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No wonder I never took a ride in the Arch.

St Louis is a funny town. There are parts of it that are quite safe, very close to very dangerous places. The powers-that-be see to it that downtown—Bush Stadium, the Arch, etc. are safe. Police presence during and after Cardinal games is quite impressive. But just a couple of miles away, it gets scary very fast.

There are also neighborhoods away from downtown that are also pretty safe. I doubt if there is much trouble in the old Italian neighborhood known as “the Hill”. Either the police or the people who live there keep them that way.

Black areas of the city are infested with gangs—lots of gangs. That, of course, is a problem for the city and the law-abiding who find themselves living there. St Louis is small geographically, which means that the several gangs are all jammed up living very close to one another. Gang territories are small and are defended ferociously, which results in such a high murder rate.

There is some good news. St Louis is losing population so that it may no longer qualify as the most dangerous big city since it won’t be considered a big city.

I live in the Benton Park area of ST. Louis. As you note there are safe areas and extremely dangers areas. But even in the normally safe areas the gangs will drive through looking for an easy mark. I most often have my 9mm on me.
One of the problems we have in our area is the traveling drug deals. They drive up a residential side street get out of their cars, make the deal, and drive away. If it goes bad a gunfight breaks out right there.
We were on the Metro-link train up to the airport twice in two days and the security/police presence was much greater then in the past, and it needed to be. Cops would ask for tickets on every trip something that was seldom done. There were also no loud obnoxious types as was common before, which is a good thing.