St. Louis-City of Danger

The city of St. Louis, fresh on the heels of a World Series victory in baseball, apparently has a serious issue with violent crime, earning the dubious title, as America’s “most dangerous city,” as selected by Morgan Quitno Press, which publishes an annual report of America’s most dangerous, as well as, safest cities.

For me, an outsider, St. Louis would seem to be an idyllic city. Located on the banks of the mighty Mississippi, the place rhapsodized by the likes of Mark Twain and others and settled neatly in the center of America’s heartland, the city has been overrun by violent crime, recently. Since 2004, the violent crime rate has risen 20 percent.

While watching the Series with my son, Mark, who had passed through St. Louis over the summer on a nationwide hitchhiking odyssey, he mentioned that St. Louis was a “pit.” When queried, he just said the city was a “dump, with nothing going on.” Granted, his take is anecdotal, but the statistics from the report seem to bear out that there’s not much going on in St. Louis, but murder and mayhem. I never would have guessed it? The Midwest is in fact, where danger lies. Boston (31st) fared better, but New York (at 139) was a real surprise to me, a much safer place than say, Tampa, Florida (at 24).