ST. LOUIS — Greater St. Louis Inc.
has launched an ambassador program of unarmed workers to "add a sense of security" in the Downtown and Downtown West neighborhoods of St. Louis. Morgan Jackson, of the Downtown Public Safety Ambassadors program, fist-bumps a security guard at the Stifel Financial building as she walks her rounds greeting pedestrians on Washington Avenue on Tuesday, Oct.
1, 2024. The new safety initiative is funded with $5 million from investors in Greater St. Louis Inc.
The group announced it will invest $5 million in the program over three years, hiring 16 people to walk, ride bikes or patrol the areas between 6 a.m. and 11 p.
m. City officials said the move was the latest attempt to convey a perception of safety in a downtown that has struggled since the COVID-19 pandemic with a reputation for reckless driving, shootings and mayhem. Downtown leaders this spring successfully sued to shut down a gas station that had become a magnet for crime; St.
Louis police said they'd move their downtown substation closer to the action at the Globe Building; and the Gateway Arch Park Foundation announced plans to buy the Millennium Hotel. "That talks about our all-hands-on-deck strategy," Mayor Tishaura O. Jones said at a news conference Tuesday.
"We just can't put crime solving and violence prevention on the shoulders of the police alone." Crime statistics for the city's Downtown and Downtown West neighborhoods show that, while murders during the January through August .
