Amid 'indescribable times,' St. Louis homicide rate reaches historic levels

ST. LOUIS — The same scenes play out time and again for St. Louis police Lt. Scott Aubuchon's homicide detectives when they arrive to investigate another death in the city: yellow police tape, the wails of family and evidence technicians scouring for bullet casings. Aubuchon's team is struggling to keep up as the city contends with a homicide rate that, by year's end, likely will be the worst in at least a half-century. The number of killings soared over the summer as detectives were called to 114 homicides in June, July and August. There were 53 people killed in the city in July alone. "Since June 1, our numbers began to rise at the alarming rate," said Aubuchon, the homicide unit's commander since 2018. "We've never seen anything like the last three months. These are indescribable times." The same can be said for the year. The shooting death Sept. 14 of a 15-year-old girl in the Riverview neighborhood was the 194th homicide of the year, matching the city's total for all of 2019. That number has since been surpassed. If the pace of killings continues, St. Louis will reach an ignoble milestone. Over the past decade, the city has averaged 50 homicides in the last four months of the year, according to police statistics. If that holds true, St. Louis will see about 240 homicides in 2020, the highest in 25 years. The highest number of killings in a single year in St. Louis was 267 in 1993, when the city had some 387,000 residents. That means the homicide rate — homicides per 100,000 people — was 69 that year. But the population of St. Louis has continued to dwindle over the decades, settling now at just over 300,000. The result this year is a homicide rate that's projected to be 79, a startling number that appears to exceed the rate for any other large U.S. city. The homicide rate matters when determining whether one city is more dangerous than another, or whether a particular city is getting more dangerous from year to year, criminologists say. Another city with a similar number of people, Cincinnati, had a homicide rate last year of 24, its highest in about a dozen years. Pittsburgh, which also has virtually the same population as St. Louis, had a rate of 12 in 2019, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting statistics. Baltimore saw a stunning 348 killings last year, but with a population about double that of St. Louis, Baltimore's homicide rate was 58. "It's important to remember that behind these numbers are real lives," St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson said in a statement. "Someone's daughter, son, father, mother, brother, sister. And as a city, we care deeply about them and their families who've been devastated by this senseless violence. The men and women of our police department are working extremely diligently to find the people responsible for these losses as they continue to address all crime day in and day out." Most of the deaths in St. Louis are not solved, making it difficult for detectives to pinpoint motives, but Aubuchon said the motive in the killings that have been solved are "all over the place." "Random fights that escalate," Aubuchon said. "Some folks under the influence of drugs. Arguments over stolen money." One key difference detectives have noticed is the relationship between killer and victim. They seem to be closer: family members and close friends. In the past it was more likely to be an acquaintance or, rarely, a stranger, Aubuchon said. "We always look for the trends," he said. "Anything that could help us turn this tide back." Richard Rosenfeld, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said the nature of events remains largely the same compared to the killings in the 1990s. The typical homicide involves two young men, usually African American, in a dispute in which one kills the other. It does appear there are fewer gang homicides now than in the '90s, a trend that is not specific to St. Louis, said Rosenfeld, a former president of the American Society of Criminology. Drug-related homicides remain prevalent, he added. Finding witnesses willing to cooperate with investigators has always been a challenge for St. Louis police, and Aubuchon said the pandemic is making it even harder. "It's tough to talk with somebody standing through a door wearing a mask," Aubuchon said. "People are wearing masks, and they don't invite us into the house where we can discreetly interact with them. People are afraid to come into our office. It's a closed space and people are restricting their exposure to strangers, which we are." Police Chief John Hayden earlier this year added six detectives and a sergeant to the homicide unit, which now has 33 detectives and seven sergeants. Still, the homicide crews are working long hours, and each crew is managing five to 10 cases at a time. "It's not easy to juggle that many cases and do the work that's needed in those cases," Aubuchon said. "The detectives are working exceptionally long hours." Statistics compiled by St. Louis police provide a glimpse at the murder victims and possible motives of their killers. A majority of the victims this year (156) have been Black men and boys. As of last week, police said they have suspects in just 69 cases, and most were Black males. ——— ©2020 St. Louis Post-Dispatch Visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at www.stltoday.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.