Missouri Lawmaker Calls For State of Emergency In Saint Louis

ST. LOUIS, MO — Sate Sen. Jamilah Nasheed is calling on Missouri's new governor, Mike Parson, to declare a state of emergency in St. Louis after what she calls an epidemic of gun violence in recent months.

"On Monday, June 25, police responded to reports of gunfire near the 2500 block of Dodier Street and found a man dead in the street. Earlier that day, gunshots on I-70 caused a three-car crash on one of our state's busiest highways. Meanwhile, another man was shot to death outside of a family pizza restaurant just north of downtown, in broad daylight," Nasheed told the governor in a letter dated June 26. "All of these fatal incidents occurred in a single day, a fact that is unfortunately all too common."

"To date, there have been 79 homicides in the St. Louis area in 2018," she continued. "By the time you receive this letter, that number will almost certainly have gone up."

Nasheed said people are fed up and want to see a change in the city.

"Forbes has named us the second most dangerous city in the country for violent crime. Others have proclaimed us the fourth worst place to live," she said. "This is not a picture we can continue to present to the world and expect our city to grow and prosper."

Last year St. Louis cracked its 25-year murder record. Per capita, the city ranks third for homicides in the United States and first for non-fatal shootings, according to data from the FBI and Major Cities Chiefs Association.

Missouri repealed a law in 2007 that allowed for longer, more comprehensive background checks, and state lawmakers passed a law in 2016 — overriding the veto of then-Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon — loosening the state's gun laws and making it easier for domestic abusers to obtain guns.

Cassandra Kercher Crifasi, a researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said those laws led to a spike in murders and 70 percent more guns making their way to criminals across the state.

“It’s breaking my heart,” Nasheed said. “We have to figure out how we can solve the problem of gun violence in the City of St. Louis and how we as elected officials can roll up our sleeves and say enough is enough.”

State and local lawmakers, as well as federal law enforcement, have taken some steps to combat the rash of violence in the city. Former Gov. Eric Greitens redeployed Missouri Highway Patrol officers to allow local police to focus more on neighborhood policing, and Federal gun prosecutions have more than doubled in St. Louis over the last year.

U.S. prosecutors said they are focusing on cases linked to violent crimes and geographically targeting areas of the city that disproportionately see high rates of homicide. Federal prosecutor Jeff Jensen said crime rates have decreased by more than a quarter in those specific areas and by about 6 percent in the city overall since the crackdown.

Nasheed told Fox 2 St. Louis that she isn't calling for "a military force to come in and invade our community." Rather, she's asked for more community resources, especially in schools, "to begin to deal with the young folks who have trauma each and every day as a result of seeing bodies lying in the street."

"The gun violence epidemic in the City of St. Louis is a public health crisis and must be treated as such," Nasheed told the governor.

More than 30,000 Americans are killed by guns every year and twice that number are injured, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 13,000 are murdered. The rest take their own lives or are victims of shooting accidents. Almost half are children or young adults.

There have been 79 murders in St. Louis in 2018, 11 fewer than this time last year. St. Louis Police Chief John Hayden said he would welcome more resources, but that he believes "we are trending in the right direction."

Read Sen. Nasheed's full letter to Gov. Parson here.

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