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ST. LOUIS — The most important sentence Thomas Abt spoke at the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Regional Crime Summit on Wednesday was also the one most likely to make a lot of tough-on-crime folks upset.

“There is no city that has had success by arresting its way out of the problem,� Abt said.

The alternative is also true: Anti-violence, anti-poverty and social justice programs don’t work by themselves.

“The research says you must have both,� Abt told a packed auditorium of political and civic leaders, police chiefs and medical professionals on the Washington University Medical Center campus.

The crowd included ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, who originally conceived of the crime summit, and St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann. Police Chief Troy Doyle from Ferguson was there, along with law enforcement officials from both sides of the Mississippi River. There were health care professionals, such as Dr. LJ Punch; and defense attorneys, such as James Wyrsch.

The starting point of the summit, organized by the , was easy: ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ has a homicide problem. But how to solve it? That’s the $60,000 question.

Actually, make that a $6 billion question. Abt says that’s potentially how much revenue ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ homicide rate costs the region annually in direct costs, like hospital and first-responder resources, and in indirect costs, like lost job revenue.

Abt is the author of He is also the founding director of the nonprofit , where he collaborates with cities on how to reduce homicides.

ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ historically has one the highest homicide rates in the country, and Abt was here for a tryout of sorts — a job interview to see what he can do for us. How that interview went is an open question.

Jim Wild, executive director of East-West Gateway, said the community leaders reached a “consensus� to invite Abt to return so he can organize a longer crime summit and help develop a crime plan.

The organizers of the event kicked the media out after the first couple of speakers, though, so reporters weren’t there to watch that consensus be reached. We weren’t there to listen to elected officials share their thoughts on how to reduce violence, or how open they are to regional cooperation on a gun violence problem that is most prominent in some city neighborhoods.

It’s a part of the story of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ that gets repeated over and over again. Remember Better Together, the failed merger of the city and county that was conceived in part to deal with the homicide problem? It collapsed by producing its so-called solutions in secret and then foisting them on an unsuspecting public.

But the need to cooperate regionally underlies the discussion of violence. And, Abt suggests, it is a key to reducing homicides in the region long-term.

“It’s complicated work that is very partnership intense,� he says.

A good example is a homicide-reducing strategy that Abt says has had the most success: focused deterrence. The concept is that police officers, prosecutors and social service agencies work hand-in-hand to identify the key drivers of gun violence in a community. Most homicides in a city are committed by a small percentage of folks, and often those people are known to law enforcement. Under the focused deterrence model, public officials try to work with those folks to keep them out of prison, try to address the trauma that leads to violence and stop homicides before they happen.

It takes cops and social workers and nurses and prosecutors working together to treat a public health crisis. In ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, it also will take agencies cooperating across city and county boundaries.

The day before Abt came to ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, we saw first-hand how difficult that process can be, with ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell trying to quietly help the transition in the city of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Circuit Attorney’s Office as Kim Gardner prepared to resign. But a county councilman questioned whether county taxpayers should be paying for such a thing, and the transition collapsed anyway as Gardner left before a deal could be completed.

Such is life in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, where our fragmentation is a daily obstacle to progress.

Focused deterrence isn’t a panacea, Abt says, but it has worked in multiple cities to reduce homicides.

“It takes a lifetime of trauma to become a shooter,� Abt told the crime summit crowd.

Reversing that process won’t happen overnight, and it isn’t sustainable without serious cooperation from government and civic leaders over a long period of time.

Jones, for one, is glad regional leaders are focused on crime in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½. She hopes the next step is to better involve residents of the city sharing their views on how to tackle the homicide problem.

“Trust,� Jones said after the summit, “only moves at the speed of our community being involved in the solution.