Rosenfeld: Is local control to blame for the city's homicide problem?

The St. Louis Police Officers Association, the police union, supports the bill, as does the Ethical Society of Police, which represents Black officers. Both groups have called local control of the police department a “failed experiment.” The union claims that homicide rates have worsened since local control resumed in 2013.

City officials argue that SB 78 would only make matters worse. According to Dan Isom, the interim public safety director and former police chief, “Removing local control will make us less safe, less accountable and less able to serve and protect our highest priority, the residents of St. Louis.”

Crime rates move up and down over time for lots of reasons, and it is difficult to isolate a single cause from all of the other influences occurring at or about the same time. It is possible, however, to evaluate the factual claim that homicide increased after local control resumed in 2013.

The graph above displays the St. Louis homicide rate from 1985 through 2022. It shows two major increases in the homicide rate during the past 40 years. The first occurred in the early 1990s. The homicide rate increased by 56% between 1990 and 1993. The second increase began in 2014, the year after the city resumed control of the police department. The homicide rate nearly doubled from 2014 to 2020 before falling during the next two years. While St. Louis experienced sizable increases in homicide when the police department was controlled by the state, a large increase also took place immediately after local control was restored.

Again, determining whether the return of local control caused the recent homicide increase is challenging. We can’t run experiments to see what would have happened to the homicide rate had local control not resumed. Fortunately, however, something of a natural experiment does exist.

The Kansas City Police Department remained under state control after local control was restored in St. Louis in 2013. If local control is the reason the St. Louis homicide increased after 2013, then the homicide rate in Kansas City should not have been affected. If the Kansas City homicide rate also rose after 2013, however, that would suggest that something other than local control of the police department was behind the increase in St. Louis. The graph tells the story.

It turns out that the Kansas City homicide rate also went up after local control of the St. Louis police department was restored. The average annual homicide increase in Kansas City between 2013 and 2022 (6.7%) was nearly as great as the increase in St. Louis (8.2%).

And, although the homicide rate in Kansas City is lower than the rate in St. Louis, that has always been the case during the past 40 years, regardless of who controlled the police department. These results do not support the idea that returning local control of the police department to St. Louis was behind the homicide rate increase that took place shortly afterward.

I more formally evaluated the hypothesis that local control of the police department boosted the homicide rate using a method that tests the statistical significance of a change in the level and trend (movement over time). The test reveals no significant increase in either the level or trend of the St. Louis homicide rate when compared to the change in the level and trend of the Kansas homicide rate after 2013.

St. Louis has a new police chief, Robert Tracy. He has asked the Legislature to give him a chance to respond to the city’s crime problems before deciding whether to abolish local control of his department.

This is a reasonable request. If local control is not responsible for the city’s homicide problem, then state control is not the solution.

Richard Rosenfeld is the distinguished curators’ professor emeritus of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.