ST. LOUIS — St. Louis police are investigating dozens of recent car break-ins downtown. Customers of a downtown hotel committed to revitalization are among the victims.
St. Louis police say dozens of vehicles were broken into starting on Oct. 21.
Brian, a tourist in town from Terre Haute, Indiana, said he went outside in the middle of the night only to discover his family’s car had been broken into.
“I just came out to get a cigarette and I noticed the windows were busted out,” he said. “It happened to the truck behind us, too. It’s probably just some kids or something, vandalizing. It’s one of those things. Take it with a grain of salt. At least nobody got hurt.”
Over the past four days, more than two dozen cars were broken into outside of the 21c Museum Hotel on Locust Street. J.P. Roberts, general manager of the 21c Museum Hotel, said they're offering $45 refunds to guests who were impacted. The hotel is also reviewing protocols and stepping up internal safety measures to keep customers safe.
“Downtown West is a little bit of a hotspot right now, and kind of working even further west in the 3300 block, I guess there have been a lot of issues," Roberts said. "It’s a very unfortunate set of circumstances, right now, that I think we’re all trying to manage, together.”
Roberts said hotel officials are re-doing the parking lot and installing a taller fence, as a result.
“The safety and security of everybody in this building is important to us,” Roberts said. “It’s why we came to downtown St. Louis. It’s why we wanted to be in this location is to help do our part to make it a safe place, a better place. This is very unfortunate, but we’re going to work through it. It’s painful right now. It’s frustrating.”
A police investigation into the break-ins is ongoing.
“Although some of these vehicles were parked on the street," St. Louis Police Sgt. Charles Wall said, "it appears that the majority were parked on unsecured private lots in the area that do not appear to have on-site security nor any type of surveillance cameras.”
Wall said police have been in talks with ownership of the private lots to address some of these issues and have deployed one of our mobile camera towers to the area.