Four people have now been murdered this year in the city of St. Louis as authorities try to reduce the number of homicides in the area with increased street patrol and its new Violent Offender Unit (VOU).
None of the murders this year have been solved and appear to be on pace with numbers from the past two years.
By the end of January of 2008 and the previous year, nine people had been killed in the city. The first quarter of 2008 saw an increase of four compared to 2007.
Other crimes appear to be the catalysts of the murders this year. The first fatality this year n a man known for attempts at abating crime n came after apparent car theft and auto burglary attempts. Terry Darris was killed in the 2900 block of Locust while visiting members of his motorcycle club.
Another shooting death of two men sitting in a car at Schnuck’s supermarket appeared to be a drug deal gone bad.
It’s unclear why a young man was shot while sitting on his porch on Minnesota St. in South St. Louis.
City Police Chief Daniel Isom recently said that many homicides are brought on by random disputes including ones at school as opposed gang violence, which he said have subsided into looser, unorganized crime factions. The concerned chief also said friends and people who live on the same block and other in other binding proximities sometimes band together committing crimes or having each other’s back.
VOU, the new, unprecedented collaboration among police, state and federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies, will aggressively investigate, arrest and prosecute the most dangerous criminals in the community.
The 31-person unit will collaborate with the department’s Homicide Division, based in an undisclosed police property where they will use computer models to help compile crime data to assist their efforts.
“The VOU will afford us the opportunity to track and quickly arrest the most heartless criminals; this is not about those citizens who have previously been convicted of a crime but have now turned their lives around,” Chief Isom said displaying sound understanding of the predominately good community.
“It’s about repeat offenders, who, arrest after arrest, jail sentence after prison sentence, continue to terrorize our neighborhoods with their criminal activity.”
Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce said, “It’s time for justice.”