The 15 homicides committed in East St. Louis in 2025 represents the lowest level in the Metro East city in 45 years, according to data recently released by Illinois State Police.
In recent history, East St. Louis recorded as many as 36 homicides in 2019. The continued drop in murders reaffirms to state and local police that their efforts are working, said ISP Director Brendan Kelly.
"I would not have guessed that we would have been able to achieve that in this past year — or in any year," said Kelly, who served as the St. Clair County state's attorney from 2010 to 2019. "It is encouraging, but it is a result of a long period of hard work."
In 2020, the state police, East St. Louis police department and community organizations created the Public Safety Enforcement Group. The partnership maintains state police assistance with violent crime investigations and also connects victims with social services through the public school district and religious organizations. The goal is to both solve and prevent crimes.
It's those consistent efforts that have led the reduction in violent crime to even outpace national declines in homicide rates, said Kelly and East St. Louis Police Chief Kendall Perry.
"What it means to the citizens of East St Louis is a better future, safer streets — where our good citizens can actually walk the streets and sit on their porches and feel safer than they've had in a long time," Perry said.
Across the country, the national homicide rate has decreased from a pandemic-era uptick, and 2025 could have the lowest rate in 125 years of data collection, according to the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice.
Since 2020, the homicide rate has dropped roughly 40% nationally, according to the group's data. In East St. Louis, the number of homicides have fallen 56%, according to state police numbers.
"What this shows, in the data that we have, is that the drop is more precipitous and more concentrated in the areas where we've been doing this type of intelligence-led and partnership with the community-led approach to law enforcement in this urban environment," Kelly said.
The drop in murders is not unique in the region, either. Reported homicides across the Mississippi River in St. Louis dropped to the lowest level since 2005 at 139, according to data from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
Nonfatal shootings also continued to drop in East St. Louis. In 2020, the city recorded 127. That figure tallied 50 in 2025.
Working in conjunction with state police, Perry said East St. Louis Police have taken 150 to 200 guns off the street every year.
During the drop in crime, East St. Louis has also consistently lost population.
In 1980, the city's population stood just over 55,000, according to the U.S. Census. In 2020, that figure had decreased to nearly 18,500. The last population estimate by the Census Bureau is 17,800 in 2024.
Since the PSEG program started, East St. Louis' population loss has slowed, though. The drop in homicides since then far outpaces the change in population and hasn't played a role in the recent decrease, Perry said.
"Even though we had a high crime rate, we're still heading in the right direction," Perry said.
Kelly said that even as the population has dwindled in East St. Louis, the factors that have led to gun violence still remain in town.
"We know there's a lot of people that come into the community that are involved in violent crime," Kelly said. "They may come from across the river. They may come from other parts of St. Clair County."
Clearance rates — the percentage of crimes police solve — continued to improve for homicides in 2025. ISP said law enforcement solved 15 homicide cases in East St. Louis last year. Over the past 15 years, the city cleared about 40% of murders on average.
A case counts as cleared when it's solved, not when it occurred. Therefore, it's possible to have clearance rates above 100% if the law enforcement agency solves more homicides than were committed in a calendar year.
Kelly said with progress like this it gives him hope that the cycle of gun violence that once felt "seemingly intractable" has the potential to be eliminated.
"What this is doing is giving us a chance to reverse that," he said. "When you're like water on a rock, and you keep engaging with the community, and you keep working with these cases, and you have additional law enforcement resources, and you have additional social service resources paired with that law enforcement, it works. It moves things in the right direction."
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