Interview with Jill Schlutie and Lee Kotwitz from Columbia Police Department and Housing Department

2. Ydych chi'n gwybod y dylunio'r dyluniau yma? Ond mae'r dylunio yn bwysig. 1. Ydych chi'n ymwybodol am fod y materion yma'n gynnwys'n iach? Ochelwch y materion yma. 1. Ydych chi'n gwybod am fod y materion yma'n gynnwys'n iach? 2. Ydych chi'n ymwybodol am fod y materion yma'n gynnwys'n iach? 1. Ydych chi'n gwybod am fod y materion yma'n gynnwys'n iach? 2. Ydych chi'n ymwybodol am fod y materion yma'n gynnwys'n iach? Yna mae'n ffodus i'r afael â'r materion yma. Mae'n ffodus i'r afael â'r materion yma. 2. Pa fath yw bod haen i'r materion i'w gyflwyno? Mae'n ddiddorol i'r afael â'r materion yma. Mae'n ddidddorol i'r haen i'r materion yma. 2. Pa fout y'w bod haen i'r materion yma? Mae'n dddoooor llllllllli Mae'n dddoooorlllllllllllllllllll Mae'n dddddooorllllllllllllllllllllll Mae'n tdddoorolllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll Mae'n tdddordodododododododododododododododododododor Mae'n tdddodoreodoreodoreodore Mae'n tdddodororuorooroor It goes on and on and on… Mae'n tdddodoreodorororeoreoror Mae'n tdddodorodoreorororororororor Mae'n tdddodoreodororerorororoororoororor Mae'n tddddodorodorororerororoororororororororo Mae'n. tdddodorodororororororororororo But I know that we have investigations underway as to what the hell happened with that McNally's has been around for a long time and we'll mention it to She-She-She looting here in a moment but II used to go to McNally's with a lot of cop friends in Columbia It's it's a block away from the cop shop and then wise guys, why are you kidding me? Do you know that we were on our way back into town? I was like oh man, what we really need is some oh, that's not there. I was this close. to ordering wise guys pizza. So our thoughts are with everybody who's involved with that and the owners and all the people who work there and all the friends and fans of wise guys and of McNally's and hopefully we'll figure out what happened and I have no idea how bad the damage is and if that's something that they're going to be able to rebuild from or if they're just going to walk away. I wish I could tell you which it's going to be but I certainly do not know. Okay, I believe it's time to bring our guests on now and we do have some sound here and we should have all of our sound of the podcast. We'll probably I said there'd be no editing on the podcast. Wait a second. You don't know that I said that that's right because it wasn't broadcasted. You have no idea what I said and did not say. All right, moving us in now to our guest segment this morning as we say hello to the Columbia Police Department chief of police Jill Schlutie. Good morning Jill and welcome to the podcast. Good morning. It's good to have you here. You bring your iced coffee wherever you go. Basically. Yes. Where did you get that this morning? It was scooters. Usually it's seven brew, but this was on the way. Uh-huh. It's big XL. Hey man, you're a cop. I want you to have energy. That's right. It's always been very very important to me. What goes in there? Is there like like whipped cream on top? I do extra-large sugar-free iced galaxy sugar-free. That's yeah. I've always been looking for a sugar-free iced galaxy and now I know that's the size of a galaxy over there. I like that. She has a Cooley over the the disposable cup. That's a fantastic to keep it colder. It's very serious business. Do you ever drink hot coffee in the winter? You do. My coffee consumption actually does decrease slightly in the summer. I find myself by 9 a.m. not really wanting that much more. And I also want to say good morning to joining you just to your left Lee Kotwitz who is and I said earlier the Neighborhood Services Manager. That's correct. Yes. Of the Housing and Neighborhood Services Department. That's correct. All right. And I want to start with a question to you first a reminder of where we're coming from on this. Moving back to a podcast back in June in which we talked to a woman named Pamela. It was a fictitious name that we used because she didn't feel comfortable putting her name out there. You guys are aware of who she is but she didn't feel comfortable with the general public which is amazing. What she had was an experience with individuals who are apparently homeless camping on their property and destroying the property and trashing it up. So I want to start off Lee with understanding what what exactly is the entire Department of Housing and Neighborhood Services. Can you put that into a paragraph for us. Sure. Is it too big for that. Well I'll try to be concise here. So we have two divisions. I work in Neighborhood Services and our primary focus is code enforcement. So we're the folks that inspect all rental properties in the city. We send notices when there are property violations for residential and commercial property. And then we also enforce sections of the health code which is what connects to this particular issue. So there are sections of the city's health code that relate to trash and debris. And in some instances homeless camps will be a violation of that code. So that's where we enter the picture in situations like this. And that's and that's why I reached out to you among several. I sent out an e-mail first of all to four different people involved with the city the mayor of Columbia the city manager the chief of police and you Lee kind of put you in some big wig headquarters doesn't it. That's good