**LEAD STORY**
There was a time, in the not so distant past, that life as being a police officer in East St. Louis, Illinois, was like a sentence to purgatory. For those readers who have never heard of the city of East St. Louis, it is a city in southern Illinois that once had a population of almost 70,000 people. About 20 years ago, the city developed very serious financial difficulties. Today, it has a population of about 38,000. The financial situation was so bad that it was once the subject of a CBS 60 Minutes report.
In the past, officers received their paychecks very erratically. Sometimes going six weeks without being paid. For ten years, new hiring was frozen. Police cars broke down and were not replaced or repaired. The situation involving the patrol cars was so bad that officers rode three to a car. The police radios broke down and were not replaced or repaired. The communications problem was so bad that officers had to communicate with headquarters the old fashioned way by using the telephone. A fact that's hard to imagine at the end of the 20th century.
One sergeant, a 25-year veteran of the force, said, "A lot of times we couldn't catch thieves because our top speed was 50 MPH. You go any faster than that and your car would start sputtering." One local businessman joked, "Four or five years ago, I could outrun their police cars on foot." About five years ago, things got so bad, money-wise, that the city ran out of gasoline for the police cars.
But today, things have finally turned around. Officers now have new cars, new radios, new guns, new members and, more importantly, a new attitude. The main reason for the turnaround is a large influx of money from a riverboat casino that in 1993 opened up on the Mississippi River.
An amazing fact is that, in 1991, the East St.Louis Police Department had only seven police cars. Today it has 54. The budget for the department is now at $4 million per year.
The police department in this mostly black community did not enjoy a good reputation amongst its citizens. But, it seems, that is changing. Said one resident of the city, "We used to call the police and you might not even see them. We're trying to trust the police now." The homicide rate of the town has dropped almost fifty percent in the last four years. In 1991, 62 people were murdered in the city. In 1995, the number of homicides had dropped to 33.
Besides the money from the riverboat casino, the department also received a federal Community-Oriented Policing (COP) grant. This helped the city hire about 40 new police officers. The department now has 87 members. The department also cooperates very heavily with federal, state, county and other local departments. The city now even has what they call a "Delta Team" that specializes in raids on drug dealers.
This is a far cry from 1977 when a consulting firm recommended that the East St.Louis Police Department be disbanded. In 1990, the State of Illinois took over the finances of the city, a situation that it still controls. Overall, things are looking much brighter in this city that has essentially been to hell and back. That's good for its citizens and for its police department.
(c) EmergencyNet News Service, 1996, All Rights Reserved.
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