ST. LOUIS – St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief John Hayden shared a video on his Twitter to address recent violence in the City of St. Louis.
5 On Your Side requested an interview with Hayden after he released the video and the department declined.
Hayden said over the past four days [June 22 to 25] there have been 19 shooting incidents with 18 shooting victims. Seven of those shooting victims were killed.
Hayden said at least 50% are drug related another 35% involve personal disputes and 15% are domestic in nature.
“In recent weeks, we’ve had three shooting victims who were toddlers ages 3 to 6 years old – in each case we have not gotten full cooperation from every single adult or teen in or around the toddlers. We do know the toddlers are not involved in drug activity and not in a personal dispute with anyone, so we’re still appealing to the public to contract CrimeStoppers to gain additional information,” Hayden said.
As of June 26, the city has had 89 homicides whereas in 2018 at this time the city had 83 homicides.
Hayden said 40 people have been arrested or are wanted for this year’s homicides. He has not said how many of those 40 were arrested.
The first thing we’re doing is thoroughly investigating each and every shooting incident – there is a great deal of evidence collection
“Our biggest challenge is always and remains to be a lack of witness participation. We always remind everyone reporting through CrimeStoppers is the way valuable information can be passed onto us anonymously and often rewarded,” Hayden said.
The number to CrimeStoppers is 866-371-8477.
Hayden said they have “beefed up” their mobile reserve unit to focus on crime reduction zones.
“We have set up three crime reduction zones – one in north St. Louis, one downtown one in the Dutchtown, Gravois park area. Within the zones, we focus our patrol on open air drug locations,”
Twenty-five of the 89 homicides occurred within homes or buildings and Hayden said therefore they were not visible to their patrol efforts.
Hayden said some of the biggest challenges are 147 officers down from our authorized strength of 1328 officers. “Since I have been chief we have graduated 123 officers lost 125 through attrition,” Hayden said. He also said Missouri gun laws are inadequate when it comes to addressing armed persons who go on to commit acts of gun violence.
“Because so many of the shootings are tied to drugs and other illegal activity the surviving victims and witnesses are reluctant to cooperate with police,” Hayden said.
