many residents no longer trust police after years of targeted policing of black neighborhoods and countless examples of excessive use of force against black people.
Several detectives have been accused of failing to take basic investigative steps crucial to solving the case
Some detectives failed to search for key evidence, follow up on leads and stay in contact with victims' families, according to a memo written by a former homicide supervisor and provided to St. Louis Public Radio. Department brass kept some officers in the department after receiving internal complaints about failed investigations.
A detective was transferred to the homicide unit in 2019 despite a history of violent proceedings, questions about his credibility and alleged drug abuse.
Staffing shortages, DNA backlog hampering department's efforts to solve homicides
With homicide rates at record highs, massive overtime, turnover in key positions, an exodus of crime lab technicians and a growing backlog of DNA samples related to homicides are all hampering investigations.
In 2023, the average turnaround time for DNA samples, which are critical to solving crimes, was 15 months, according to department records.
The department withheld information about homicides from the public and kept inconsistent records
The city of St. Louis has spent nearly two and a half years trying to keep homicide cleanup information secret — even though the department has provided the same data from previous years to The Washington Post. Officials released the records as part of a legal settlement last summer after reporters sued the city.
The department also declined to provide an updated roster of homicide detectives or say how many detectives there are on the homicide unit.
Researchers have raised questions about the transparency of the department's public data. For example, Saint Louis University professor Ness Sandoval tried to build a monthly crime database for the city's 79 neighborhoods, but was unable to add up the monthly homicide numbers to the annual totals published by the department.
St. Louis police declined to discuss the discrepancies in their data. But Police Chief Robert Tracy briefly addressed the issue during a public safety briefing with the mayor and other officials in January.
“I'm a big believer in auditing the numbers because I'm all about statistics and the integrity of statistics,” he said. “So if he finds a discrepancy, let's find out what the discrepancy is. Let's talk to him about it. Let's do it.
Sandoval said he met with an aide to Tracy but not the chief himself.