ST. LOUIS MO (KTVI-FOX2now.com)—
There is growing momentum behind a grieving mother's attempts to get the traffic barricades on her street moved. The St. Louis Fire Chief says he is on her side, and he is not stopping there. He says blocked streets keep his crews from doing their job and he would like them removed, city-wide."As everybody says, minutes count. And sometimes this results in a couple minutes of delay," says St. Louis Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson.
His crews arrived as fast as possible at the shooting scene on Hickory in South St. Louis, and as much as he wishes they could have saved Gina Stallis, there was probably no way.
"In this case, no, the barriers didn't delay our response, we were on the scene in under four minutes," he says.
There are three hundred streets like Hickory in St. Louis, where through traffic is blocked. Rose Whitrock, Gina's mother, never liked the barricades at her home. There is no good way in and no good way out.
"The night of the shooting, the medics had to park over there on Ninth Street," she says, pointing several yards away.
16 and 22 year old suspects spent twenty minutes inside the Whitrock home, holding her family at gunpoint, robbing them, terrorizing them, shooting at them, killing her daughter.
Rose had to watch rescuers running in, carrying out the victims, and dodging the four giant flower pots that cut off access to her home.
"We have not been happy since they have been here," she says.
The barriers could soon be gone. Whitrock's alderwoman, Phyllis Young, says the neighborhood will meet Tuesday to talk about the crime, and decide if the barricades should go.
Young says the barricades went in on Hickory in 2003 after some in the neighborhood lobbied for them. But Whitrock says she was never asked if they could be right in front of her home. And the fire department was not consulted, says Jenkerson. It never is.
"No not at all. We are notified the barriers are going to be put in a place, in a specific spot," he says.
Many have been in place for decades.
"When they first did it, they actually gave us heavy duty steel cables we attached to the pumpers, and we had to pull up and drag them out of the way and then respond in. That's more minutes," he says.
"This has been an ongoing concern of the fire department's. We don't like them. They severely impede what we do."
The city streets department says it gets an average of one request a month to close a street, and only one request a year to reopen one. It is rare to have a neighborhood consensus.
"Maybe the outcome wouldn't have been different," says Whitrock, "but those barriers are not going to keep home invaders or robbers or criminals out of our homes, they're just not."
Jenkerson says he has no say in removing the barricades. The mayor's office asked his opinion so he is now weighing in. It is up to neighborhoods to lobby their aldermen to install or remove the barricades, and statistics could be on the side of keeping them. Studies in some cities show significant decreases in crime after barricades are installed.
But Jenkerson says they are a hazard.
"It prevents a way in and a way out. Every minute counts with the fire service and the EMS. It hinders us. It concerns us."
