Yes, St. Louis is becoming a safer place.

Eddie Roth is Chief Performance Officer for the City of St. Louis. He was a member of the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners from 1998 to 2001

Alex Ihnen, of nextSTL.com, asks: Is the city of St. Louis becoming a safer place?" The answer, decidedly, is "yes."

Crime reduction is Mayor Francis Slay's top priority. He believes, with good reason, that St. Louis steadily and significantly has reduced crime (especially violent crime). He also believes crime remains unacceptably high, and that the St. Louis can do better -- and that THE CITY IS poised for dramatic additional reductions of crime.

The Mayor brought IBM to town last spring to help us improve coordination and communication between the public and agencies that make up the city's criminal justice system - police, prosecutors, courts, corrections, probation, parole and neighborhood stabilization - agencies supported by taxpayers in the amount of nearly $250 million per year. He appointed Sam Dotson, a police captain, as director of city operations to ensure that all city services are viewed through the lens of public safety. He hired me in August as chief performance officer to help implement the recommendations in the IBM report (PDF).