Count us as extremely surprised when we heard the news that East St. Louis’ Police Chief, Ranadore Foggs, called it quits Saturday. Who the hell would have guessed that East St. Louis had a Police Chief?!

Chief Foggs told Mayor Alvin Parks Jr. about his decision Saturday.

Foggs said he had philosophical differences with the mayor on how the police department should be run. Foggs said his character and integrity were important to him and making the city safe was his No. 1 goal, and that’s why he came aboard the police department.

“I am sorry to see him leave. Chief Foggs had every intention of making the town very safe and I do too,” Parks said. “If Chief Foggs feels as if it’s time for him to go — while we’re disappointed, if it’s his decision, I respectfully accept his resignation.”

One could hardly blame anyone in the unenviable position of trying to keep East St. Louis safe for quitting all of five months after accepting the job, but as much as we’d like to imagine Foggs looking at every crime scene and whispering “I’m getting too old for this shit.” over and over again, it seems like Foggs quit because Mayor Parks was a little too bossy.

Councilman Delbert Marion, who spoke in an angry and serious tone about Foggs’ resignation, said the mayor has been trying to run the department.

“The mayor’s political influence, or attempted political influence, in the police department is unwarranted,” he said.

He said the mayor was trying to tell the chief how to schedule his manpower for patrolling the streets. Marion said some of what Parks was trying to do violates the police officers’ contract.

While city administrators bicker, East St. Louis is now left without any top-level police leadership and has plunged in to a deep darkness with the drugs, violence and fear running rampant on their now vacant city streets. Clearly something needs to be done…oh…right. It’s always like that. Scratch that. … The good news is, that despite concerns to the contrary, there has been no appreciable change in over-all crime levels despite being without a Police Chief!

Not sure what the process for East St. Louis Police Chiefs that want to quit is, but maybe it’s like that Judge Dredd movie with Stallone (trailer embedded below) where they just give you a shotgun and a trenchcoat, followed by a ceremony where they just push you out in to the vast wasteland and tell you to clean things up the best you can. That would seem a bit weird, since we’re pretty sure that’s what they do when they hire a new beat cop to go with the other three. On the other hand, pretty much everything about Judge Dredd (with the notable exception of hover-bikes) pretty much lines up perfectly with what East St. Louis has become in our mind.

via BND.com

Cahokia, Illinois isn’t just an 6th grade class’ field trip location to learn about indians, it also happens to be completely overrun by criminals. In a shocking move the police finally got together to solve the problem and someone asked “Well, could just go get them at their house?”

That’s just crazy enough to work.

Dozens of law enforcers swept every home, looking for wanted criminals.

“A lot of people scattered, retreated into their homes,” State’s Attorney Brendan Kelly said of the scene when officers rolled in.

Just an hour in, eight people had been arrested.

This new police strategy follows several previously less successful plans, such as “Wait to see if they turn themselves in”, “Dude, Armageddon is on! We should order pizza and watch it at the station!” and “Eh, lets just see how it goes”

via KMOX

We we did it everyone! We managed to steal, stab and shoot our way back to the top of the Most Dangerous City rankings. How’s about that “Midwest Hospitality” now, huh?!

The study by CQ Press found St. Louis had 2,070.1 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, compared with a national average of 429.4. That helped St. Louis beat out Camden, which topped last year’s list and was the most dangerous city for 2003 and 2004.

Read that shiz again: St. Louis had a “score” of 2,070.1 violent crimes per 100,000 people. The national average is 429.4.

2,070.1 versus 429.4! Which translates to the fact that St. Louis has 5 times more violent crime than the national average. Five. Five! Would you like to comment Mr. Mayor?

Yup, he’s right, there sure are a lot of ads in the newspaper during the holiday season. Oh, by the way, The Riverfront Times has been counting the murders this year and it’s up to 115, and keep in mind, that’s just murders. Between the stabbings, the shootings and the break-ins, this the fine people of St. Louis get more stuff forced in to them they don’t want than an alter boy in the Vatican…but yeah, those ads in the newspaper, sure are a burden.

Ok…ok…that was cheap. Let’s give Mayor Slay(ings) a real shot. Here’s the actual comment on the city’s new ranking that probably won’t be showing up in the new SLU recruitment pamphlet:

Kara Bowlin, spokeswoman for St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, said the city actually has been getting safer over the last few years. She said crime in St. Louis has gone down each year since 2007, and so far in 2010, St. Louis crime is down 7 percent.

Wow. That’s great! 7 percent is a lot! No, wait. It’s not. Allow us to debunk: If we had say, oh round numbers, 10,000 violent crimes in St. Louis, that would make the national average, roughly, 2,000. Which makes us look like Gotham city when the walls fall down on Arkham Asylum. Now what if Commissioner Gordon said, “Hey, its not that bad! We just saved 7% of those people!” …bringing our number from 10k to 9,300, or 4.65 times the national average, which is…and here’s some technical jargon so try to hang in there…still really really shitty. If you’re happy with 7 percent, you suck. We need a Mayor that gives a crap about crime and this jackass isn’t it.

What about the police department?

Erica Van Ross, spokeswoman for the St. Louis Police Department, called the rankings irresponsible.

