Historical September 1985 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Operation SafeStreet, the crime prevention program for the City of St. Louis, is seeking nominees for its new awards program called the “Operation SafeStreet St. Louisan Awards.” As the recognition program grows, awards will be given monthly.
A ceremony will be held quarterly to announce the winners for the previous three months.
The awards are designed to give special recognition to citizens, police and SafeStreet volunteers who have made outstanding contributions in crime prevention. Awards are given in three categories: Outstanding Volunteer is presented to a person who has donated unusual amounts of time and energy to make the neighborhood safer. Concerned Citizen is awarded to persons who aid police, help a victim or work toward prosecution of an offender. Police Service award is given to police officers or districts for exceptional police work. Recipients of the first awards are: Oscar Farmer for Outstanding Volunteer. Mr. Farmer retired as a St. Louis Police Department lieutenant after thirtythree years.
He has been spending an average of fifteen hours a week recruiting. volunteers for the SafeStreet program.
His efforts had resulted in seventy-two recruited block captains, 718 secured homes and over 800 installed smoke detectors in the Penrose Park area. Concerned Citizen was awarded to Robert Henderson from the Shaw neighborhood.
He was responsible for stopping four crimes in the area and successfully aiding in the conviction of one person. Mr. Henderson spends many hours walking and watching the neighborhood with his canine companion, Kansas.
The Police Service Award was presented to two patrolmen from the Third District, Officers Gary Kukla and Robert Heimberger.
They were assigned by Third District Captain Charles McCrary to a special detail to try to impact a rash of burglaries in the Tower Grove, Fox Park, Tiffany and Shaw neighborhoods. hoods. Their determination and hard work resulted in the arrest of fourteen individuals for twenty-four crimes in a two-month period. Tom Mangogna, Chief of Staff for Mayor Schoemehl, presented the awards at a luncheon at the Marriott Hotel. “The strong commitment that these four individuals have shown is a great example of the work being done by citizens, volunteers, and police in making our City a better place to live and work. I want to thank you on behalf of the citizens of St. Louis who have all benefitted from your efforts,” Mr. Mangogna said. Operation SafeStreet was initiated in 1984 by Mayor Schoemehl.
It was designed as a cooperative effort between police, City government and the citizens.
There are five program components: Project Porchlight, where residents are asked to burn their porchlights from dusk to dawn; Project Home Security, in which home security measures are offered to residents at nominal or no cost; Project Quiet Street, where streets are closed or redesigned, at Alderman’s request to limit traffic to residential use; Neighborhood Watch, sponsored in cooperation with the St. Louis Police Dept., trains volunteers to be block watchers; and Operation SafeStreet Newsletter, mailed to all residents in the target areas.
To date, Operation SafeStreet is working in forty-six neighborhoods, with 211,242 residents on 2,643 City blocks.
There are 1,475 block captains recruited, trained and working in their areas. ‘ There have been 6,976 homes secured through Project Home Security, 25,000 smoke detectors sold or installed and 225 Neighborhood Watch meetings held. One-year crime statistics for the initial Phase 1 neighborhoods showed a 15.4 per cent decrease in the SafeStreet areas compared to a 6.8 per cent decrease City wide.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, September 1985.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Printed duplicated fragment “hoods.” retained after “neighborhoods.”
Original source: SD_Times1985_09.pdf, printed page(s) 7; PDF page(s) 7.
