On Oct. 20, St. Louis Alderman Cara Spencer of the 20th Ward sent a simple request to the St. Louis Police Department.

“I am requesting Shot Spotter data for the Gravois Park, Dutchtown (3rd District only) and Marine Villa neighborhoods YTD, month by month to compare where we are this year over where we were last year,” she wrote in an email. The note was copied to an aide who works for Mayor Francis Slay.

“I am especially interested in looking at August, September and soon October of this year to see what sort of spike we may be seeing in gunfire in our communities and people are reporting just an absolute ton of gunfire.”

What Spencer and others soon found out is that the ShotSpotter technology had been turned off since July. The Cherokee Street area alderman’s email spurred a flurry of communication, finger-pointing and blame-shifting between the department run by Police Chief Sam Dotson and the administration of the longest-serving mayor in the city’s history. I obtained the records through a Sunshine Law request to the mayor’s office. They show a level of management dysfunction that some had feared when voters in 2012 returned control of the police department to the city.