St. Louis is a city where children beat immigrants for fun (unless our mayor swoops in and saves them like a superhero). In fact, there's so much crazy crime that we have our own newspaper, the St. Louis Evening Whirl, to cover it with headlines like: "Freaks, Chumps Ravish Da Lou" and "Crazed West County Chick Carves Up B.F. Like Turkey."
But crime is hardly unique to St. Louis, which gets an unfair rap for being one of America's most dangerous cities. The St. Louis Civic Pride Foundation released a video this week hoping to explain away the complicated statistical anomaly that makes the Lou seem disproportionately murder-y, but the final product feels more like America's version of North Korean propaganda -- with lots of white people and tiny dogs.
The video starts with a true and little-understood fact: St. Louis' consistent ranking as one of the most dangerous cities in America (sometimes the world) comes from false boundaries, not actual crime rates. Because St. Louis City is not part of St. Louis County, city crime rates only account for 11 percent of the population.
This video explains better than we ever could:
Combining city and county crime rates puts St. Louis as the 91st most dangerous city in America, says Explore St. Louis -- not the 4th, where St. Louis ranked in 2012 just under Camden, New Jersey, and Detroit and Flint, Michigan.
But the video, titled "The Truth About Crime in St. Louis," goes beyond crime rankings with three anecdotal illustrations of just how safe St. Louis feels.
Continue reading to see the five things this video taught us about making a St. Louis propaganda video.
