Bellefontaine Neighbors Police Dept
St. Louis County contains between 80-90 independent municipal jurisdictions, most governing their own police departments. Each jurisdiction is subject to different circumstances based on location and access to resources. The City of Bellefontaine Neighbors is located in the northeast St. Louis County area, only a few miles west of the Missouri – Illinois border. The City shares jurisdictional borders with the City of St. Louis, City of Jennings, City of Moline Acres, City of Riverview, and unincorporated St. Louis County, to include Castle Point, Spanish Lake, and Glasgow. The City is largely a bedroom community with basic retail and other community amenities that are used by both residents and non-residents. Transient motorists are a commonality on the County roadway system within the jurisdiction. Motorists traverse our jurisdiction to access major highway Interstate-270 to drive to other areas of St. Louis County and into the State of Illinois. Alternatively, many motorists traverse our jurisdiction to access the City of St. Louis. Both driving behaviors reduce the amount of time a motorist spends on the roadway instead of using other major highways to travel around the entire area to access these points, which involves a significant amount of more travel time. Lastly, transient motorists are believed to be accessing the resources of the jurisdiction when similar or substitute resources are not available to the motorists elsewhere within a reasonable driving distance. It is reasonable to believe that transient motorists comprise, at minimum, approximately a two- thirds majority of the motoring public in our jurisdiction. This is also supported by Table 4, whereas the Location of Stop is recorded to have occurred on County roadways at a total rate of 61%. This belief is also supported by Table 2, whereas 81% of the total stops (White 82%, Black 81%, Native American 100%, and Other 85%) were not residents of the jurisdiction at the time of the stop. Lastly, given that the transient motorist group (non- residents) accounts for the larger number of vehicle stops when compared to that of jurisdictional residents, the output of the vehicle stop data does not include necessary measurable information such as 1) the volume of total transient motorists for the period and 2) the volume of individual ethnic groups, gender, and age groups among the transient motorist group for the period. This suggests that the control variables that the vehicle stop data is compared to is underrepresented and limited. Therefore, the majority of vehicle stops within the jurisdiction are open to broad and shallow analysis/interpretation to which any argument of such can neither be proven or disproven.