ST. LOUIS — An outside, independent agency has finished its assessment of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
Teneo Risk delivered its final review to city officials Monday. The 42-page report acknowledges the challenges facing the police department and offers suggestions and recommendations on how to move forward.
“Staffing levels, resource allocation and distribution, and organizational and governance structures continuously challenge the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department as it faces persistent violent crime in the City, as well as poverty rates well above that of the rest of Missouri,” the review states.
The report adds that violence against officers this year have “added to these burdens, dropping morale to what many interviewees characterized as an unprecedented low and instilling in officers a fear of the scrutiny they may face for performing routine responsibilities.”
The review team talked with officers throughout the ranks of the police department as well as city leaders. The team also reviewed SLMPD’s policies, procedures and operations and analyzed crime data.
The six-month review led the team to develop three overarching areas that target immediate opportunities for improvement:
- The department should consider reorganization of personnel, bureaus and specialized units to maximize efficiencies leveraging existing resources.
- The department should create and implement a more data-driven, community-focused, long-term crimefighting strategy.
- The department should empower the chief to select senior personnel, predicated upon the needs of the department, and to develop a forward-looking strategic plan for the organization. To the degree there are institutional or organizational impediments to doing so, those should be evaluated and rectified.
The review gave ideas for how to bring about changes in the short term and over the course of the next year.
“With a strategic organizational plan, an overarching crime fighting strategy and further streamlining of the resources that the department does have available, the SLMPD can transition from reactive and decentralized crime-fighting to a proactive and holistic approach that can scale and flex to the City, community and department’s needs,” the report concludes in its “next steps” section.
The full review is available on the City of St. Louis’ website here and in the document below.