The Rams’ money debate becomes a proxy for the crime debate in St. Louis

ST. LOUIS – My email inbox is clogged every day with marketing pitches from out-of-town PR firms telling me what to think of St. Louis or Missouri.

Many of them appear to be generated by artificial intelligence. They grab random data points and try to get my attention, often in the form of a top 10 list.

“US cities with the fastest real estate sales… MLB teams with the most resold jerseys… Most popular cuisine in Missouri… St. Louis food ranks high for best regional cuisine… Missouri ranks 43rd most expensive state for bills… “

Delete. Empty the trash. Repeat.

This is my everyday life, and I suspect it is the same for most journalists. But sometimes, while the zone is flooded with silly statistics with no context, one of the pitches makes the news.

Such was the case last week when Wallet Hub “reported” that St. Louis was no longer among the top 10 most dangerous cities in America. A few local TV stations took the bait. The news was shared on social media and made its way into email newsletters from elected officials and civic leaders. St. Louis is on the rise!

To be clear, we didn’t need a financial services company creating a ranking based on arbitrary facts to make us feel good. In fact, let’s take the most important issue when it comes to civic pride: crime.

Crime is down in St. Louis.

This is a sentence that I have been writing regularly for more than three years. Homicides, in particular, have declined in each year of Mayor Tishaura O. Jones’ term in office. The city’s total of 160 homicides last year was even lower than the pre-pandemic number. And by August of this year, the city was on track to see another decline in homicides. Meanwhile, the city is working with law enforcement agencies across the region as part of the “Save Lives Now!” initiative. Initiative that aims to further reduce homicides through a deterrence philosophy.

But despite these numbers, perception sometimes lags behind reality, especially when it comes to the city center. Police Chief Robert Tracy pointed that out this week when he announced a new mapping tool that residents can use to track crime in their neighborhoods.

St. Louis residents tend to overreact to random bad news and gloss over the good. Call it Second City-itis.

Take last week’s announcement that prominent public relations firm FleishmanHillard is leaving downtown to open an office in Clayton. The news sparked immediate and predictable complaints about the downtown area. Jason Hall, CEO of Greater St. Louis Inc., used the news to push City Hall to spend its portion of the Rams settlement money on infrastructure, including $100 million downtown.

“Make no mistake,” Hall said, “downtown desperately needs investment, and it needs it now.”

It’s a version of a mantra that has been repeated in St. Louis decade after decade: The city invests in the same land while neighborhoods north of downtown suffer. St. Louis historian Colin Gordon wrote about the dynamic in his 2008 book “Mapping Decline.” His analysis that the city’s pursuit of “big tickets” downtown was a fool’s errand still resonates today. “There were great failures,” Gordon wrote, “and successes were rare.”

Hall is not wrong that downtown needs investment, and the Greater St. Louis proposal for the Rams money also calls for more investment ($130 million) in northern and southern neighborhoods. But his reaction to FleishmanHillard’s news, as well as that of other state leaders and elected officials, explains why perceptions of crime lag behind the statistics.

Jones, meanwhile, has spoken broadly about using the Rams’ money to make a generational investment in people, perhaps using it to leverage more federal or private money and trying to have a lasting impact on the city. It’s a rare situation for a politician: He’s sitting on a $250 million pot of gold and hints that some of it won’t be spent until after he leaves office.

Two days after the PR firm announced its move from downtown, another major company, AT&T, announced it would move employees from Earth City to downtown, making big news for downtown this week overall could be positive. The return of jobs to the city center is a great headline. The same goes for someone who says crime has gone down.

Is this perception or reality? I’ll let you know when tomorrow’s PR pitches land in my inbox.