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If you guessed any number higher than two, you're wrong.

If that doesn’t fit the shooting gallery image that so many area residents stamp on downtown, that’s because it’s not. The common view of the area as unsafe is often based on outdated statistics, misleading rankings or the occasional shocking anecdote.

That doesn’t mean crime — and its almost-as-damaging cousin, the perception of crime — aren’t big problems for the city’s troubled core. But the issues are a lot more complicated than citizens throughout St. Louis and beyond often seem to realize.

The Post-Dispatch Editorial Board this week is publishing a series of editorials exploring how St. Louis can revive its troubled downtown/Downtown West corridor. That’s the more than two-square-mile stretch from the Arch grounds on the east, to Jefferson Avenue on the west, to Chouteau Avenue on the south, to just beyond Washington Avenue on the north. We are keeping all the editorials in the series outside our paywall, free to everyone, to include as many community members in the conversation as possible.

Today, we focus on crime and chaos — and perceptions of both.

They are entwined issues that have helped drive a crisis-level exodus of business and tourism from the downtown area. It's also made downtown a place that residents in other parts of the region tend to avoid unless there’s a concert or a ballgame.

But the statistics are unambiguous: downtown has some of the lowest levels of violent crime in decades. It’s part of a national downward trend in violent crime in most metropolitan areas.

Citywide, St. Louis in 2025 saw dramatic reductions in crime rates compared to the previous year. The city’s 141 homicides last year represent its lowest total deaths in more than a decade. Most other violent crimes plummeted as well. Robberies were down 15%; auto theft was down 22%; burglaries, 16%; shooting incidents, down a whopping 28%.

When unveiling those numbers in January, Police Chief Robert Tracy told reporters that the city is "doing what we need to do to keep people safe. That’s what brings people in … so we’ve got to make sure everybody knows that.�

Tracy reiterated that message in an interview with the Editorial Board in early April.

“This trend's been going down for the last several years, but certainly the narrative that's been out here (is), 'It's not safe to go downtown,'� he told us. “You have to get the perception of crime down, which is even more difficult, I think, than driving down crime.�

It's the central question Alderman Rasheen Aldridge, whose 14th ward encompasses much of downtown, told the Post-Dispatch in January, after city police released their crime stats.

"There is a perception still in people's heads that (crime) is not down," he said. "How do we change that?"

An annual parade of "Most Dangerous Cities!" lists seeking easy attention don't help, even as for St. Louis (primarily due to its separation from the county). 

Make no mistake: St. Louis' violent crime rates are too high. But most of that violence is not primarily, or even substantially, downtown violence. In a 2019 Saint Louis University analysis of homicide rates among St. Louis’ roughly 80 neighborhoods, downtown didn’t break the top 30.

None of which diminishes the seriousness of the violent crime that still does happen downtown, nor are we trying to diminish the devastating impact on victims. 

And there are intangibles to consider, like the frequent atmosphere of lawlessness and chaos — especially regarding large late-night gatherings and unenforced traffic laws. Those are issues that may not show up on FBI data but contribute to the sense, among visitors, entrepreneurs and prospective residents, that this isn’t a safe place to put down stakes.

Things like late-night crowd noise, fights, aggressive panhandling and (especially) brazen traffic violations are big parts of it. As any downtown resident will tell you, most nights, especially on weekends, are filled with the sounds of revving engines and screeching tires.

Also, drivers casually blowing through red lights is a common sight. Seeing those drivers pulled over by city police isn’t.

Police officer shortage

While civil strife that has arisen downtown after police-involved shootings in recent years has sometimes highlighted friction between cops and the community, the more common complaint among residents is that they don’t see enough uniforms in the neighborhood anymore.

So it was that Sgt. Mike Marks of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department got a raucous round of applause as he walked into a neighborhood meeting at an event space on Washington Avenue one night in February.

Marks, a fixture downtown for years, was asked about the diminished visibility of officers in the neighborhood — especially police biking units. Once a ubiquitous part of downtown summers, “bike cops� had sidewalk-level daily interaction with citizens that created a sense of familiarity and security.

In 2017, “we had one lieutenant, three sergeants and 24 officers assigned to the biking unit,� Marks told the gathering. “That was 28 people. Right now, the downtown bike unit is one sergeant and seven officers. So we've lost two-thirds of the officers.�

Amid gasps, Marks laid out the problem: “We had a bunch of young guys on the bike detail, guys that wanted to come out — and 90% of those young guys that came down to the bike unit (have since) quit the St. Louis Police Department to go to another department. They could go overnight to $15,000 to $20,000 more (in salary) just by quitting.�

Cities across the country have had a difficult time recruiting officers in recent years, and the issues often go beyond money. But data here confirms Marks' anecdote that pay is at least a primary issue in St. Louis. 

