5 minutes with St. Louis police commanders
I was invited to observe the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department’s “CompStat” meeting Thursday before last.
It is a weekly gathering of command staff in which everyone reports on what happened during the preceding week, reviews the status of major projects, and fields questions from the top brass.
The May 22 meeting lasted more than 90 minutes, and could be captured only in its atmospherics in this short video.
Having to show up every week and stand before your peers and answer questions about the hard data from the week before keeps you on your toes. You might be able to finesse a week now or then. But I am sure it soon becomes clear who is working hard and who is not.
I served on the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners (1998-2001), and most of the commanders remembered me from that time, and I remembered them too.
They knew I was in the audience (and that I write for the Post-Dispatch and STLtoday.com) which may have influenced their presentations some — in the sense that they were happy talk about positive developments and initiatives.
And why not? There’s a lot of cool stuff going on.
Most of the meeting, though, was given over to the tough reality and grim specifics of crime in the community — even with the long term, positive trends.
But there was plenty of energy in the room — and a clear sense that the best way to fight crime is simply to outwork the bad guys.
Eddie Roth writes about education, social justice, public safety, transportation, legal affairs and historic preservation. He joined the Post-Dispatch editorial page in 2008 after six years as an editorial writer with the Dayton Daily News. But he is not new to St. Louis. Eddie grew up in Webster Groves and south St. Louis County. He's a lawyer who for many years practiced with a downtown firm, and was active in civic affairs, including serving a term on the St. Louis Police Board. He and his wife, Jeanne, and their three daughters, Emily, Julia and Alice, live in the Shaw Neighborhood.
When it comes to community organizing, he endorses Quentin Crisp's advice: Rather than keeping up with the Joneses, it's better to pull them down to your level. 
“You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.” -John Morley