ST. LOUIS • Most public parking lots will be required to have gates and attendants under new rules aimed at fighting car break-ins downtown, Mayor Francis Slay announced Wednesday.
The announcement was spurred by a rash of break-ins Friday night in which thieves smashed windows or broke locks to more than 60 vehicles parked mostly in lots surrounding the downtown corridor.
The issue, said city Public Safety Director Charles Bryson, is that many lot attendants take money as cars enter before events, such as Cardinals games. Once the lots are full, the attendants depart — leaving the cars vulnerable to theft.
"If you're taking folks' money, you've got to take better care of their cars," Bryson said Wednesday.
Slay's staff members said a task force has been working on the issue for more than a year, ever since violence broke out on Washington Avenue and police identified unmanned parking lots as trouble spots.
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Despite the trouble, police statistics show a decrease in car break-ins in the downtown area over the last year. Still, the task force was preparing to announcing the measures next month and moved up its timeline after last weekend's break-ins, staffers said.
On Tuesday, Slay met with the group, made up of police, city attorneys, the Department of Public Safety and the city's "Problem Properties" unit, which works to reduce crime and complaints associated with certain buildings.
The group decided that:
• The building commissioner will issue rules next week, effective 30 days after they're issued, requiring that most or all parking lots provide attendants.
• The rules also will require parking lots to be gated and locked when not open.
• Police will meet with parking lot attendants and employees to train them to spot and report potential trouble.
• Police and the Problem Properties unit will meet with the individual owners of 100 of the roughly 200 parking lots in the downtown area to address specific issues on their properties.
Managers at several downtown lots did not return calls seeking comment. But Slay has tweeted, via the social network Twitter, that some parking lot owners have "resisted new regulations."
One lot owner, however, has already volunteered to provide an attendant during Cardinals games, said police 4th District Capt. Kenneth Kegel in the mayor's release.
"That is a good step forward," he said, "but we need more lot owners to follow the lead."
The city could shut down lots that fail to follow the new rules.
The crime spree that prompted Slay's announcement occurred mostly on the fringes of downtown Friday night and Saturday morning: 28 vehicle break-ins in LaSalle Park, five downtown, 10 west of downtown and two in the North Riverfront area. In addition, 17 cars were broken into at a Commerce Bank lot at Vandeventer and Chouteau avenues.
Police Capt. Michael Caruso said Saturday that the break-ins appeared to be the work of two separate groups of two to three thieves each.
One group tended to smash windows and grab anything in sight. The second group used a screwdriver to punch under the lock. In some cases, the cars were just vandalized. In most, items ranging from purses to GPS units were stolen.
"It was a target-rich environment for the thieves," Caruso said, given the number of people downtown for Marine Week and the Cardinals game.
Police have descriptions of the suspects' cars — a black Ford Fusion and silver Dodge Intrepid — but so far no arrests have been made.
City officials and police leaders noted, however, that vehicle break-in incidents in the area are barely half what they were at this time last year — dipping to 113 from 212 downtown, and to 81 from 193 in the downtown west neighborhoods.
According to FBI reporting standards, one incident can refer to multiple vehicle break-ins in the same area by the same suspect.
Police attribute the drop to several initiatives that began in 2009 and 2010, including a campaign that urged the public not to leave their valuables in plain sight and a special detail of officers focused on preventing car break-ins and catching those responsible.
"It's public awareness, it's policies in place, and communication with lot owners that helps deter this behavior," Police Chief Dan Isom said Wednesday.
Isom said most of the lots downtown do not have attendants constantly on site, and many are not fenced. The lot hardest hit, in the LaSalle Park neighborhood, just south of downtown, did not have any attendants present when the break-ins occurred, he said.
He said he supports the new city rules.
And by Wednesday, police were already battling another rash of break-ins.
This time, 20 cars were broken into at a lot at 18th and Market streets, between 1 and 4 a.m.
Police were unable to say whether the crimes were connected to those from the weekend.