SITE OVERVIEW ♦ ST. LOUIS COUNTY | MISSOURI
Target Area: Castle Point Neighborhood • Population: 2,932
Fiscal Agent: St. Louis County Police Department
Research Partner: Southern Illinois University
Crime Concerns: Violence, gang activity and drug sales
BCJI Funding Year: 2017 Planning and Implementation
Neighborhood Profile
About one-third of the residents of St. Louis County, live in unincorporated areas whose municipal functions, including police, are provided by St. Louis County. The inner-ring suburban Castle Point Neighborhood is one of these areas and has one of the highest violent crime rates in the county. Since the civil disturbance that followed the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, also located in the northern part of the county, the challenges of communities like these is clearer than ever: racial segregation, concentrated poverty, high unemployment, and generally poor perception of governmental legitimacy by disadvantaged populations.
Ninety-six percent of the housing in Castle Point is small single-family homes, yet more than a third of these buildings are vacant. Approximately 37 percent of the households fall below the poverty line, and the child poverty rate for the area stands at 50 percent. The entire Castle Point Neighborhood lies within the federally designated Promise Zone, and the St. Louis County Planning Department has identified far North County as a high priority for housing and community development funding. Recently, multiple agencies have built centers in the area to bring jobs and increase access to public transportation.
The Castle Point Neighborhood is a black market for drugs, especially crystal meth and heroin, controlled primarily by a gang from the nearby Spanish Lake area that operates in abandoned vacant homes. In a survey of residents in high crime areas in St. Louis County, residents in the Castle Point Neighborhood felt significantly less safe, had less trust in police procedural justice and were less willing to cooperate with police.
Planning Process
The St. Louis County’s BCJI project will work to strengthen police-community relations, provide services such as job opportunities and counseling to juvenile residents, and improve the physical environment. The team has four overarching goals:
- Reduce violent crime: Law enforcement and partners aim to lower assaults with firearms, the number of drug and gang related offenses, and opportunity for crime involving vacant/abandoned properties.
- Reduce residents’ fear of crime: The team will increase the feeling of safety for residents both in their homes and in the community, including decreasing the rate of victimization.
- Increase collective efficacy: The team will work to attract more residents to community meetings and events and build collective efficacy.
- Improve police-community relations: The team will work to increase trust, police legitimacy and residents’ willingness to cooperate.
The BCJI team will increase law enforcement directed patrol within hot spots, and the police and a local not-for-profit neighborhood development agency will partner to improve the physical environment, including new pedestrian level streetlights on streets with high levels of crime activity, traffic barriers as a tool against gang drive-by shootings and assaults, and crosswalks and signage near the local elementary school. Partners will provide job and life skills training for local at-risk youth with projects that create art on abandoned houses in the community.
Other Key Partners
St. Louis County Public Works, SLCPD Police Athletic League, Riverview Gardens School District, Compliance and Accountability Program (CAPS), St. Louis County Economic Development Program, CPN Foundation, Street Light District, neighborhood leader Sharon Jackson, Better Family Life, Beyond Housing, St. Louis ArtWorks, St. Louis County 4th District Councilwoman Rochelle Gray, St. Louis County Office of Community Development, St. Louis County Parks Department and the St. Louis County Problem Properties Unit
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