If you have lived in St. Louis for any length of time, you’ll be familiar with the “Top 10 most dangerous Cities” lists that are perennially reported on by the Post Dispatch in their never ending quest to harvest our clicks. It’s always a sure bet that this list will stir up argument in the r/stlouis subreddit, and I’ve read through enough of those threads that I can narrow them down into two main arguments:

Argument #1 states thatSt. Louis is being unfairly represented. Typically, these lists are put together by some previously unknown website who scrapes data from the FBI crime database, compiles it into a clickbait article, and then publishes it without a second thought. Saint Louis is at a disadvantage when it comes to the FBI data because our city is artificially small compared to other cities in the database. Due to the Great Divorce, as Saint Louis expanded westward, none of the newly created communities were included as part of our city. Instead, we remained a downtown district with relatively few residential neighborhoods. Crime is always bad downtown, and without a true representation of our residential neighborhoods to balance out the crime, our violent crime rate looks astronomical when, in fact, it’s fairly typical of a Midwestern city.

Argument #2 will say that the first argument is naïve and those who argue that point are just making excuses for a city which is terribly governed and completely overrun by criminals, murderers, and Democrats. Those who make argument #2 say that crime in Saint Louis is worse than most every other Midwestern city and that we deserve our position at the top of the most dangerous cities list.

So who is right?

I decided to take a look at the data and put these two arguments to the test. I compared two Midwestern cities, Saint Louis and Indianapolis (because the hoosiers in Indianapolis need to be taken down a notch). According to the FBI data, Saint Louis has a population of 317,095 and in 2015 had 5762 violent crimes occur within city limits. That gives us a violent crime rate (# violent crimes/100k citizens) of 1817.12. Indianapolis has a population of 863,675 and in 2015 had 11,124 violent crimes. This gives Indianapolis a lower crime rate of 1287.98. The first thing I did was to recalculate Saint Louis’ crime rate if our city limits were to be expanded west towards 170. In other words, what if Webster Groves, University City, Richmond Heights, Maplewood, and the rest of those tiny municipalities just to the west of Skinker were suddenly represented in Saint Louis City proper.

After tallying up those populations, along with their violent crimes, that gives Saint Louis an adjusted total population of 487,801 and in 2015 would give us 6915 violent crimes. Our newly calculated violent crime rate would then be 1417.58. By adding these municipalities, we would just barely be removed from the top 10 list.

At first glance, it looks like victory sorta belongs to argument #1. However, the second part to that argument states that our violent crime isn’t any worse than violent crime in other midwestern cities.

Is that true?

Indianapolis has a size of 368.1 sq. miles. Saint Louis only has a size of 66 sq. miles. What would happen if Indianapolis’ size was limited to 66 sq. miles and if we put the areas of highest crime right in the middle of the smaller Indianapolis, just as it appears Saint Louis is unfortunate enough to have had occurred?

In order to do this, I pulled up the 2015 murder maps of Saint Louis and Indianapolis. During 2015 in Saint Louis we had 188 murders. That gives us a murder rate of 59.3. In 2015, Indianapolis had 144 murders. That gives them a murder rate of 16.7.

I traced the outline of Saint Louis and placed that outline right square in the middle of the highest density of murders on that Indianapolis murder map. Compare this image With the Indianapolis murder map. I counted the number of murders within that 66 sq. mile border to be 67. Next, I took a look at the population density per zip code in order to estimate the population density of that entire area. I used zipatlas to get the population densities and I used this zip code map(http://www.zipmap.net/Indiana/Marion_County/Indianapolis_city_(balance).htm) to determine which zip codes lay in the 66 sq. mile area. This gave me an estimated population density of 3876.7 per sq. mile. Multiplying that by 66 sq. miles gives the area a total population of 255,860. With 67 murders among a population of 255,860, that gives Indianapolis an adjusted murder rate of 26.2.

This is higher than the original, but still comes nowhere near the Saint Louis murder rate. I suppose I could play around with the map and try to squeeze some more murders into the 66 sq. miles, but that seems disingenuous.

So which argument is more accurate?

Unsurprisingly, the answer is somewhere in the middle. It’s true that if we merge some county municipalities with Saint Louis City that we would no longer appear on those dreaded lists. This would be fantastic for our national image. However, North city is still a bloody hemorrhaging wound, and we cannot ignore the fact that we still have a terrible problem with violent crime. Just in case you’re curious, the murder rate in the worst three zip codes of North city is around 200 murders per 100k people. There’s definitely a problem.

Hopefully this was interesting! It wasn’t a perfect analysis and I welcome any questions about my methods or disagreements with my conclusions. I realize that a lot of people won’t be satisfied with my conclusions, but I hope that in the future we can try to meet somewhere in the middle. Saint Louis does have a problem with violent crime, but it’s also a great city that’s being misrepresented by negative clickbait articles which, I think it’s fair to say, we should all ignore.

EDIT:

Here’s a list of the municipalities I included in my second calculation:

Saint Louis City

Bellefontaine Nbrs

Bel-nor

Bel-ridge

Brentwood

Clayton

Country Club Hills

Flordell Hills

Hillsdale

Jennings

Maplewood

moline acres

Normandy

Northwoods

pagedale

Pine lawn

Richmond Heights

Riverview

rock hill

Shrewsbury

University City

Velda city

velda village hills

vinita park

webster groves

wellston