isn't it. I think I don't know. We keep really busy. There's always a lot going on. The reason we reached out to you is because the person and there have been several that have come forward that had this issue going on with homeless people camping on their property. There was discussion of a threat of fines from the city of Columbia if they didn't get this property cleaned up. And I don't want to misstep on timing or the way it came about. But generally speaking am I still on target. There were homeless people camping on there. The property was trashed up and the city said you need to clean it up. And if you don't you'll be fined. Is that correct. That is not exactly correct. So if I can just share a little bit about how the enforcement process works you know whenever our staff discover a violation we're going to reach out to the property owner send a notice. And there are a couple avenues that we have. So one is sending a notice of violation. And if that issue is not corrected then that violation could be considered by the municipal prosecutor and go before the municipal judge. The judge could decide they want to levy a fine on that owner or the violator. That's the process. So when it comes to fines city staff doesn't usually have any authority. Your initial letters mentioned that there could be fines. Probably. I mean that's usually what the language is is that it'll say if this isn't resolved then we may send it to prosecution. And we have generally speaking a pretty generous prosecutor and judge. And so some cases get resolved and there's no fine. And the fines are varied. And again city staff doesn't dictate what the judge might set as a fine. Is there any reason that there would there have been an amount ever mentioned in there. So I'd like to make sure that I'm getting this right. So let me get to where this 15000 dollars came up because there's also another path for enforcement and that is by the city coming in and abating the violation. So in health the health code if there are some violations the city can come in and resolve that through an abatement process and then that cost is taxed against or billed against the property. So in this instance because we had not seen any improvement on the violation we got a bid from our contractor to conduct that abatement. And that was where this 15000 dollar amount gets mentioned. I got you. And so at that point that was shared with the property owner to say hey we've been talking with you we're trying to get this resolved we're not seeing progress. Our contractors looked at the site. They're telling us it's going to cost 15000 dollars if the city conducts that abatement. And if we have to go forward with that then there's going to be a tax bill against the property for that expense. So luckily the property owner at least I say luckily because I think it's the best outcome the property owner came in and cleaned up all the debris that was at that site. I want to mention while we're talking money and the fact that the property owner did that at their own expense obviously we all do all kinds of things for our property at our own expense. It was and I checked on it this week 10000 dollars. So your bid from a general whatever contractor that would do that wasn't far off from what it took them working themselves. And then the other expenses at 10000 dollars to clean that thing up. And these discussions Lee and Chief Slutty are not an ambush. I don't lie and wait with my questions. I believe we need to talk and understand this better. I'm not happy with the way these things have happened and I've heard from a lot of people that are upset. The majority of people in Columbia don't know what's going on and they don't care. I get that. But the people listening to this podcast do care and a lot of them are very interested. And before I move further I want to say that Deb and I our property is prime. I'm not really promoting this. I want you to know right now I am not promoting this to the homeless out there but homeless don't listen to this podcast. It's prime for homeless to come in and camp out on. In fact we've had homeless less than 300 yards from the back of our property camping out near the highway. Meanwhile the back of our property I can't see. We have forests that are really really all over that and we can't see. So it's prime for this kind of thing. So I'm really interested in how this could work because there could be people camping there right now and I would have no idea. Which brings up my next question to you which is how the heck did you guys know that this property was trashed up. We got a call from the police department. So the officers contacted us and we talked frequently because there's a lot of cooperation between our departments in situations like this. Well I'm glad to hear that. And the reason the cops knew about this is because the property owners chief they they reached out to you guys that we've got. They didn't reach out. That's not how this started. Oh how did this start. And I want to say up front I'm I'm not here to attack anybody that's come to talk to you. My job is to just provide facts as I know them. So this first came to our knowledge through a see click fix complaint. So see click fix is a new system the city uses to kind of better organize how citizens can communicate with city and say hey there's a pothole here. The water fountain doesn't work at this park or whatever it is. And so one of the things you can go on there and report