After state takeover, St. Louis police should maintain community-based intervention efforts
A St. Louis Metro Police car outside Carnahan Courthouse in downtown St. Louis (Clara Bates/Missouri Independent).
The imminent return of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police to state oversight is rooted in the belief that policing remains a crucial force for crime reduction.
Safer streets, in turn, fuel business growth and community development. These legislative developments — and the changes that come with them — will undoubtedly affect ongoing crime reduction initiatives.
Yet, St. Louis stands at a pivotal moment.
By official measures, the city has made progress toward reducing violence since 2020-2021, when there was a nationwide spike. Policing will play a key role in sustaining this progress, but other factors are critical as well.
Research on strategic 'focused deterrence' policing, dating back to Boston's Operation Ceasefire in the 1990s, has a key takeaway: sustained violence reductions require both effective law enforcement and authentic community engagement.
St. Louis has embraced this approach. Public-private partnerships have built a coalition comprised of public health leaders, community organizations, local government, clergy, businesses, credible messengers and residents to form a 'network of capacity' for violence prevention and intervention.
This has since expanded to the Save Lives Now! Initiative and other community-driven efforts embodying a proven model: focused law enforcement, cognitive change and services. Such complementary police and community efforts target immediate violence and its harms while addressing risk factors to reduce violence in a sustainable way over the long term.
As policing oversight shifts, it is crucial to assess these community-driven initiatives. We co-lead a research team at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, studying the implementation of community-based violence intervention strategies and whether they're making an impact. We've observed meetings, interviewed key players, analyzed administrative data, and supported efforts to track outcomes and build accountability.
Government-led initiatives often face public skepticism, and even good ideas can falter in execution. Yet St. Louis offers promising signs.
Examples include the Office of Violence Prevention's collaborative relationships with both St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and community-based service organizations in its Community Violence Intervention; the business community's early commitment to supporting violence reduction that has since expanded to become the regional Save Lives Now! Initiative; and neighborhood residents working directly with city departments to address location-specific violence risks in the St. Louis Public Safety Collaborative.
Additionally, the Violence Prevention Commission funds and coordinates youth events to create safer, supervised spaces. Each effort reflects recommended implementation practices and helps strengthen neighborhoods, build trust with police, and support economic growth.
This collaboration is promising, but the ultimate goal of these initiatives is to reduce violence.
Recent data offers cause for optimism there as well. An analysis of official crime incident data shows that from 2022 to 2024, homicides dropped by 25% and aggravated assaults with guns declined 26%. In the 11 neighborhoods where the Office of Violence Prevention first focused its efforts, those official numbers dropped by 42% and 31%, respectively, during the same period.
While more work is needed to ensure that all members of the community feel safe, the results suggest that community-based resource mobilization combined with targeted policing can have an impact and these efforts should be expanded to other areas of the city struggling with violence.
Public policy is full of examples of once-promising programs that ran out of funding or faded over time. St. Louis cannot afford to let that happen here. Violence shapes both how residents experience their communities and how outsiders perceive the city — affecting everything from quality of life to economic investment.
Maintaining a comprehensive, collaborative strategy is essential but it requires continued support and resource allocation from local leaders and state officials coupled with advocacy and engagement from community residents and organizations.
St. Louis has reached a point where it has a rare opportunity to redefine what public safety looks like — one that blends strategic policing with community-based initiatives. This has proven to be a blueprint for successful violence reduction in other cities and it has begun to improve conditions for the better in St. Louis.
Even as changes unfold, the city must hold onto this momentum by leveraging the community's growing capacity to effectively respond to violence.
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