Власти Сент-Луиса объединили усилия для борьбы с воровством медных проводов на набережной

The Mississippi riverfront in downtown St. Louis has become a hotspot in the city’s cat-and-mouse battle with copper wire thieves—with the city struggling to stay one step ahead of increasingly aggressive thefts. The ill effects of the thieves’ handiwork are readily apparent. North of the Arch, both the Eads Bridge and stretches of Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard on the riverfront have lost lighting because of thieves. Gates controlling traffic both north and south of the Arch aren’t operable because thieves absconded with their wiring. Get a fresh take on the day’s top news Subscribe to the St. Louis Daily newsletter for a smart, succinct guide to local news from award-winning journalists Sarah Fenske and Ryan Krull. “You need lighting down there,” says Ben Jonsson, a retired Air Force colonel and the city’s chief operations officer. “You also have to have access.” Ryan McClure is the executive director of the Gateway Arch Park Foundation, an organization doing as much as anyone to activate the riverfront. He says that when his organization put on the Rolling on the River roller skating event in May, it was a big success. But it had to be powered with generators. “When we did the investments previously, power was installed so that events could happen on the riverfront. Well, unfortunately, that is not there [now] because the wiring has been vandalized and stolen,” he says. “We’ve got to fix that.” Fixing it, he adds, is a necessary precursor to any big infusion of private or public capital investment coming to the riverfront. Copper wire theft has been a scourge on the entire city: from homes and businesses in South City’s Patch neighborhood to churches on the Northside. Some thefts have brought a heavy dose of irony, such as thieves stealing wire stolen from a courts building or—on two separate occasions—the region’s new unified 911 call center. The riverfront is a special case, though. A tremendous amount of city-owned wire is on site to power lights and other infrastructure. The riverfront is also a swath of the city that both City Hall and civic groups say needs to be better activated, and earlier this year they dedicated $15 million of Rams settlement funds to doing just that. Finally, the area also sits at the intersection of many different stakeholders—the city; Bi-State Development, which operates MetroLink; and federal authorities, who control the Gateway Arch National Park. When it comes to battling copper wire theft, these entities are right now as unified as they have ever been. When Jonsson came into his current role at City Hall in May 2025, pedestrian lights on the Eads Bridge and Leonore K. Sullivan were out due to wire theft. Jonsson describes the thefts as occurring as quickly as the city could make repairs. The city had tried to be proactive about curbing the thefts. Unfortunately, says Jonsson, the thieves “are just very resourceful.” So St. Louis talked to other cities that had dealt with wire theft and learned some best practices. They installed the wiring for the lights underground, accessible only by manholes on Leonor K. Sullivan, which were then covered with concrete barriers and large rocks. The wiring on Eads was secured behind metal boxes welded shut. The price tag on just the Eads job ran nearly $225,000. It was installed in May of this year. “It was stolen essentially three weeks later,” says Jonsson. The thieves—as if fueled by some sort of performance-enhancing drug—moved the large rocks and concrete barriers to access the manholes. In a separate incident, they used a “powerful grinding saw” to cut through the welded boxes on Eads Bridge. Portions of the riverfront went dark—or at least dim—after sunset. “There is a very strong correlation between lighting and criminal activity,” says Jonsson. “It’s just so foundational that you have lights on down there.” Not wanting to throw good money after bad, the city paused repairs. Jonsson says he believed the problem to be solvable, but knew it would require multiple agencies partnering together and leveraging each other’s capabilities. In August, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri Tom Albus, the top federal law enforcement official in the region, convened a meeting about wire theft. “The problems are acute at the Arch area,” Albus says. He added, “[The area] should be a source of pride for our community. So, whatever they need, we’re happy to do it.” He notes that thefts from the Arch grounds, churches, historic buildings, and libraries strike at the “integrity and the beauty of our city.” He adds, “I just think that’s something that everybody would be interested in stopping.” His office needs a “jurisdictional hook” allowing them to work on the problem, but thefts from Eads Bridge, critical interstate infrastructure, represent just that. Albus’ meeting drew the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, the National Parks Service, and Bi-State Transit—and brought several solutions to light. The city was well aware that cameras they owned on the riverfront weren’t working because thieves had ripped out their wire. (That wire was fiber optic, not copper, surely a disappointment to the thieves.) But what the city didn’t know was that Bi-State had its own cameras that could be leveraged to surveil the area where thefts occur. They’re coordinating on those efforts now. Also, the National Parks Service, which patrols the Arch grounds said that they currently have to get approval from the SLMPD before they detain anyone, creating a lag that allows quick-moving scrap thieves to get away. The MOU between the two agencies is now being updated. “We’re working to make sure that administratively they have the flexibility they need to just jump in and help out,” says Albus. “Or at least have the direct line to the Fourth District to tell the watch commander to get somebody down here as opposed to waiting on the line for 911.” A few days after the meeting, Albus’ office also sent out a letter to area recycling facilities that buy scrap, letting them know that after a spate of “significant copper wire thefts” in the city, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI were working to identify anyone stealing or buying the stolen material. His office is also looking into the strategy of looking at who has sold scrap to scrapyards recently and seeing who on the list has warrants or wanteds. “We just need to be trying to develop leads and identify these people,” he says. Any scrapyard owners with questions were encouraged to contact assistant U.S. Attorney Hal Goldsmith. Other solutions were more improvised. Jonsson says that the city hung wire for some of the lights on Leonor K. Sullivan 30 feet in the air, out of the reach of thieves. That’s feasible in the stretch of the riverfront between the Arch and Eads Bridge, but doesn’t make sense at the Arch, as the eyesore would detract from the region’s top tourist attraction. “It’s not pretty to hang wire between light poles that should be underground,” says Jonsson. Jonsson says that the city is also looking into wire that has GPS tags on it, as well as alarms that will go off immediately once a burglary is detected. Previously, the only way to catch a thief in the act was if a camera happened to be trained on the exact spot they were targeting. Most commonly, the theft was only discovered the following day. Jonsson wants alarms that will, in military parlance, provide “advanced warning.” As for the gates controlling traffic to the north and south of the Arch, Ameren is now coordinating with the city to install a power system that will be, if not entirely theft-proof, at least more so. As Jonsson said, the scrape thieves are resourceful. Albus compared the scrap thief mentality to that of your friend in college willing to put inordinate effort into not writing the assigned paper. Notably, however, everyone SLM spoke to for this story was optimistic the problem could be solved. Part of that optimism stemmed from the fact that because of work like that of McClure’s organization, there’s likely to soon be more reasons for more people to be on the riverfront, which is the best deterrent to these thefts. “With numbers and with vibrancy, comes safety,” says McClure. “That’s just a scientific, proven thing. That is the direction that we’re heading in.” Says Jonsson: “Our first W will be tactical battles, not the war. There’s many battles in a war. We gotta win.”