They say detectives often don’t return calls - a basic step that helps solve cases, criminologists say.Īt the same time, some of the city’s elected officials complain that the police department is unaccountable and unresponsive.Ĭommunity leaders, politicians and other public safety experts say the department’s transparency lessened after several high-profile police incidents in St. The relatives of homicide victims say detectives don’t provide routine updates about investigations. The case is just one example of how the department holds back information from the public. Louis Circuit Court by Minnesota Public Radio, the parent company of APM Reports. The legal move comes four years after the city released the same data to The Washington Post. Louis Metropolitan Police Department for violating Missouri’s open records law. The police department released some data but has repeatedly refused to provide a critical piece of information that would help the public understand how well detectives do their jobs: whether the police solved the case.Īs a result, APM Reports has filed a lawsuit against the St. Under Missouri’s public records law, the requests covered information about each case, including victim name, age, race, location of the crime and whether an arrest was made. Louis Public Radio and APM Reports, an investigative team with American Public Media, sought data from the department to better understand how often St. With a growing number of killings going unsolved, the police department has shielded critical information from the public.įor months, St. In 2020, detectives solved only a third of the city’s homicides. Louis Metropolitan Police Department has declined.
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And as killings have increased from 2018 through 2020, the percentage of homicide cases closed by the St. It had the highest homicide rate among the nation’s large cities. The city nearly broke a 30-year-old record for the number of homicides in a year. By Rachel Lippmann, Tom Scheck, Shahla Farzan, Jennifer LuĢ020 was a bad year for killings in St.