Police chiefs address safety concerns for west St. Louis County residents
Mallory Thomas and Kevin S. Held
ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. – Residents in west St. Louis County met with police chiefs from a number of jurisdictions Wednesday night throughout a neighborhood safety briefing.
Round 100 individuals from Ballwin, Chesterfield, Des Peres, Ellisville, Eureka, Manchester, and Wildwood confirmed as much as the assembly to listen to a variety of subjects involving medicine, mall safety, and crime stats.
“A few issues we’ve added. We talked about flock license plate readers. Our metropolis invested and now there are 5 cameras on the mall property and that’s been a giant deterrent,” stated Des Peres Police Chief Eric Corridor.
Residents additionally heard extra concerning the first responder scarcity taking place throughout the area.
“We have now the Route 66 Explorer Program between us Ellisville and Manchester. We partnered up collectively for that,” Ballwin Chief Doug Schaeffler stated. “We’ll take individuals age 14 via 21 and make them police explorers. Get them concerned in legislation enforcement. They work with us, they do issues for us, get them uncovered.”
Police chiefs and captains from every municipality stated crime charges are down in comparison with final yr. One space the place St. Louis County is seeing a rise in crime includes medicine.
“Fiscal yr ‘20, we seized 182 kilos of fentanyl; fiscal yr ‘21, 398 kilos of fentanyl; final yr, 671 kilos of fentanyl; and thru June of this yr, we’ve already eclipsed that,” DEA Assistant Particular Agent in Cost Colin Dickey stated. “We’re already as much as 680 kilos and we nonetheless have three months of reporting.”
Dickey stated a giant manner the DEA is working to fight the drug drawback is educating the general public at conferences just like the one Wednesday evening and instructing children concerning the risks of fentanyl.
