One-On-One with St. Louis Police Chief, Robert J. Tracy

It’s little wonder why Mayor Tishaura Jones and the city’s Department of Personnel chose Robert J. Tracy as chief of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.

Jones in her effort to “reimagine” public safety was looking for someone with alternative views on police response programs that utilized other resources to address crime, such as mental health clinicians for crisis situations.

Tracy, 60, who holds a master’s degree in public administration and a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from SUNY, Empire State College has built an impressive portfolio of achievement. He has more than 30 years of law enforcement experience with the New York, Chicago, and Wilmington Delaware Police Departments.

He either created or led innovative police programs such as the “Firearms Suppression Division” which coordinated police tasks across several citywide units. In Chicago, Tracy held the “Crime Control Strategist” position and instituted strategies that helped reduce crime statistics. In Wilmington, he instituted a process that streamlined the department’s Intelligence-Based Policing methods.  

In December 2022, when announcing Tracy had been chosen out of 40 other applicants nationwide, Jones described the first chief hired from outside St. Louis City, as a “visible, accessible” chief, and a “trusted partner” who will implement alternative police response programs in the department.

Chief Tracy has officially held the position for nearly a year and three months. The St. Louis American had the opportunity to sit with Tracy for a one-on-one interview to ask about his accomplishments and remaining challenges as head of the city’s police department. Tracy frankly answered questions regarding his methodology; how he really feels about private entities paying a huge portion of his salary and those of officers who moonlight for them; how he plans to address shortages amongst his ranks; if it’s important to release videos related to crimes or police conduct in a timely manner and more. Tracy, with his characteristic Bronx, New York accent, answered our queries candidly, repeatedly emphasizing that “balance” is a major recipe in his operations.

St. Louis American: You’ve only been here a bit over a year so this may not be a fair question but what do you think you’ve accomplished and what more needs to be done?

Police Chief Robert J. Tracy: One of the things you need to do in a police department is teach everybody the mythology and expectations of the new chief…how we work together and most of all, community engagement. Without going to those community meetings, working together…we’re not going to have long-term sustainable success. I think I’m most proud of the way we’ve gotten back to those community meetings.

There’s been disruptions throughout the United States because the pandemic and then after George Floyd’s murder, we had civil unrest. We had to separate because of the pandemic and then we were somewhat divided because civil unrest didn’t allow us to get to those meetings because we were dealing with protests…we started to lose trust. The community and the police are one and we need to work together. When we see each other in calmness-not crisis-we can build trust, talk about issues and solve them together.

StLAmerican: Speaking of trust…when I was a kid in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, I remember cops walking the beat. Can we ever get back to that?

Tracy: I think we had a lot more cops back then but here’s another thing, people rate us on the timeliness of how we respond to 911 calls. Therefore, most of our time is spent responding to those calls. I’m trying to get back to a balance that gets officers out of their cars. I call it ‘in between calls for service?’ What are you doing when you’re waiting for a call for service? We have to figure out how we can divert other calls and let other people handle them who might not be a police officer.

StLAmerican: You mean mental health experts and people in other fields?

Tracy: Yes, but we still have to be a part of that. Even though we’re bringing them in to make sure we’re handling (situations) with better training and more thoughtfully so that things don’t go awry…we try to handle things as best as possible working with clinicians, but it still takes our resources.

StLAmerican: Moving on. There was an audit done in 2018 of a special unit within the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department that was rather damning. Six years later, only portions of that audit have been released to the public. Do you have any say over when the full audit can be released?

Tracy: That was addressed well before I was here. I review how our internal affairs and our force investigations unit are operating. The results of some of these things are up to the Sunshine lawyers, the city law department…as far as what they can and cannot release. I can only speak about what I’m doing now.

StLAmerican: So, you don’t have the power to say, ‘release the whole audit now?’

Tracy: No.

StLAmerican: When you were with the consulting firm in Chicago after the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald-an unarmed Black man-you said ‘the law enforcement community and the criminal justice system should try to get videos out as quickly as possible for transparency and to avoid compromising cases.’ Does that sentiment apply here in St. Louis?

Tracy: I’m not sure where I was when I said that but, I believe there’s a balance in what can and cannot be released. You want to make sure that when something happens, you don’t want to compromise an investigation. I don’t make the laws…but I also don’t want to release things right away that may make the police look positive or might cause concern…I try to stay consistent. What people have to understand is that the circuit attorney looks at this, we have a force investigation unit that looks at things and we have a U.S. Attorney who looks at these things. I would check with them to make sure I’m not compromising an active criminal or investigative investigation. 