“Crime is based on a variety of factors. It’s based on geography, it’s based on poverty, it’s based on the economy,” Van Ross said.

“That is not to say that urban cities don’t have challenges, because we do,” Van Ross said. “But it’s that it’s irresponsible to use the data in this way.”

How are they irresponsible? It’s not as though St. Louis is more poor or has a worse economy than lots of other places (freaking Detroit!). If you mean they’re “irresponsible” because they make your office look like they can’t handle their business, then yes, I guess we agree. Numbers are numbers, they don’t lie. There’s zero chance that you can make it to the top of this list without sucking ass in crime.

Van Ross is right in some ways though. Each city has other issues that may or may not make it more or less dangerous than the next city. Lets look at the top 10 with their “excuses” listed to the left:

10. Birmingham, AL - Constant arguing if that slavery thing is still cool.
9. Gary, IN - Everyone’s pissed they live in Gary, IN.
8. Compton, CA – It’s all Debo from Friday.
7. Cleveland, OH – The Drew Carey Show had them all feeling like they were somebody and then he did that stupid “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?” show and now their confused and pissed off.
6. Richmond, CA – Debo’s mom lives here with his cousin.
5. Oakland, CA - It’s freaking Oakland.
4. Flint, MI - Near Detroit.
3. Detroit, MI – Even closer to Detroit. Like really close.
2. Camden, NJ – The mob.
1. St. Louis, MO – The city doesn’t give a crap, instead choosing to fight with the police over who is their boss and take money from their budget, allowing them only the protect the areas that have commercial properties that give the city sales tax.

One last thing worth noting is that New York is #269. If they could clean up New York, someone should be able to clean up St. Louis.

via AP

P.S. St. Louis, in all of its stock Arch photo glory, made Gawker’s front page:

The city of St. Louis is launching an advertising campaign to help with the chronic issue of car break-ins within the city limits.

The crime has blossomed in recent years, with the advent of GPS devices and MP3 players. The thrust of the new initiative is to alert motorists to not leave anything in sight inside their cars. The campaign will be managed through window posters and billboards paid for by the police department, a total of about $7,500.

The campaign announces “free beer,” or “free food,” or “free smokes,” indicating that’s what motorists offer when they leave valuables in sight.

The St. Louis tourism board must be thrilled.

Other aborted slogans for the campaign included “I hear the Royals are getting better, go park in Kansas City” and “Please police yourselves, because we’ve run out of options.”

Things like this make our city look horrible and more importantly waste funds that could be helping in other areas.  Clearly our fair city has a crime issue and we at Punching Kitty see no better option that creating our own Robocop!  He could patrol the streets 24/7 eating baby food and cracking down on car thefts and random ass shootings.  This is the perfect plan.  We realize the money on the table here is only $7,500 so the initial Robocop version would be more like a gun duct taped to the top of an radio controlled car toy than the movies Robocop, but look thats just version 1.0 dude.  Give the city a little more jack and soon enough we will have a robot with a human face walking around the city that can kill everyone but Mayor Slay and hopefully us for thinking of the idea.

via KSDK

Steven Jackson has responded to the heinous charges by his ex-girlfriend and mother of his son to TMZ:

The St. Louis Rams running back just released a statement to TMZ saying, “It’s disheartening that I have to address any alleged allegations 10 months later, but I have read the accusations made by Supriya Harris, and they are untrue.”

Jackson continued, “The accusations are especially hurtful because those who truly know me know that those actions would be out of character for me.”

Jackson acknowledged that Harris is the mother of his son, and described the boy as “a son that I love and that I willingly support emotionally and financially.”

Our thoughts? None of this crap is true.

First, beating the hell out of a pregnant girl is something thats so messed up that is usually comes out in the wash right away, not 10 months later.  Only furthering suspicions that this is all bull is the fact that he is already in a legal scrap with Harris about child support.  Sure would help her case if he looked like a pregnant girl beating meanie.

Lastly, wouldn’t this be something the police are interested?  We think so…except if there isn’t any evidence. Granted the Las Vegas police will probably open an investigation on this if it gets enough press because someone is always up for re-election, but if there was something real here, wouldn’t have there be work on this oh say, when it happened, not 10 months later?

Yes, if this is true, even a little bit, it would be bad for St. Louis and the Rams so I have a built-in slant. However, we have never heard even a single bad story about Steven Jackson so until some actual hard facts come to light we are on Team Jackson.

Also we hear that sometimes “bitches be trippin’!”

TMZ is reporting that there has been a claim filed in Las Vegas against the Rams All-Pro running back stating that during a 2009 argument…

“Steven became enraged and pushed me to the ground, repeatedly.”

“forcibly grabbed my arm and flung me against the door. I was crying and trying to protect my stomach from the blows, as I was 9 mos pregnant.”

and “continued to shove me against the door until his nephew … interceded and yelled, ‘uncle, she has a baby, stop.’”

A mere 10 days after the alleged beating, Jackon’s then girlfriend (she left him 4 months ago) gave birth to their son.

The two have more legal history as she is filing to get him to pay child support.

We have nothing but love for SJ39 recently, but this is even a little true, this is about as messed up as you can get.

TMZ is investigating and we will see what we can dig up as well.

via TMZ