Program Profile: Police-Led Community Initiative to Reduce Gun Violence (St. Louis, Missouri)

This police-led program was designed to reduce gun crime and serious violence in the Wells Goodfellow neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri. The program is rated Ineffective. The intervention did not have a statistically significant effect on gun violence or total violence trends in the target neighborhood compared with the average trends of seven matched comparison neighborhoods across the city.

An Ineffective rating implies that implementing the program is unlikely to result in the intended outcome(s).

Program Goals/Target Sites

This police-led initiative was an intervention designed to reduce gun crime and serious violence in St. Louis, Missouri. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD) collaborated with numerous justice, government, and community organizations to develop the intervention for the Wells Goodfellow (WGF) neighborhood. The program strategy was based on a preintervention assessment of violence patterns in WGF as well as the problems cited by WGF residents and stakeholders (Koper et al. 2010).

The City of St. Louis has a population of about 318,000. Slightly more than 25 percent of city residents live below the poverty line. In 2007, the city experienced 7,654 Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) Part I violent crimes, a rate about two-and-a-half times that of other U.S. cities of similar size. In 2004 and 2006, between 82 and 89 percent of the city’s homicides were committed with a firearm. Approximately 8,000 people reside in the WGF neighborhood, 98 percent of whom are African American. The neighborhood is characterized by high levels of family disruption and vacant housing units, as well as a high violent crime rate (Koper, Woods, and Isom 2016).

Program Components

The program included enhanced enforcement, prosecution, and supervision in WGF. Many of these key components were not entirely new or unique to WGF; however, they were intensified during the project period.

Patrol officers, detectives, and officers from multiple SLMPD specialty units coordinated proactive enforcement activities, such as directed patrols, surveillance, warrant application and execution, drug enforcement and investigation, intensified responses to shootings, and in-depth follow-up investigations. Activities were focused on hot spot crime locations, known persons in the neighborhood, and the deterrence of nonresidents who sold or bought drugs in the WGF neighborhood.

Federal authorities assisted SLMPD with the activities, including a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) team that conducted drug operations in WGF. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) provided funding to supplement police overtime. ATF also conducted joint patrols with SLMPD during parts of the project and traced recovered firearms. Overall, these activities were designed to deter illegal gun carrying and use, target known persons, suppress drug activity believed to be associated with much of the violence in the WGF neighborhood, and better respond to incidents of serious violence.

In addition, the City of St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office increased its focus on the prosecution of offenses in WFG, particularly for cases involving violence, guns, or drugs. Prosecutors worked with SLMPD to strengthen cases and requested judicial orders to restrict outsiders convicted of drug offenses from entering the neighborhood. The United States Attorney’s Office also committed to prosecuting eligible gun cases from WGF.

Finally, SLMPD also coordinated with probation and parole officers to improve supervision for high-risk probationers in WGF. This involved strengthening a joint police-probation intensive supervision program for high-risk probationers in WGF (including those convicted of a gun offense for the first time).

The program also included efforts to improve police–community relations, and to mobilize and stimulate the community through community meetings, job fairs, and other special events. For example, an interagency team had been addressing issues related to nuisance and vacant properties in WGF, and this effort intensified during the intervention.

Study

To study the impact of a police-led initiative in St. Louis, Missouri, Koper, Woods, and Isom (2016) used a quasi-experimental multiple time series design to compare trends in total violence and gun violence in the Wells GoodFellow (WGF) neighborhood with the average trends in seven matched comparison neighborhoods. Approximately 8,000 people reside in the WGF neighborhood, 98 percent of whom are African American. The neighborhood is characterized by high levels of family disruption and vacancy, as well as a high violent crime rate. In 2007, WGF experienced 357 violent crimes, including 14 homicides, 82 robberies (60 of which were armed robberies), and 250 aggravated assaults (117 of which were committed with guns). WGF also had high levels of drug offending, with 272 drug offenses reported during 2007.

WFG gun violence and total violence trends were compared with the average trends in several matched comparison neighborhoods. Comparison neighborhoods were matched based on numerous social characteristics, such as population, race, age, youth by age and race, number of households, number of female-headed households, vacant housing units, and percentage of rentals. Neighborhoods adjacent to WGF were not selected in order to reduce the possibility that those areas would be affected by crime displacement or diffusion of crime reduction benefits from the WGF intervention. Although the comparison neighborhoods typically had lower counts and rates of violence than did WGF, there were no significant baseline differences between groups.

Outcome measures included counts of UCR Part I violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery aggravated assault) committed with or without firearms during the 2005 to 2008 study period. Preintervention included data from 2005 until the intervention began in April 2008. The intervention took place from April to December 2008, after which postintervention data was collected for 38 weeks. The data were obtained from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and aggregated into weekly time series for the target and comparison areas. The researchers examined changes in weekly counts of violence in WGF during the intervention period and assessed trends in WGF relative to those in the comparison areas. Seasonally adjusted t tests were conducted to identify changes in weekly counts of total violence and gun violence during the intervention. Time-series methods were used to test for differences in pre- and post-intervention trends. In addition to examining trends in total violence and gun violence, the researchers also examined trends in the ratio of crimes in the target area and the pooled comparison area. The study did not conduct subgroup analyses.

The program was developed through collaborative community efforts. A research partner working with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD) analyzed geographic and demographic patterns in homicides, gun violence, and drug offenses in the Wells GoodFellow neighborhood. The study detailed reviews of homicides and a sample of other gun crimes that took place in the neighborhood during 2007 (Koper et al. 2010). In April 2008, the findings were presented at a community summit that brought together community members, community leaders, and representatives from SLMPD, the Mayor’s Office, and several other government and nongovernment agencies. The program strategy was based on the study findings as well as the problems cited by individuals who attended the summit.

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile: