Robert Tracy was officially sworn in as the new St. Louis Chief of Police this week, after a year-long search for a replacement. Chief Tracy, who was most recently the chief of police in Wilmington, Delaware, joined KMOX alongside St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones for his first interview as chief.
"I'm just privileged and honored to be here. And I thank the mayor for having faith in me to select me as the first outside chief in the history of the St. Louis metropolitan police department," Tracy said. "Four days in I'm very hopeful, I see a lot of hope in the city. I see a lot of stakeholders that have been involved in this — I'm just chomping at the bit to get started to make sure that we can try to make a difference in the city to make it safer."
Tracy is the first chief in the history of the SLMPD to be from outside St. Louis. Mayor Jones said one reason she felt confident bringing him in was that he's had experience coming in as an outsider.
Jones also touched on hiring a white man for the position, something that came as a surprise to some residents.
"Well, we did an extensive search. As you know, this search took us over a year — one of my staff says 482 days or something like that," Jones said. "But I hire the people with the most qualifications or who are most skilled to do the job, period. I don't care if they're white, black, blue, purple, yellow, whatever. And Chief Tracy's experience rose to the top for me."
Chief Tracy told KMOX how he plans to build relationships with the St. Louis community, and how those relationships will make a difference in his role.
"You have to be working with the community, you have to build that trust. And that's from transparency, that's from getting out in the community. That's from building the trust, starting with your police chief being readily available," he said. "They have to see that you're sincere. They have to make sure that everything you say that you're going to do you're going to follow through with and that takes a little bit of time because everybody's a little skeptical in the beginning."
He added, "I can say all the great things in the world, but it's my actions that are going to show through in the actions of my police officers."
The Police Officers Association has told KMOX that morale is low in the department right now — staffing is an issue, and so is pay. Chief Tracy said he isn't ready to comment on the topic of pay raises yet, as the city is in the middle of union negotiations. As for morale, he has some ideas.
"You can look at the type of training that we're doing, the availability for them to move around, the support that they're going to get within their positions, to make sure that they understood that they all supported," he said. "And then you look at a lot of things that you continue to get to — can you continue to work with them in the community, and offer them a lot of things. It's not always just about pay."
Mayor Jones and Chief Tracy talked with KMOX about crime rates, Tracy's use of crime analysis at his past jobs, juvenile crimes, and more. Listen to their full exclusive interview on Total Information AM:
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