APM Reports



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St. Louis cops are hiding key details about homicide cases from the public
by Rachel Lippmann, Tom Scheck, Shahla Farzan and Jennifer Lu



2020 was a bad year for killings in St. Louis.



The city nearly broke a 30-year-old record for the number of homicides in a year. It had the highest homicide rate among the nation’s large cities. Yet as killings have increased from 2018 through 2020, the percentage of homicide cases closed by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department has declined. In 2020, detectives solved only a third of the city’s homicides.



With a growing number of killings going unsolved, the police department has shielded critical information from the public.



For months, St. Louis Public Radio and APM Reports sought data from the department to better understand how well St. Louis police solve homicides. Under Missouri’s public records law, we asked for data about each case, including victim name, age, race, location of the crime and whether an arrest was made.



The police department released some data, but has repeatedly refused to provide a critical piece of information that would help the public understand how well detectives do their jobs: whether the police solved the case.



As a result, APM Reports has filed a lawsuit against the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department for violating Missouri’s open records law.



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