is encampments. And so we started getting I know there was at least two independent if not three independent complainants on that particular property. And so they contacted the city and said hey I'm driving by this all the time. And I see those are just citizens who see it and they report it. Yes. OK. So that's how it first came to my knowledge. I don't know if that's Lee's. That's what I understand. But we got multiple people contact and sometimes it comes just straight to us as a department because the person that kind of runs that system can kind of hand those things out. Oftentimes they also come through a city council person to the department. And I think in this case it came from kind of both avenues. So some people were very upset because I did not see it at the time. I didn't drive by there when this was going on. That's my understanding. They were calling because you could see it for my 70 drive southwest. Let me pause you for just a second. Does that mean. Could I imagine that when I'm seeing a trash heap somewhere and I know where it's coming from we all know where it's coming from when I see one of those out there in the woods especially when the fall comes and the leaves are coming down. You guys are probably already aware of it. Good chance. I mean I would never tell people not to report but I looked at it. You know we keep a tracker on all the complaints that we get in or or if an officer happens to find one. You know we've had about 88 in the past since we started tracking it with the hot team. So maybe nine months. 88 complaints or 88 sites 88 sites. And some of those overlap a little bit. So I say that because some of them especially on city property if it's on a trail sometimes we have to sometimes finding where they are is very difficult even when people are reported in. I actually will tell people sometimes can you drop a pin on a map and send it to us because they have to kind of go out sometimes off the beaten path to find them. But yeah. So that's kind of the count that we're up to at this point. Man I got it. I got it. I don't I don't know where our account is yet which by the way I love you guys have heard it. But do we know do we have a count from the what is it called the one night count per year that we have for the point in time count. Yeah. I don't remember what last year's was. I just went to a meeting where they talked about that the health department handles that. The last time I went to a meeting I was in the hospital and they told me I was looking for it was probably was probably about a month ago and it was not that I could see released across the nation yet. It does happen across the nation and bam it'll it'll come out. But 88 different sites. I didn't know we had that many. That's that's that's quite a few. And that can be to be to be clear that could be like you see a small little C1 tent or that could be these massive ones that we've had to go clean up. Right. You heard of the C click fix before. I'd never heard of that system before. That was new to me. I just pulled it up to see. So it's C like you're seeing something. Click it and then it'll get fixed. I'd never heard of that system before. I didn't know that existed for Columbia. I haven't either. I city Columbia like any other place has a lot of stuff to try and get out. I recognize the fact that communicating with all the people can be tough but using social media and your Web sites and other media outlets. Heck Lee if you have something you want to talk about today and make sure you get out there you can put on the podcast. OK. Great. Is there anything you'd like to like to mention out there for us. I guess that related to see click fix. I would say that when people want to communicate with the city you know we will take complaints all different ways. Facebook messenger send us an e-mail call us. You know we want to receive information all different ways. So see click fix is just another tool to do that. So one of the things that I want to mention on identifying these sites is that sometimes the police officers are invited by the property owner to come look at these these sites these camps when it comes to the code enforcement done out of neighborhood services is that we have to be able to see it from a public right of way or from the neighboring property. So if it's back and you can't see it from off the property then there's never going to be a violation from our office. It's only going to happen if it can be seen which I think is this case in this situation because it could be seen from a public way. And so that's what generates the concern and the code violation. I'll tell you that I knew about this site long before I met Pamela and I was like oh I think I know where you are. And we talked some more. Oh yeah I've been seeing that for a while but sharing with family members I'm like look at this pile of stuff going on over here because if I had to ask you chief would you like to see the same number of homeless in Columbia more homeless or fewer homeless. Obviously fewer and I actually found the answer to your question. I went to one of the Let's Talk local ward meetings a couple of weeks ago and the health department put up a slide and said the twenty twenty four number was three hundred and twenty three. Yeah but we don't have twenty twenty five yet. No no. And so we'll see what happens. It's been it's been going up throughout this time. And you guys are dealing with all this stuff all the time. And I have some