ST. LOUIS — If you plan to spend part of your weekend in downtown St. Louis, you may notice new people in uniforms walking the streets.
Greater St. Louis Inc. launched its brand-new Downtown Public Safety Ambassadors program on Saturday. The program is centered around making the heart of our city safer for everyone.
Kurt Weigle, Greater St. Louis Inc. Senior Vice President and Chief Downtown Officer, said the ambassadors are not police officers, they're not armed, but they can do really important things for the city.
"The most important skill that any of these ambassadors has is loving the city and loving people. We want people who just love talking about our downtown, love looking out for our downtown," he said.
It's that love for downtown that drew Tremyya Malone to apply for the position.
"It's always something hot going on down here, it's always live," she said.
The St. Louis native was one of a dozen starting their first shift Saturday as a downtown public safety ambassador.
"I'm interested in bridging gaps in the city. We have a lot of things going on, people touring all the time," Malone said.
Weigle said the ambassadors take public safety downtown to another level.
"What we wanted to do with this program is to create yet another layer, just to make it very clear that there's a strong presence of public safety on the streets," he said.
The program is funded by Greater St. Louis Inc. investors and is a collaboration with St. Louis Police, according to Weigle.
"We've got a strong commitment from the chief, from the local commander of the fourth district, that they will support these ambassadors. What we're doing is creating, truly, a web of public safety downtown, where the ambassadors are going to be working actively with SLMPD. What that does is it creates a safe place, not only for the public downtown, but for the ambassadors too," he said.
The ambassadors will walk, bike, and drive all over downtown. Weigle said they can escort people to their cars, answer questions, give directions and even communicate with law enforcement.
"They will be extra eyes and ears for the police. They'll report when they see something that is suspicious to the police, and so on a number of levels, they will be there to help downtown both feel safer and be safer," he said.
According to Weigle, the ambassadors go through extensive training.
"They will learn how to interact with the public. They'll understand what the laws are at a basic level. They'll understand how to de-escalate in cases where things may start to get heated," he said.
The firm Greater St. Louis Inc. hired to run the program, also runs similar programs in 150 communities across the United States. Weigle saw the success of this program first-hand when he was running the downtown development district in New Orleans. He said deterrence and prevention is vital.
"The benefits just really magnify when you have police and ambassadors working that closely together, so that kind of partnership is going to be important for us. What we heard from the public time after time is that seeing the ambassadors there made them feel safer," Weigle said.
It's that kind of important visibility, that Malone believes, will push her hometown to the new level.
"We're here to help. We're here to get them where they're going safely. It's definitely going to be an asset," she said.
Eventually there will be 30 ambassadors walking the streets of downtown seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. During big sporting events or any other major event downtown, more ambassadors will be out on the streets. If you need any assistance from an ambassador, you can call 314-978-2233.