50 New St. Louis Police Officers Won't Have To Live In The City

ST. LOUIS, MO — St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson plans to waive residency requirements for 50 new police officers to combat under staffing at the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, she announced last week. Current law requires St. Louis police officers to live in the city for at least 7 years after they are hired.

“Public safety is my No. 1 priority. We have been running two Police Academy classes at a time, we started a cadet program, we have advertised, but we are still down between 130 to 150 officers on any given day,” Krewson said in a statement to the Post-Dispatch. “This is an issue of public safety. Waiving the residency requirement will help us broaden our recruiting efforts.”

Even with a waiver, police officers must still live within an hour of St. Louis.

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Critics have said granting waivers will mean the police force will be less connected to and invested in the communities they serve, but Police Chief John Hayden said he supports the measure.

"Today’s decision is a step toward replenishing our ranks so that we can provide greater safety, security, and service to our citizens," he said in a statement.

Even with sales tax-funded pay raises, the department has struggled to recruit and train enough officers as the city's population has dropped and violent crime has spiked over the past several years.

Last year St. Louis cracked its 25-year murder record. The city had been well behind where it was last year in terms of homicides, but a spate of killing is threatening that progress.

"Going into [last] Friday afternoon, we were 25 homicides down compared to last year, so we were trending in the right direction," Hayden said at a press conference last week.

But just yesterday, two women were shot in separate shootings in the south city — one on her lawn and the other on her front porch — and a triple shooting left one man dead Sunday night. Last Sunday, six people were fatally shot in their cars in multiple shootings across the city.

As of October 1, there have been 139 murder in St. Louis this year, police said.

Photo: Demonstrators confront St. Louis police officers while protesting the acquittal of former SLMPD officer Jason Stockley just over one year ago. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)