ST. LOUIS — It was a violent weekend nationally and all across St. Louis over the holiday weekend.
At least 21 people have been shot, and eight people have died since Friday, July 1 morning.
Some of those victims were as young as 17 years old and one was a former high school football star, Damion Baker.
The Downtown Engagement and Public Safety Initiative had its weekly meeting on Tuesday, July 5, and addressed the crime.
Police said they are just as frustrated as everybody else.
The numbers were already adding up over the long holiday weekend and on Tuesday morning, two more shootings were added to the list.
This is making law enforcement question if what they're doing is enough.
It was a quiet afternoon in downtown St. Louis on Tuesday, but just that morning and over the long holiday weekend, it was a much different story.
Dan Isom, St. Louis Public Safety Director, described the weekend as 'difficult' for both downtown and the entire city.
"Unfortunately, seven people were killed since Friday morning and more than a dozen shootings happened across our city," he said.
Isom addressed the violence in the Downtown Engagement and Public Safety Initiative meeting.
He said many of the violent crimes they've seen this year are interpersonal disputes that escalate.
"The violence that we see in our streets, of course, is unacceptable and it speaks to the ways guns are flooding our streets and taking the lives of our citizens," Isom said.
He said the hot months are always a challenging time.
Traditionally they see a spike over the Fourth of July, according to Isom, but the last four days seemed to catch officers off guard.
"Certainly up into this weekend, we felt that we were deploying people in the right places in the right times, but certainly this weekend was not what we expected," he said.
Unexpected events, not only for officers but also the victim's friends and family.
Specifically, those who knew 25-year-old Damion Baker, who lost his life early Sunday morning just south of Busch Stadium.
Baker was part of the undefeated CBC state champions football team in 2014.
He went on to play college football at Holy Cross.
Baker's former coach, Lonnie Jordan, said no one ever expected this would happen to him.
"I don't put one life above the next, but especially when you're not out here doing anything to harm anyone, and it just comes to you," he said.
Just this summer, St. Louis police officers moved to mandatory 12-hour shifts.
After the past days filled with tragedy though, city leaders expressed, that there may be room for adjustments.
"We will continue to look at what we're doing and try to improve, but I am hopeful that we won't have many weekends, like this, throughout the rest of the year," Isom said.
In comparison to the past two years, homicide numbers are down across St. Louis.
We still have several unanswered questions about the shooting that killed Damion Baker, like who is responsible and how the female victim, who was with Baker, is doing.
Police said they had no new information at this time.