The starting base salary for a St. Louis police sergeant as of last fall was $77,480, putting it in the lower half of a 40-community survey of sergeant salaries provided by the city. The survey found sergeant salaries at that time ranged from just over $56,000 (Warson Woods) to more than $106,500 (Town and Country).

A 7% raise approved for St. Louis officers and sergeants in January has narrowed the gap, but it remains wide. The new base salary for St. Louis sergeants, $82,914, is still in the middle of the regional range, and still well below where sergeants’ salaries stood last fall in numerous area cities — where the job is presumably less dangerous and stressful. Those communities include Wentzville ($88,705), Clayton ($93,615), Ladue ($99,971) and Maryland Heights ($105,428).

The pay gap with surrounding cities (as well as with comparable large cities in other regions) is an issue up and down the command structure.

Among street-level cops, salary differentials with neighboring jurisdictions is a key factor in the city’s consistent failure in recent years to staff up police to statutorily approved levels. As of mid-March, said a department spokesman, there were 1,154 authorized positions for commissioned officers, but just 851 officers actually on the payroll.

Practically everyone agrees the city must get more and better-paid police officers out on the streets to confront both crime and the perception of lawlessness. It all might sound like an argument for supporting the state-run city Police Board’s recent demand for higher police spending. But it’s more complicated than that.

We won’t belabor our standing argument against the recent Republican-led state takeover of police in this overwhelmingly Democratic city — except to reiterate that it’s a politically cynical stunt in light of the city’s falling crime rate in recent years.

The state board is pressing St. Louis to spend at least $250 million in the next budget on police, which is around $50 million more than Mayor Cara Spencer says the city can afford without catastrophic cuts to other services. The two sides were still negotiating as of this writing. But the state’s demands, Spencer has said, “would cripple the city of St. Louis.� (Spencer’s administration filed suit over the issue on April 9.)

More spending on police is indeed urgent for the future of downtown. But Spencer and other city leaders don’t have the luxury of addressing that issue in a budgetary vacuum. If more cops come at the expense of street maintenance, garbage pickup and other basic necessities, it would address one problem for the neighborhood while exacerbating many others.

There’s a surprisingly simple solution: The state could make up the difference between what the board is demanding for police spending and what the city can afford.

Not only would that help ramp up police staffing that the state has deemed crucial, but it would put the state in compliance with its own Missouri Constitution, which generally prohibits unfunded mandates from the state on local governments — which is exactly what this is.

Homelessness and traffic lawlessness

In March 2023, a Post-Dispatch investigation confirmed what anyone who has lived downtown has long known just by looking around: Whether because of staffing shortages, fear of community blowback or both, St. Louis police for years haven’t aggressively enforced city traffic laws. And it costs lives.

Post-Dispatch journalists Jacob Barker and Josh Renaud that year reported that, between 2009 and 2021, two things happened regarding traffic enforcement citywide: Police traffic stops and ticket issuances decreased by half — and traffic fatalities in the city doubled.

While that data wasn’t limited to downtown, there is constant anecdotal evidence that reckless drivers in the neighborhood in particular face little consequence for their recklessness, unless there’s a crash.

Chief Tracy theorized to us that officers in the past "pulled back" on traffic enforcement out of concern about neighborhood reaction. He also pointed to a continuing reluctance to spark dangerous high-speed chases. He expressed optimism that the upcoming resumption of , after years of being held up in court, will help.

In any case, high-profile traffic tragedies have shaken the city’s national reputation and convinced local residents that downtown is frequently in the grip of mayhem.

Adding to the feeling of chaos is the issue of the city’s unhoused population. The seriousness of the issue was vividly demonstrated by the fact that former Mayor Tishaura Jones’ administration had to put metal barricades around the lawn surrounding City Hall for more than a year after clearing a homeless encampment there.

The issue arguably appears worse than it actually is because the lack of local population density means the homeless are often all that visitors see in certain stretches. But homelessness has been a problem in the city for decades — even in downtown's heydays — and several efforts over the years have been launched in search of solutions.

Still, it adds to the point that feeling safe in a city is about more than crime rates. Just citing statistics that show crime is dropping isn't enough.

Yes, that's a start — residents here can play a lead role in spreading the good news. State leaders can certainly put their money where their mouths are and actually help when they lament crime in the city. 

But the city also must confront the sense of chaos that too often engulfs the area. More (and more visible) police presence, stricter traffic enforcement and a concerted push to rein in even minor lawlessness — vandalism, aggressive panhandling, loud crowd behavior — must be part of the mix.

At some level, perception is reality. A downtown that's perceived as unsafe can be just as difficult to revive as one that actually is.

This series was conceived, and its subjects interviewed, by the Post-Dispatch Editorial Board: Editorial Page Editor Kevin McDermott, Post-Dispatch Publisher Ian Caso, and community board members Antonio French, Janet Y. Jackson and Lynn Schmidt. It was researched and written by McDermott.