hard questions for both of you guys as we move through this. But I know that it's a little bit of a mini nightmare I'm sure for the Columbia Police Department. All right. Yeah. And I'll say something about this property is a good example because again I'm not not here to attack anyone that was talking to you. But the person that came to you is actually not the property owner. If you look on the Boone County Web site the property owner is not that person. I believe she was the tenant on the property from best I can tell. So we have to contact the property owner. They're the only one that has the legal authority to say hey come remove these people from my property. That was difficult in this situation. You know I get I get that but I feel like you're splitting hairs on this thing. And what we really need to go for is I mean they they spent ten thousand dollars from what it sounds like to me. And they I absolutely were putting up with hell from these people living there coming in and stealing things at their house in the middle. Well anytime but some things the middle of the night including turning on their their hose a spigot outside in the middle of the night while they're in bed. And they're like what the hell. And I can hear my whole spigot get turned on from anywhere in the house. We got to work on that with some home improvement guys. But I mean this this whole thing's going on. Whether they own that property or not sounds to me like that's a technicality. It's a legal authority. You have to have legal authority to tell the police department we can remove people from a property. So we do things called wait wait hold on a second. Are you saying that if I'm a renter and someone comes and camps out in my living room I don't have authority to kick inside your house is different inside your house is different. What about in my driveway. Can I kick him out of my driveway. Absolutely. You can kick him out of your driveway. Can I ask you a question. Yes. How is it that people saw this from the roadway. Citizens saw it from the roadway. You saw it from the roadway. And that was the first we heard about it. I don't know. I mean I don't I don't know. That doesn't catch me on anything over here because I'm looking at going I don't know. But I'm just they've got nine. They've got nine acres over there. And the part that we were able to see from I 70 was the back piece of there. It was it was less than one acre of their property as is what you told us that night. So I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know I don't know. I don't know who left their property that morning. But she and that property is an example of what's going on. If we want to we can talk hypothetically if someone is camped on the back of our property right now. Well what exactly should I do. Well you call the police if you want us to come out and have them removed for trespassing. But it would also be your right to say on my home. So I don't I don't. I do not purport to know all the city ordinances about what if you need a business license or not. But depending on where you live you could we've had people call and say my neighbor has someone with a tent in their backyard. Then you get into all these you know hypothetical questions right that that people like to bring up which are well so my kids can't camp in my yard in a tent. But this you know what I'm saying. So this is where we the city the police department kind of get caught in this vortex of all these different things. But in this particular case we had a lot of trouble getting in contact with the property owner and getting them to sign a letter of enforcement so that we could come remove people from the property. OK. So if we just take that property owner out of the equation we have homeless individuals in Columbia city limits who are illegally occupying space on people's property right now. Don't we. Yes. And if you call the police if those people call the police we will come and deal with those issues. We'll arrest them for trespassing if that's what they want. We can just tell them hey you have to leave or you're going to get arrested for trespassing. I have a feeling and I'm not saying that she or they will be right that I'm going to hear from people saying that's not the way that this happened. And I want to say at that time I'm not getting into that mix. And one of the things to point out about our citizens Lee and I'm not coming down on you. But is that while while they've got a couple of things going on in their life a few things I'm sure your job is to send out these letters and follow up on this. Their job is not to be receiving the letters what they have to write. So they have to contact an attorney and figure out what's going on. That's difficult for them. I'm sure we can picture that right. Well our experience was the same as what she mentioned is that we reached out to the owner. And again that is what we follow in city code. It says that we specifically have to reach out and communicate send a notice to the owner. And we look at county records to identify who the owner is of properties. And looking at the timeline for this this struck on for quite a while. So it came to our attention in mid-December and didn't get resolved until early March. So our staff also tried to communicate with the owner. And that is generally how we want to address any kind of violation is to get voluntary compliance to talk with the owner send a notice and doing an abatement like we