A new light rail that links East St. Louis to the nearby suburbs is being blamed for bringing urban crime to the suburban shopping malls. From an article in the Riverfront Times:
Ask virtually any store manager at the Saint Louis Galleria about shoplifting, and you’ll invariably get two responses: One, it’s out of control; and two, it’s gotten exceedingly worse since August 2006, when MetroLink opened a stop just 500 yards from the high-end shopping center.
In the first six months of this year, Richmond Heights police made 345 arrests at the mall. That’s nearly double the number of arrests made in all of 2005, before MetroLink opened its Shrewsbury line.
More alarming are the numbers of juveniles (kids under the age of 17) arrested at the mall. This year police are on pace to take 276 juveniles into custody for shoplifting and other offenses — a sevenfold increase over the 39 kids arrested at the Galleria in 2005.
“I know it’s not politically correct, but how else do you explain it?” comments a frustrated Galleria store manager who, like many Galleria shopkeepers interviewed by Riverfront Times, says her employer prohibits her from officially speaking for the company.
“Anyone can see all these people crossing Brentwood Boulevard from the MetroLink station,” the manager continues. “Most of them aren’t here to shop. They’re here to hang out and cause trouble.”
Mall workers say it’s not just shoplifting that’s causing problems. In November 2006 police arrested five juveniles and four older teenagers following a fistfight at the Galleria that involved dozens of minors.
Four months later in March, another fight in the mall — this one involving up to 100 teens — led to three more arrests and the Galleria imposing new sanctions on teenagers. The so-called “Parental Guidance Required” policy, put in place in April 2007, prohibits anyone under age 17 from entering the mall after 3 p.m. on weekends without an adult chaperone.
There’s more:
Now — eighteen months after the Galleria curfew first went into effect — many store owners in University City speculate the ban has resulted in pushing troublemakers six stops up the MetroLink line to the Delmar Loop. Police in University City confirm that they first noticed large groups of teens congregating in the Loop in June 2007, two months after the Galleria imposed its curfew.
In recent weeks, dozens of those same teens have been implicated in violent attacks that have hospitalized people working and living near the light rail stations in the Loop and the nearby DeBaliviere neighborhood.
If the incoming President can find the money, there will surely be renewed efforts to expand public transit in a lot of cities.
There are obvious gains: environmental, less road congestion, fewer accidents, etc. But if St. Louis’s experience is at all indicative, there might also be at least one unintended consequence worth thinking about.
(Hat tip: David Friedman)
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#1 – The implication is that areas currently without public transit might resist getting public transit if it means they believe that they will be importing crime from somewhere else.
My neighborhood is not served by public transit; I live in the suburbs where the density makes the economics of public transit difficult. On the one hand, I would use public transit if it were available and the additional time cost to me was reasonable. On the other hand, I paid a premium for my property because it was in an area with a low crime rate.
Raising the crime rate alone is sufficient disincentive for me, but it would also lower my property value. Fuel prices probably will not get high enough for me to accept that trade-off.
…What you are more or less arguing for is that artificial transportation barriers are an effective crime fighting tool….
Exactly where did you read these policy subscriptions in the article above?
It seems the strawman you are arguing against doesn’t exist.
Simply noting consequences isn’t the same thing as perscribing remedies…
If public transit increases the number of teenagers shopping at the mall, wouldn’t we also expect to see an increase in the number of teenage shoplifters even if the rate of shoplifting per teenager stayed the same?
I’ve only crocodile tears for the rich on this one… ghetto advocacy isn’t cool.
Societies with a more equitable distribution of wealth have many fewer problems of this kind. Only countries where youth of all backgrounds have equal opportunity can be expected to produce equally law-abiding populations.
Marketing has created an unquenchable desire for things, but the capability to obtain those things is hardly equal.
This is far from empirical evidence that crime is the result of the new transit system. What is the creme situation area wide? Do we know that these folks committing the crimes are coming from East St. Louis or are they from somewhere else?
There are many unanswered questions here.
The problem with the RFT story (they are notoriously shoddy in their ‘investigative’ reporting I should note, and I’m a fan of the paper) is that these problems started long before the metrolink opened that station. It has more to do with the fact that other area malls have closed down, making the Galleria the nearest teen hangout for a greater part of the population.
This being St. Louis there is of course a strong racial factor to this as well. The Galleria is in upscale Clayton. There have been several lawsuits against the Galleria security for being unduly aggressive and harassing with black teens while ignoring the same behaviors from white teens.
Could the headline have also read “Public Transit leads to increased revenues”?
Wouldn’t a more accurate analysis determine the relative change in a) actual store losses due to shoplifting and b) store revenues?
This analysis is racist because of the focus on the negative aspects of the influx of urban teens without reference to possible positive impacts. Is society better or worse off because of public transport?
This started a long time ago when we chose to forgo common public space for privately owned “public space” like malls. I also wonder about how much shoplifting goes on by young people who do not “stand out” as much as the lower income folk. Is it easier to arrest this people?
I want to see data on shrinkage, not arrest numbers.