The department provided the first update to its crime statistics webpage since December 2020 with a report that included crime totals for the city as well as for each neighborhood and police patrol area from the beginning of the year through June 24.
The move comes about a week after the Post-Dispatch published a story on the months-long delay in making crime totals and data accessible to the public online without people having to file and pay for a request through the Missouri Sunshine Law, which governs the release of public records.
The information released Monday remains limited and the department sees the update as a "temporary fix."
One limitation is that the public can't compare most crime totals to previous years. The department on Dec. 7 altered the way it provides crime numbers to the National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, to comply with a landmark change in national FBI reporting requirements.
NIBRS is designed to capture more detailed crime data and has a different way of counting crimes. In the new system, when multiple crimes are committed during one incident, each gets counted. Under the old system, only the most serious offense would be tallied.
St. Louis police remain unable to compare year-over-year crime statistics and are focusing on month-to-month comparisons, department spokeswoman officer Michelle Woodling told the Post-Dispatch this month.
Homicides down from last year
The one crime that can be easily compared is homicide, as it's always the most serious offense tracked.
The homicide data so far this year shows killings spiked early in 2021 compared with previous years, but the city has seen fewer killings year-over-year since May.
So far in 2021, St. Louis has had 92 homicides compared with 99 this time last year. This year's total is on pace with the average number of homicides the city has seen by the end of June for the last five years.
The numbers have improved compared with the first four months of the year. From January through April, St. Louis homicides were up 21% compared with the previous five years.
But from May through June 28, homicides were down 28% compared with the previous five-year average for those months.
Delays continue
Despite the crime totals published Monday, delays continue on two key goals for the department's switch to NIBRS: A more permanent "public portal" for crime data and certification to submit the data to the Missouri Highway Patrol.
The city has failed to report its crime statistics to the highway patrol since December, despite a 2001 Missouri law requiring all law enforcement agencies in the state to submit numbers to the agency. By law, departments that fail to comply could lose state or federal funding, though Gov. Eric Greitens in 2018 signed a bill waiving penalties until the end of this year.
The highway patrol makes crime totals available to the public online and submits the statistics to the FBI, which manages the nation's most comprehensive crime database.
The city has been preparing for the switch to NIBRS since at least 2017 and got a $1.2 million federal grant to complete the project. The department aimed to have its own public crime data portal launched last September and set a goal to submit crime data to the highway patrol in the new NIBRS format by last January, but contractor Optimum Technologies ran into "unforeseen delays," according to the department.
Work on the project continues, Woodling said in an email Monday.
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