described a very costly abatement is really the last ditch effort from the city. That would be the kind of the final act. And we certainly would want property owners to take responsibility and come up with a resolution before we get to that step. So then back to our property. It's a beautiful piece of property by the way. And we have the trail going through behind us and all this common ground and what have you. If someone is there right now camping out illegally and I'm not aware of it and reports are called into the city. Chief you would receive those reports because one way or another would come to you and go we've got people that are camping on a piece of property and you would reach out to me or you would just come check it out. So the homeless outreach team officers would come out and try to make contact with you and say hey do you know this is back here we got a complaint about this. And then it would really be up to you at that point what you want them to do. They would be happy to help you go speak with the folks. Tell them they can't be there. And that's really kind of what a lot of their job is honestly. I want to I want to ask a couple of questions here that may be difficult. Have you to talk to each other about the subject matter that we're discussing here today on this podcast. Well just briefly. Yeah we've we've shared information just so that we're both up to date on the case. Yeah I went through and looked through. So obviously Lee doesn't have access to police records. So I went through and looked at all the prior calls at the address to kind of ascertain based on her timeline. And so like I can tell you as soon as the property owner signed an enforcement letter I think we made an arrest out there the next day. So speaking for like Tom and I both own our properties. So if we call and there's somebody on there there's no delay right. If somebody is trespassing on our property and we say I want them removed right now they will either be told to walk off the property that second or they will be handcuffed and taken away in that moment. Is that correct. Just like any other kind of trespassing. OK. It's not. I think it gets a little confusing sometimes because we get focused on the fact that it's homeless people camping. But really it could be any trespassing. Right. And you get down on a regular basis with all kinds of different things. So that kind of muddied the story when we talked about this that you guys have to talk to the property owner the property owner has to be the one to agree to that. But hypothetically had they been the property owners and said I want these people gone now. CPD would have said you're leaving right now or we're arresting you. Absolutely. And if they say I'm not leaving then they leave in handcuffs. All right. The other two people that were invited on the podcast and Mayor Buffalo was on our podcast two months ago I think it was. And so she's she's been with us. But she was invited on and so was city manager to Carlin Seawood. Did you guys speak to the city manager about this issue and about the podcast that we were going to be having. Other than letting him know I was going on it. And he encouraged us to accept your invitation. So because I think there are some of these issues that sometimes can come to the responsibility and authority of the city council and others to the responsibility and the authority of the city manager and to not have them here. And I understand they're busy people. And Barbara can only take so much of me and I certainly understand that as well. And I'm not just Barbara. Wow. Well that was the last time I want to make sure we get a shot of you laughing very hard at your little joke over there. So I get those things but I would like to I want to make sure that we're speaking about the realities not just on that property but what's going on today because a lot of people very very upset and I don't want to become the next Pamela that has a ten thousand dollar fee to spend on cleaning up the human excrement televisions targets shopping carts and everything else that people are leaving in these camps. It's absolutely disgusting. But humans are disgusting. That's just the way that we are. So we're all disgusting in our homes. Let me clean it up before somebody comes to visit. I mean I get all these things. But chief you mentioned something about what we're doing with the homeless. We have I want to say a team that are from the CPD focused on homeless individuals. Is that correct. Yes. Two officers two officers Kelly Beach posted online and hit me with this. Hey Tom perhaps you've seen this 2014 Chief Burton memo regarding CPD's interaction with campers and park dwellers or otherwise homeless individuals. Actually Kelly I have seen it before and I've talked about people I've seen posts about it for the last several years now. So I'll pitch it over now to Chief Schlutie. Is that still in effect what Chief Burton put out several. What did he put out 10 years ago. I can't remember what I did five days ago. So I definitely don't remember a memo from 2014. It was. You were there at the department the time and you were at some point an assistant chief to Chief Burton. Is that correct. I was. I've been an assistant chief and a deputy chief under Chief Burton. And this was for 64 homeless persons Columbia Police Department policy and procedural manual. And it talks about a community community liaison that will be designated by the chief of police a member of the