The St. Louis homicide rate reached its highest level in 20 years in 2015.
This comes after the anti-police riots by Ferguson #BlackLivesMatter protesters last year.
The Mike Brown riots made international headlines.
Now St. Louis city is experiencing a surge in homicides and violent crime.
The Riverfront Times reported:
Metro police investigated 188 murders – a number barely blunted by the knowledge that it could have been worse. As we pointed out in an early October cover story, the city had been on pace to hit 200 slayings by New Year’s. Only a merciful slowdown in the final months kept St. Louis from reaching a level of carnage it hadn’t touched since 1995, when 204 were killed.
St. Louis beat out Memphis, Detroit, Baltimore, Rockford, and Chicago to become the most violent city in the United States in 2015.
The number of St. Louis homicides reached 188 in 2015, the highest number since 1995.
Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri-St Louis, says the Ferguson riots had nothing to do with the rise in violent crime in the area. Obviously, he is confused. The homicide chart clearly shows an increase after Michael Brown’s shooting death in August 2014.
For the record, the murders and violent crime are relegated to poor ethnic neighborhoods.
Here’s a more recent map of the violent crime in St. Louis – in the poor ethnic neighborhoods.
Via St. Louis Post Dispatch: