The communications problem was so bad that officers had to communicate with headquarters the old fashioned way by using the telephone. A fact that's hard to imagine at the end of the 20th century. You go any faster than that and your car would start sputtering. About five years ago, things got so bad, money-wise, that the city ran out of gasoline for the police cars. But today, things have finally turned around.
Officers now have new cars, new radios, new guns, new members and, more importantly, a new attitude.
The main reason for the turnaround is a large influx of money from a riverboat casino that in 1993 opened up on the Mississippi River. An amazing fact is that, in 1991, the East St. Louis Police Department had only seven police cars. Today it has 54. The police department in this mostly black community did not enjoy a good reputation amongst its citizens.