department to act as the homeless liaison officer responsibility is including several things and not the least of which is maintaining a list of the areas within and near this jurisdiction that are used as frequent homeless encampments. Do you continue to make the list to maintain it. You said there are 88. That sounds like an old policy. I'd have to go back and look and see how many times it's been changed since 2014. But that doesn't sound like something that's in. We're in the process of redoing all the policies for Kali accreditation. So I'd have what you say for 64. Yeah. OK. I can go back and check that. But to answer your question I don't I don't know that that policy is still in effect since I don't really know what the manual looks like. I'm pretty sure it's between 463 and 460. Oh you might be surprised. Well there we go. You might be surprised the number. There we go. One of the things I read about in there today is remaining abreast of laws dealing with the removal and or destruction of the personal property of the homeless. And it goes on to talk about those things. If you guys remove somebody a homeless individual from a property they don't belong on you have to be worried about the homeless person's property. Is that correct. That is something that's come up legally over the years in lots of jurisdictions. That's been something that's had to have been tackled. Yes. Currently we have processes that we go through. So our process for city property obviously camps prop pop up on city property. Right. So we go through a process of posting notices on the camps that they need to get out. And within a certain amount of time we actually have somebody who helps facilitate that. So I think a lot of people know that the city has a contract with for a change. So a lot of times the officers will go out. They'll inform the people if they're there in person. Many times they're not there. So they'll post written notices and then John Trapp will come out later and try to get them connected with services separately and get them to move out. I only know of a very small handful of times when we've gone back out to actually remove the camp where there's still been people there. So usually that process seems to work fairly well. I think there are probably people when they if they've read that or if they hear me bringing it up they're like I feel like the homeless individuals in town are getting more protection than some of the citizens here. I think people could feel that way. I know you're going to say that's not the case but can you understand how they might look at it and say what the heck is going on around here with the homeless? I mean in your mind you said you don't know all the city ordinances but you're supposed to know a lot of them. Is it legal to loiter or camp or solicit from a median in the middle of an intersection? So words are really important. There are no loitering ordinances in the city. So if you want to loiter on a median you can? Right now yes. What about soliciting from a median? So panhandling is not illegal. Panhandling statutes have been struck down as unconstitutional. Soliciting from a median then is legal? Wherever yes. Right now it is legal. What about camping on a median? Same thing as sitting there right? Really the act so I'll strip this down a little bit. So if it was in your front yard somebody walked in and sat down or somebody had a campsite there for 12 hours you'd say these are not the same things. We're talking about public property versus private property right? No no no I'm talking about the definition of what the hell is going on. So in your yard if somebody comes over and sits down would you feel the same as if you pulled up and there was a Coleman stove going and a nice little pop up and maybe there was a trailer pulled in there. Would you feel the same? And I'm pretty sure you would not. And when I see someone on a median that's been there for 12 hours they have a dog, three chairs, a tent, a shopping cart and all that in the median that's different than standing there. So that's what I'm saying. It's different under the law or under what we see. I'm not saying it's not different. So I see people every day on my commute into work that have sit on milk crates, they have chairs, they have dogs, they have all kinds of things right? It's legal then for them to be there with all of those things. So to clarify for everybody because this is another huge misunderstanding. The activity that's going on on the median. So there's conversations right now about do we need to have some kind of ordinance that addresses medians right? If you drive around Columbia and look at medians I would be scared to sit on one. A huge portion of them look like they've been ran over by the Bearcat. There's chunks of them missing. There's signs folded over. We all see this all the time. So I don't think you can make a strong argument that it's safe to sit on a median. The issue is I don't think it's safe for anybody to be on a median. I don't care if you're panhandling, camping out, asking for money for your fraternity or sorority or you just want to stand out there with a sign that says watch the Tom Bradley show. I don't think any of that is safe. That's a great idea. Please don't do that. The point is it's not illegal. It is not illegal. Let's say, God forbid, I don't know if this has happened yet or not, but they're so close. I mean like Clark Lane. That thing is so narrow. I won't even go to the