Centene CEO’s Lamentations About Crime in St. Louis Seem Dubious
Date Posted: December 29, 2020
Posted In: Discussion,
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Crime is up in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Homicides are nearing record highs. The two-year surge in violent crime should matter to folks in St. Louis. The highest-paid CEO of the region’s largest public company by revenue says so.
Earlier this month, Centene, led by CEO Michael Neidorff, alerted Clayton officials that the company was putting off plans for a third tower at its headquarters because of rising crime in St. Louis. “They’re not willing to put more investment into our region, whether it’s Clayton or anywhere else, until they can feel more hopeful about crime being addressed,” Clayton Mayor Michelle Harris told the Post-Dispatch.
Neidorff’s timing is curious on two fronts. First, the news came amid a consultant’s study that he funded of the two largest police departments in the region, in the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County. The lack of cooperation between the departments limits crime-fighting abilities, the reports found. Consultants found a long list of bad management practices in both departments, though it’s unclear whether the reports will have much of an effect, in part because of the secrecy in which the studies were conducted.
Then there was the announcement that Neidorff made this summer. The St. Louis-based company is building an eastern headquarters in Charlotte, investing $1 billion in a facility that is expected to create about 6,000 jobs. The decision came with a vast public critique by Neidorff of the many things he finds wrong with St. Louis, including its crime rate.
He’s not wrong. Homicides are reaching historic levels in St. Louis this year, and for several years, the city has maintained the highest, or one of the highest, murder rates in the country, in part because of the way those statistics are gathered in a region in which the city is separated from a county with separate police departments for both.