By Joel Currier
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS — Capt. Ed Kuntz’s brow crinkles with frustration when he talks about St. Louis’ staggering crime rate.
Maybe it’s the burden of shedding St. Louis’ disputed, yet damaging, label as the nation’s most dangerous city. Or maybe it’s just his distaste for career criminals. Either way, he takes it all personally.
“They can’t go out there and do what they’re doing to our city,” Kuntz said. “The city is coming back. If I have anything to do with it, it is.”
Feeling the weight of the city’s 8,645 car thefts, 3,147 robberies and 129 murders from last year, the head of the city police department’s new Crime Suppression Unit recognizes the street fight that will be needed to knock down the crime rate.
“It’s kind of like the all-star game of crime,” he said. “We’re looking for the criminal all stars — our best guys against their most prolific.”
It’s no game to the roughly 55 members of the new police unit, formed in January to attack St. Louis’ 5.8 percent overall rise in crime last year. The team of hand-picked detectives, whom Kuntz described as some of the department’s youngest and most aggressive, relies heavily on informers and crime data to identify neighborhoods where persistent criminals live.
Its officers spend a lot of time trying to catch auto thieves — minnows of the criminal world — because data show that stolen cars are commonly used as getaway cars in more serious crimes. The Anti-Crime Task Force, which has been arresting car thieves since the unit was formed in 2003, is now part of the new Crime Suppression Unit.
But their top priority is to scratch names off a list of about 300 felons by catching them in the act and putting them back behind bars. These are repeat offenders who have returned to the streets after multiple jail sentences. Catching those career criminals, Kuntz believes, would make the city’s crime rate fall dramatically this year.
“Twenty percent of the people commit 80 percent of the crimes,” Kuntz said. The “80/20 rule,” also known as the “Pareto Principle,” has become something of a maxim for the unit.
The birth of the new unit came after the release of FBI statistics that showed violent crime in St. Louis grew 10.3 percent in the first half of last year. That was almost three times the national average increase of 3.7 percent. Murders were down 1.5 percent, but rape grew by 22 percent.
Last fall, a Kansas publisher ranked St. Louis as the nation’s most dangerous city, based on FBI statistics. City leaders dismissed its method of measuring crime only within city limits and excluding suburbs with lower crime rates.
The unit targets “hot spots” — identified using the most up-to-date crime data. Using the data and mapping software, police rank the 10 highest-crime neighborhoods and patrol the streets that are experiencing surges in criminal activity.
“You’ve got to go where crime is happening,” said Sgt. Allan Moore, a 15-year department veteran who joined the team in January. “If a guy gets away with a crime in a certain area, he’s coming back. And we’re going to be there waiting for him.”
In recent weeks, the team has made Dutchtown, in south St. Louis, its top priority because of a spate of stolen cars and armed robberies.
Through Saturday, the unit had made 301 arrests, seized 72 guns and recovered 108 stolen vehicles. Nearly one in four of those arrested had been free on parole or serving probation.
The effort may have had some impact so far — citywide, crime was down about 5 percent Jan. 1 through March 5.
Since the unit was formed, prosecutors have filed about 25 percent more felony cases than in the same period last year, said Jeannette Graviss, chief of the circuit attorney’s warrant office. But police and prosecutors warn that warmer weather typically brings a rise in crime and felony cases.
Some of the arrests stand out more than others, says Sgt. Joe Morici, who heads a team within the unit that aggressively hunts down violent offenders. Last month, two detectives disrupted a holdup in which a storekeeper had been shot and beaten in the Walnut Park neighborhood. Police ran down and arrested two men running from a convenience shop and pointing a handgun at the store’s blood-drenched owner, who was chasing the men.
Morici says detectives already have arrested at least 10 of the 70-plus suspects on his list of “most violent offenders,” which includes those wanted in connection with murder, assault, illegal weapons charges or parole violations.
Targeting hot spots
Scholars say “hot spots policing” is an effective strategy for preventing crime in targeted areas by combining crime data with mapping technology to identify where to send manpower.
A study published in 2005 by Harvard University researcher Anthony Braga called the approach an “extremely promising new strategy for policing.” The study showed it resulted in significant reductions in crime and emergency calls for police in several cities, including Minneapolis, Kansas City and Jersey City, N.J.
Its effectiveness here will depend heavily on the St. Louis Police Department’s ability to sustain its efforts over the long term, said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist with the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Police will also need to monitor the movement of crime away from targeted hot spots to surrounding neighborhoods, he said.
“I think it’s a move in the right direction,” he added. “This should become part of normal policing practice in the city of St. Louis.”
‘Be careful out there’
At the start of a recent night shift, about two dozen detectives crowd around a table for roll call inside a second-floor board room in a substation off Manchester Avenue. They talk about recent arrests and trade tips on suspects they’ve been watching.
They know the dangers that come with trying to lock up the city’s most chronic criminals. One of the team’s detectives has been shot four times in his career.
“Everyone, be careful out there,” one detective reminds the officers. “At the end of the day, it’s just a stolen car.”
Ed Kuntz delivers a final pep talk before the team rolls.
“You guys are the best of the best at what you do,” he says. “If we get the crime rate down, we’re going to have a hell of a party in December. Just keep doing what you’re doing. We’ll get there.”
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