BELLEVILLE — Power has been restored to thousands of Ameren customers in east Belleville Friday night.

At the height of the power outage, more than 3,000 homes and businesses had lost service, according to Ameren's outage map.

Ameren spokesman Leigh Morris said the outage occurred at about 5:30 p.m. when the utility's East Belleville substation had mechanical problems. Morris said the outage lasted for about an hour.

Mayor Mark Eckert said extra police officers were assigned to patrol the area.