Some city leaders had an easier time than others at last night’s public safety town hall.
The event, which went down at the Urban League and was so packed as to require multiple overflow rooms, saw six of the City of St. Louis’ top elected leaders answer pre-selected questions from the public in a conversation (of sorts) moderated by Ward 10 Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard.
On the one hand, in terms of the night’s ease, there was Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore, who touted his first six months in office, comparing himself favorably to his predecessor Kim Gardner, whose office he said many believed "had stopped playing its vital role in the criminal justice system."
“I do think that our office stepping in and effectively prosecuting violent crime has had a direct impact in saving lives,” he said.
Gore also talked about bringing new hires into his office, clearing a case backlog and beefing up a diversion program.
On the other hand there was Public Safety Director Charles Coyle.
Things had been going smoothly enough the first hour or so of the town hall when Coyle got a question about the safety of the City Justice Center, which saw a spate of deaths last year. as well as a hostage situation and a lack of medical care for detainees in dire need.
Coyle began by saying that problems in the city exist in the jail, and vice versa. It was when he said, "The largest number of deaths were from natural causes," that he began to lose the crowd, many of whom openly laughed at the statement.
Coyle's task was no doubt made more difficult by the presence in the audience of several members of Freedom Community Center, a criminal justice reform organization, though the crowd writ large didn't exactly seem eager to come to his aid. (Mike Milton, Freedom Community Center’s founder, has been a critic of jail operations and recently quit its oversight board with a strongly worded letter.)
At one point, Coyle engaged in back and forth with FCC member Tracy Stanton over the number of people currently incarcerated at the jail. Coyle insisted it was around 600. Stanton said it was closer to 900 as of January 1, around the time that the jail's daily tracking public system went offline.
Members of the audience shouted to Coyle about water being shut off to cells, inadequate food, suicides and the jail commissioner needing to be fired.
"They don't want to take care of these people when they come in," said an elderly woman standing near Coyle.
At some point, LJ Punch, a trauma surgeon on the panel with the elected leaders, intervened.
"I can't do this. These are human beings," said Punch. "As a physician and as a community leader, this is not OK.”
Referring to Coyle, Punch said, "You don't have the proper forum. People aren't able to make their concerns be heard."
Aldermanic President Megan Ellyia Green won back a portion of the room’s good will when she promised to schedule a Public Safety committee hearing where people concerned about the jail can make their thoughts known.
That was one of many instances last night in which Green seemed to connect adroitly with the audience. In general she connected issues like red light cameras, expired temp tags and traffic calming measures to specific board of aldermen actions, but also spoke more personally on topics like curbing domestic violence in the city.
If Gore had the easiest time facing the public last night, then it was Police Chief Robert Tracy who got off the easiest.
"One hundred and fifty-eight is progress, not a celebration,” Tracy said of last year's homicide tally, down drastically from 2022.
The big issue of the night for the top city’s cop was reckless driving — everyone’s reckless driving, that is, except his own department’s. (A question about the spate of police SUV crashes was reportedly on the list of items to be discussed, but alas, it never came up.)
Tracy said that two of the biggest complaints he hears from residents at community meetings are about dangerous drivers and the ubiquity of expired tags. He insisted the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department is doing something about this, citing the more than 32,000 moving violations the department gave out last year in addition to 7,166 summonses for vehicles without proper registration.
Green, for her part, said that she wanted to see the city and state make it easier to register vehicles and renew plates so that police resources can be reserved for people who are the real problem — those putting fake plates on their cars and truly trying to evade the law.
"If it becomes more of the norm that you need to have your tags on your vehicle, then the folks who are just lazy start to get compliant because they realize there might actually be repercussions," Green said. "Which makes it easier for Tracy and his officers to actually go after the folks with the fake plates."
The most surprising part of the town hall, aside from the long, and at times contentious back and forth over the jail, was just how frequently cars and reckless driving surfaced as a topic of concern.
"In St. Louis, you can't drive two blocks without seeing a bumper, a headlight, a fender," said James Clark, vice president of public safety and community response for the Urban League. He’d been asked a question about how to stop domestic violence.
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