Talk:Crime in St. Louis

No difference

There is no difference between the content of this article and that of the section in the main St. Louis, Missouri article. what does this exist? --Not a dog 13:32, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Not skewed

Crime data is not skewed. For example New York City data only includes crime committed in New York City, not New Jersey or Long Island. L.A. data includes crime committed in the city of L.A., not in L.A. County. Crime data for Gary, Indiana includes crime committed in Gary, Indiana, not crimes committed in Chicago. St. Louis crime data includes crime committed in the City of St. Louis, not in St. Louis county or East St. Louis, Illinois. Please explain why you think the data is skewed, because the reason given in the article is NOT valid. J. Crocker 23:54, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Agree with J. Crocker, there should not be a disclaimer after the Morgan Quitno stating that they are somehow invalid. Perhaps the article can mention the controversy surrounding the rankings, however the reason given in the article is not sufficient and should be removed. Astuishin 00:53, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

For J. Crocker and Astuishin, please read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:United_States_cities_by_crime_rate and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Morgan_Quitno_Press. Power Society (talk) 06:58, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I also agree with Jcrocker as stated above. The fact that this page and the crime section in the St. Louis page are written in a way to downplay the violent crime statistics in St. Louis is a serious embarrassment to Wikipedia. The facts are facts and St. Louis has the highest violent crime rate in America. It doesn't matter if there are communities near St. Louis that are much safer; we aren't talking about them, we are talking about the city of St. Louis. I know it is difficult for those of you from near STL to accept the fact that your city has such high crime rates, but trying to write it off as 'controversial' is irresponsible and delusional. There should be no beating around the bush on this. Facts are facts and St. Louis is the single most dangerous city in America. Period. 134.48.241.189 (talk) 00:30, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

This afternoon, I reverted the deletion of the lead statement regarding controversy regarding the rankings; there was no edit summary and no reasoning provided for the deletion of the statement from the lead in this section (although I note that there is discussion here in favor of deletion of all statements, that is not what the most recent edit did). In defense of including the controversy statements, the body includes cited statements from criminologists and local leaders regarding how the rankings can be misleading as to the true likelihood of criminal victimization. This was done to address the concern raised by User:Astuishin from 2006. The page does not downplay the violent crime statistics (it presents them early, in fact), and it presents them in a neutral way, without hyperbole. To not include these cited statements would violate one of the five pillars of Wikipedia, to write in a neutral point of view (see WP: NPOV). Finally, User:134.48.241.189, making statements that your opponents are "delusional" and "irresponsible" violates one of the five pillars of Wikipedia, to remain civil in discussions (see WP: Civility). If you (anonymous editors or others) wish to remove the statements regarding the controversy of the ranking of St. Louis, please post a notice at the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard to request comment. I might also suggest posting a notice on the WP: WikiProject Missouri and WP: WikiProject St. Louis talk pages. poroubalous (talk) 21:54, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

References and citations

This article as well as the main st. louis page has some pretty gaping citations problems. For instances in the second paragraph it says: Historically, St. Louis has been a de-facto segregated city. As an outsider, I have know way of verifying this statement; simply from the my general knowledge of major American cities this is probably a legitimate statement however it provides no facts or citations to support it and therefore is unverifiable, perhaps the person who wrote this can cite a source for its information. Astuishin 21:26, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to cut social issues and expand focus on crime

First idea: I propose to cut the social issues section of this article and rename the article "Crime in St. Louis, Missouri" for the following reasons:

1. Many/most other city articles that deal with crime are named "Crime in Chicago" or "Crime in New York City" and it stands that we should seek consistency for this topic
2. No other city sub-articles include a "social issues" page
3. The social issues listed (pollution and healthcare) lack focus and are not substantial enough (i.e. they have no references and are not particularly notable) to stand as articles on their own; segregation (which was once a social issue that was part of this article) deserves to be part of an African Americans in St. Louis, Missouri article
4. The issue of crime in St. Louis often focuses on heated issues such as the city's murder rate and publications relating to St. Louis (e.g. CQ Press's America's Safest and Most Dangerous Cities), making it notable.

Second idea: I also would like to suggest that this article include information about crime in the Greater St. Louis area, given that:

1. Most of the surrounding cities and counties lack "Crime in ..." articles of their own but are substantial in size (St. Louis County is more than three times larger in population than the politically separate St. Louis City)
2. These counties and cities often are considered part of St. Louis as a region. *That being said, it should be abundantly clear what is and is not information relating to St. Louis City proper.

Thoughts? poroubalous (talk) 02:30, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I redid the article using updated data and crime stats I pulled from the UCR; I also culled crime reports for 67 municipalities in STL County and compared their total to the city (which was a huge pain). Still need to finish the references and insert cite templates for a few things, but otherwise it's close to being done. Also, I will move the article to "Crime in St. Louis, Missouri" at the end of tonight if there are no objections, and long-term we should create LGBT history in St. Louis, Missouri and African Americans in St. Louis, Missouri to incorporate the segregation and healthcare reform policies that were part of this article. poroubalous (talk) 16:28, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Moved the article to Crime in St. Louis, Missouri poroubalous (talk) 00:12, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

"City Limits" (vs Metro) Crime Rankings Widely Discredited.

The "City Limits" rankings have been widely discredited because city limits encircle wildly varying core portions of their metro areas city to city. St. Louis city is only the inner 1/10 of its metro area, whereas San Antonio city limits encircle 70% of its metro area, including nearly all low crime suburbs. So the "city" ranking pretends to define your danger level but does nothing of the sort. An actual fair comparison of one's safety would be to rank the inner 1/10 of the St. Louis Metro vs. the inner 1/10 of the San Antonio metro area. Or ALL of the St. Louis Metro area vs. ALL of San Antonio Metro area. These comparisons are apples to apples, because Metro Area boundaries are defined by the same rules consistently by the Federal government. At the full metro level, St. Louis ranks safer than San Antonio (95 vs. 78). I suspect at the inner 1/10 core of the metro area level, St. Louis would also rank safer than San Antonio, since most metro areas are configured similarly wrt lower crime suburbs around higher crime older core areas. If San Antonio's core was actually safer than the St. Louis core, then San Antonio suburbs would need to be far far more dangerous than St. Louis suburbs to generate San Antonio's less safe metro crime ranking. So you are probably safer in both downtown and suburban areas of St. Louis than corresponding areas of San Antonio, yet the "city" ranking shows the opposite -- only because it does not normalize out the effects of varying city limits. With this flawed methodology, a city could lower the danger level for it citizens, simply by extending arbitrary political boundary city limits, as San Antonia has done, without changing its crime fighting apparatus at all. But that doesn't work at the metro ranking level, because cities don't define their metro boundaries -- the federal government does consistently.

So I suggest removing the "most dangerous cities" references altogether. If you insist on a crime ranking section, use the Metro Area Ranking -- which does a much better job at actually correlating with danger levels metro to metro since it compares apples to apples with regard to the boundary definitions of the ranked entities. Here is the link: http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2013/2014_MetroCrimeRateRankings%28LowtoHigh%29.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gary Kreie (talk • contribs) 03:51, 17 September 2014 (UTC)