Forget it, Jake . . .

Photo credit: Buphoff

Cities all across the U.S. have the same tired local news format: reporting what they deem news, weather, and sports, lame attempts at humor, one or two feel-good stories, and the annoying happy talk at the end of the broadcast. St. Louis is different only in that most of its news portion is a bloody police blotter of violence and mayhem. They still throw in the feel good stories and the lame humor, only it's almost always after you've heard some story like the one a few nights ago about the home health care services owner who shot three business associates then killed himself. The shooter's son reportedly said he heard something on the news but didn't think his father was involved because “I mean, it’s St. Louis. There’s shootings all the time.” The boy knows his city. On the night of June 11 there were eighteen people shot and one stabbed in seven separate incidents. The local news broadcasts here are rarely anything but depressing.

Since I arrived in St. Louis early this month there have been some twenty-eight shootings and six murders. I want to make it clear that I had nothing to do with them . . . but I'm not entirely sure I can.

The FBI ranks St. Louis as the fourth most dangerous city in the US, based on violent crime and murder statistics--but that includes only St. Louis proper. The numbers come down considerably when the entire metro area is considered. I'm writing from Frontenac, for instance, where, at least between 2000 and 2011, there were no murders or rapes, only a very few assaults, and some burglaries, though one would think it an excellent area to burgle inasmuch as it's among the top-twenty richest communities in the U.S. But it is well policed and far from the inner city; safe, like Cherry Hills Village--south of Denver, CO--which comes in at number six of our nation's richest cities. Unsurprisingly, Cherry Hills Village's crime statistics are practically nonexistent compared to those of Denver. This pattern is repeated all over the country. The rich wouldn't live here if it was a high crime area. They can live anywhere they choose. Many of those in the high crime area wish they had such freedom of choice.

One more thing about Frontenac: it's virtually all Caucasian. The African-Americans you'll see in this area are almost all service people: house cleaning, home health care, gardening, and the like. I'm staying with my uncle who has round-the-clock aides supplied by a local agency. All nine women who care for him at various times are African-American. They are caring, conscientious and hard-working. The agency, which charges $19.75 per man-hour pays it's health care workers an average (and I'm estimating here, based on my conversations with them) of $9.50 an hour. They have no paid leave, and no opportunity to get health insurance through their employer. This means that, from one client alone, the agency grosses about $5330.00 a week and pays out $2240.00, leaving them some $3290.00 a week to cover other overhead and profit. Clearly it wouldn't take may other clients to do very well indeed in this business; and it's equally clear that the workers are grossly underpaid for the important services they provide. Naturally, these workers, most of them young, single mothers, struggle to get by. Their stories would make you cry if you were not laughing with them. Most of them have the gift of gab and use humor, gallows humor, as an emotional buffer. But the management is doing very well, thank you. I wonder, do they live in the suburbs or in St. Louis?

In talking with these women, naturally I hear the stories of St. Louis, not Frontenac. They have all been devastated by violence and a rampant addiction culture-- mainly meth and various opiates, but it even casino gambling figures in. One worker has lost two siblings to death by shooting, and one to death from AIDS. Another spent $10,000 over three months on a gambling addiction in a casino that had no crisis of conscience in taking her hard-earned money (though God forbid that she should count cards.) True, that's mostly on her. But why do we grease the path toward foolish choices and hence poverty in this country? It's good for someone, surely. I wonder, who?  Fortunately she woke up and broke her casino habit before she broke herself. But as a nation we haven't. We are taking a tremendous gamble, at the cost of lives, that these social and economic disparities can continue and leave us somehow unaffected. The stories I've heard are tragic and often gruesome, but, "I mean, it's St. Louis. There's shootings all the time."

"Forget it, Jake; it's Chinatown."