StLAmerican: I ask because I heard the video from the Central VPA high school shooting has yet to be released. Do you have any say on that particular video?

Tracy: It’s still an investigation that’s being completed.That has hundreds and hundreds of hours of video. Here’s the thing though, Central VPA will be a textbook example of how police should respond. Listen, we lost some lives…some people were injured…there are families that are grieving but if the officers hadn’t responded the way they did that person was going to cause more people to be hurt and/or killed.

In the Uvalde (Texas) school shooting, people said police didn’t do the right thing. Here’s a case where if we released the videos, people would say ‘yes, they were trained for it and they were heroes.’ But I still can’t put that out until we’re done with the investigation. Even when we’re ready to release it-which is going to happen shortly-we have to think about the trauma that’s going to be re-introduced in the community, to the students, the teachers and police officers that were involved. So, it’s not as easy as ‘here you go, here’s the tape?’ It’s also what will we create with that?

StLAmerican: Of your $275,000 salary, $100,000 is provided by the nonprofit, St. Louis Police Foundation. Additionally, some of your officers are also moonlighting for a private police company. How do you feel about private money paying for what is supposed to be publicly funded city police services?

Tracy: Let’s start with the salary. They did several national searches to get a police chief. What they wanted to do was try to be competitive in bringing in the right talent. Baltimore, Philadelphia…you look at a lot of police departments that have the same type of challenges we have in St. Louis and they’re paying upward of $300,000. They had an agreement with the city and the foundation to bring in the best talent possible. I had to go through an interview process and was among four final finalists. That salary wasn’t for Chief Robert Tracy, it was for whoever was going to be the new police chief. But nothing was ever asked of me because of that foundation money. I’m not compromised in my position, my integrity, or my character to serve this city because of a competitive salary. I answer to the mayor, to the constituency and the community.

When it comes to secondary policing; it is not uncommon in every city that I’ve worked with where we’ve had police officers hired by private entities to supplement their security in the area. If you go to any stadium, they do hire police officers.

StLAmerican: Yes, but we’re not talking stadiums; we’re talking neighborhoods. What do you think of the perception of a pay-to-play system where private entities may be prioritized over say, poorer neighborhoods?

Tracy: What you must do is make sure their primary job-which is here-is taken care of first, then we regulate how many hours they can work outside their primary job which is the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. It’s about monitoring it so people don’t feel like they can be compromised with a private force. 

I make sure we have balanced policing throughout the city. If you look-even in our first year-we’ve had progress. If you look at our crime statistics last year, we’ve had some of the biggest reductions in crime both in the North and South patrols-the 1st and 2nd and also the 5th and 6th Districts. I can extend officer’s hours or additional shifts throughout the city so if there are incidents going on in Walnut Park or O’Fallon, I afford the commanders of those districts to use discretionary overtime so we can make sure those neighborhoods are not forgotten and the numbers are showing that.

But we also have to make sure we have resources downtown. We have to make sure we don’t lose businesses…that is the economic engine of our city. The rest of the city will fail if we lose downtown. Tourism, conventions, sports teams…all that revenue helps keep the government running and it creates jobs for everybody in the city and gives the government the ability to create programs for the whole city. We all rely on each other.

StLAmerican: In 2018, the former Circuit Attorney, Kim Gardner published a list of 28 officers whom she did not trust to put on the stand. Some of those officers were involved in questionable shootings. I know this happened before your tenure, but have you reviewed that list and come to any conclusions regarding those officers?

Tracy: Well, there’s a thing called the ‘Brady List’ where the credibility of officers who did not commit policy or other violations that rose to the level of termination. That list has to be disclosed to a prosecutor if an officer is going to testify. I did not see the due process of how they met any type of list…I’ve never seen anything like that from a circuit or district attorney’s office. This was outside the definition of a Brady List. I did not know the criteria of how they got on that list. What I do know is the officers must be held accountable for their actions. We’re having discussions with the new circuit attorney regarding the Brady list and we’re taking it case-by-case.

StLAmerican: What’s your thoughts on the conversations in Jefferson City about bringing your police department under state control?

Tracy: Well, I’ve already been there last year testifying as to why we should stay under local control. I don’t know state control, never been under state control. Everywhere we’ve had success has been under local control. I’m for local control. I think the mayor who is in charge of this city should be in charge of her police chief. I think the voters would like to have oversight over their police department and I agree with them.

Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.