ST. LOUIS — Mayor Tishaura Jones' office is defending her plan to expand youth activities at recreation centers after a low turnout this weekend.
Aides from the mayor's office estimated approximately 40 to 50 people showed up at two recreation centers, but only saw two or three of them who fit into the 15 to 19-year-old age range.
The city of St. Louis rolled out new youth programming to try and create alternatives for kids caught up in crime after a mass shooting at a downtown office space earlier this month.
Wilford Pinkney, the director of the Mayor's Office of Children, Youth and Families, said the new programs could take some time to catch on, and sold the upside in recruiting adults as community mentors.
"There was just adults at both sites who are from the community," he said. "That's one thing to me that was a real positive for them this weekend. People that didn't live in those communities and weren't being paid to be there showed up because they wanted to show their support for young people, and to engage them, and find out how they can turn this tide of violence."
The city plans to spread the word through social media influencers and other local figureheads.
Pinkney said if the trend catches on with more youth, it could have a ripple effect among their classmates and start to steer their behavior into different avenues.
"Many kids who may carry weapons with the intent of using them, they're usually not alone," Pinkney said in a Monday afternoon press conference video call. "Groups of other kids, who then look at them -- and look to them and maybe even look up to them -- and may result in them engaging in that similar behavior. So these types of events are meant to pull kids away who don't have anything else to do but see these kids every day."
Other positive trends are starting to surface in the police crime statistics.
5 On Your Side's Christine Byers obtained a recent CompStat print-out from the St. Louis police department that shows murders are down 4% so far this year compared to the same time last year, robberies are down 23% and felony thefts down 40%, but car thefts are up by 56%.
Pinkney shrugged off the dramatic increase in car thefts and said it doesn't reflect on the city's ongoing effort to hold automakers accountable in court.
"I don't see it as a failure," he said, "because once again, we don't want to take a stat from a 'one week' or 'one day' or 'one month' in time as an indication of the success or failure of effort."