ST. LOUIS — My email inbox is clogged every day with marketing pitches from out-of-town public relations 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 catch my attention, often in the form of a top 10 list.
“U.S. cities with the fastest property sales … MLB teams with the most resold jerseys … Most popular cuisine in Missouri … St. Louis food ranks high for best regional cuisine … Missouri ranks No. 43 most expensive state for bills …â€
Delete. Empty trash. Repeat.
That’s my daily routine, and I suspect it is for most journalists. But sometimes, while flooding the zone with inane statistics lacking context, one of the pitches will make it into the news.
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So it was last week when Wallet Hub “reported†that St. Louis was no longer one of the 10 most dangerous cities in America. A couple of local television stations . The news was shared on social media and made its way into email newsletters from elected officials and civic leaders. St. Louis is moving up!
To be clear, we didn’t need a financial services company to come up with a ranking based on arbitrary facts to make us feel good about ourselves. Indeed, take that most important issue when it comes to civic pride: crime.
Crime is down in St. Louis.
That’s a sentence I’ve been writing regularly for more than three years. In every year of Mayor Tishaura O. Jones’ administration, homicides in particular have dropped. Last year’s total of 160 homicides in the city was lower than even pre-pandemic numbers. And through August of this year, the city was on pace to again see a drop in homicides. Meanwhile, the city is working with law enforcement officials throughout the region in the  initiative, which seeks a further drop in homicides through a philosophy of deterrence.
But despite those numbers, perception sometimes lags reality, particularly when it comes to downtown. That’s a point Police Chief Robert Tracy made this week while announcing a new mapping tool that lets residents track crime in their neighborhoods.
St. Louis residents have a tendency to overreact to random incidents of bad news and gloss over the good. Call it Second City-itis.
Take the announcement last week that iconic public relations firm FleishmanHillard was leaving downtown for office space in Clayton. The news spurred immediate and predictable lamentations about downtown. Jason Hall, CEO of the business group Greater St. Louis, Inc., used the news to push City Hall to spend its portion of the Rams settlement money on infrastructure, $100 million of it downtown.
“Make no mistake,†Hall said, “downtown needs urgent investment, and it needs that investment now.â€
It’s a version of a mantra that has been repeated decade after decade in St. Louis, with the city investing in the same patches of land while the neighborhoods north of downtown suffer. St. Louis historian Colin Gordon wrote about the dynamic in his 2008 book, . His analysis that the city’s chase of "big ticket" fixes downtown was a fool’s errand still resonates today. “Great failures abounded,†Gordon wrote, “and successes were few and far between.â€
Hall’s not wrong that downtown needs investment, and the Greater St. Louis proposal for the Rams money also calls for more investment ($130 million) in north and south city neighborhoods. But his reaction to the FleishmanHillard news, as well as that of other civic leaders and elected officials, helps explain why the perception of crime lags behind the statistics.
Jones, meanwhile, has talked in general terms 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 make a lasting impact on the city. It’s a rare place for a politician to be: sitting on a $250 million pot of gold and suggesting that some of it won’t be spent until after they're out of office.
Two days after the PR firm announced its move from downtown, another major corporation, AT&T, announced it was relocating employees from Earth City to downtown, meaning the overall news for downtown this week could be a net positive. Jobs returning downtown is a great headline. So is one saying crime is down.Â
Is that perception or reality? I’ll let you know when tomorrow’s slew of PR pitches lands in my inbox.