ST. LOUIS — At least 30 cars were broken into in the past four days near the 21c Museum Hotel in the city’s Downtown West neighborhood.
Twelve of those break-ins happened Saturday night in the 1500 block of Locust Street, and 14 happened a block north of there on Sunday, said ºüÀêÊÓƵ police Sgt. Charles Wall.
Four more happened overnight Tuesday in the 1500 block.
Police said some of those cars were parked on the street, but the majority of them were parked in privately owned lots without security or surveillance cameras near the newly opened hotel at 1528 Locust Street.
“Today, we have been in talks with ownership of these private lots to address some of these issues, and we have additionally deployed one of our mobile camera towers to the area,†Wall said.
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But at least one person on Tuesday said she and her husband were staying at the hotel and paid $45 for overnight valet on Saturday, and when they picked up the car the next morning, hotel staff told them it had been broken into. Someone stole a pair of sunglasses and a prized National Park Service stamp book from their car.
Wall said investigators are looking into whether the same person or group is responsible for all of the break-ins.
officials did not immediately respond for comment.
After several years of construction, the hotel opened in August in the 95-year-old former YMCA building on Locust Street. The boutique hotel offers 173 rooms and more than 14,000 square feet of museum exhibition space throughout the 10-story building.
In all, 39 cars were broken into over the weekend in the Downtown and Downtown West neighborhoods, Wall said.
The downtown area has for years been the subject of intense public scrutiny regarding crime rates and policing.
But there were 3,020 reports of vehicle break-ins in the city through September this year — down nearly 17% compared with the same period in 2021. In Downtown and Downtown West, there have been 499 thefts from cars reported so far this year, down from 925 in 2022 and 736 in 2021.
Various agencies and groups have poured money into efforts to reduce crime and clean up the city’s business core, which is often viewed as unsafe, especially at night.
The Downtown Community Improvement District spent $730,000 on secondary security services downtown for the fiscal year ending June 30. That was in addition to $90,000 on the city’s police bike unit and $100,000 on “seasonal safety initiatives to enhance the pedestrian experience.â€
In July, the police department began to put additional officers on patrol in downtown ºüÀêÊÓƵ through a pilot program spearheaded by the department’s new chief and funded with $860,000 from a police nonprofit.
“What we really want to do is have more of an omnipresence,†police Chief Robert Tracy told the Post-Dispatch in August.
The ºüÀêÊÓƵ Police Foundation has since paid the department at least $225,000 to fund officers’ overtime pay, according to invoices from August and September.
Tracy said the program was slated to run through about November and may expand to other neighborhoods in the city.