Tishaura Jones is a radical leftist who is very critical of St. Louis City policing...The murder rate in St. Louis City hit a 50-year high in 2020.
But for Detroit, St. L. might well be the poster child for a dying city. Seventy years ago it had a population of over 850,000. Now it is a bit over 300,000. And you can tell. There are empty buildings all along the interstates that run through the city.
There are some very nice parts of town, very safe, but because St. Louis city is geographically fairly small, the nice parts are very close to the less-than-nice parts. Downtown is fairly safe and the police presence is very high when the Blues or the Cardinals have home games because downtown is so close to feral territory. I wonder if the new mayor will cut back on that.
Both my husband and I were born and raised in inner city St. Louis. My older sister still lives in south St. Louis city near “The Hill”, so we do go back to visit occasionally. It is not something we look forward to.
When my husband was drafted into the military in 1961 and we left St. Louis, I never dreamed that we would never return there to live even though we had multiple chances to do so.
Downtown was not safe, even in the ‘70s. My Mom and her friend were attacked on the parking lot when leaving the Adam’s Mark Hotel. While getting into a car, her friend was beaten and bloodied with an ice scraper until she gave up her purse. Thankfully, there was only one attacker so he ran away after he got the purse. In the ‘80s my niece was car jacked at gunpoint on the near north side. She never did get her car back.