left lane on Clark Lane because I'm scared I'm going to bump into them. Where it meets near the connector. Yeah, it's so narrow and they're sitting there or standing there. Is the driver still responsible? Let's say a homeless person is on the median and they over and hit the car or somehow those two collide with one another. They're technically a pedestrian. So I've always been taught the pedestrian always wins in a car versus pedestrian case. So how does that say when we've got homeless all over the place? Have there been vehicle homeless locations? And so is then again, does that fall on the fault of the driver when they're like, I'm just trying to drive and there's a guy standing there? I don't know that we've ticketed anyone for that. I think I only know of a couple times when someone has been hit from being on one of the medians and a car came towards it. We don't. We do accident investigations and all those situations. So we look at everything. Driver and attention. What was the pedestrian doing? I know we ticketed pedestrians downtown who walked out in front of cars because you're on the phone, whatever it is. So we really do try to figure out Missouri's technical. But we don't assign fault. The police firm doesn't assign fault. We just do an investigation and then insurance companies sort all that out. Are we anywhere closer to someone proposing an ordinance through the city council? I'm just I'm just asking this is kind of an umbrella question because I don't know who you've talked to or who's talked to you or anything else. But you know what's going on out there. The medians are all legal and allowed. And so are we are we getting to a point that anyone's discussing maybe bringing it up and and actually introducing an ordinance that would say you can no longer solicit from the medians at our intersections? So I think Councilwoman Meyer, before she had to resign from the council, brought this issue forward. We had a consultant presented some information about median traffic type things. Two pre-councils ago, I believe, so that people should be able to go back and watch that. I think those are recorded now as well and posted online. But he presented a report and so talked about our intersections. And you get into all this public work stuff. It's way out of my lane. But the width of medians, what they need to be are required to be at different types of intersections. I think there was a list also in that presentation of five or six other cities who have done something with prohibiting basically just stopping on a median for whatever reason. So I think that's something that's being looked at. My recollection of that conversation was the council said they wanted to not make any recommendations for or against that until after the election in August. Can you give me any kind of an idea of and maybe this isn't something you want to answer to. Where the worst places are with the number of homeless individuals that includes things like some of the crime that some of them can bring with them. Whether it's a level of trafficking, human, drugs, using illicit drugs, any kind of stealing that's going on. Can you tell me where, because you guys must know, is Clark Lane one of the worst places? A lot of the calls that we get are centered around downtown, the business loop area, the range line kind of business loop corridor that goes through there. And a lot of these, it's no surprise, a lot of this is happening in proximity to where they're camping. So that's where you see a lot of people. And then we start getting calls about different things going on around the city. It branches out a little bit farther than you would think at times. But I would say it's certainly more concentrated in the middle of the city with some outliers of the people you see on the connector that we get calls about. I mean, I've talked about this before. We spend a lot of time going and checking on people because people are concerned. And so we get these calls called it's coded an unknown problem because that's the only thing they can come up with to label it as. But they're saying, I don't know if this person's dead or alive or they're sleeping or whatever it is. And so we take police time or EMS or fire time to go out and check on that individual and make sure that they don't have a medical problem or something's going on. We get a lot of those calls, a lot of those calls. I'm a longtime supporter and will always be of law enforcement. I think we have to have it in a society. And CPD works very, very hard. I know that some of your detective work with some of the specifically shootings and some of the murders we've had over the last, let's say, 12 months. You guys have done a tremendous job. And I think you've been starting to get in to some of the community members who are who in the past have been very quiet. And they've said, whatever you're doing behind the scenes, don't tell us. Just keep doing because I think it's really good. And those are huge. Right. And, you know, I occasionally get a cat stuck in a tree or something if you're a firefighter. And sometimes you get a McNally's burning down, you know, and you guys have some stuff that's really, really big. And I just throw it out to you like that. Do you want to respond to that or anything you want to say about that? You know, we've tried to track this because we'd like to know. I mean, I'd like to know, as the police chief, how much time are we spending, you know, responding to these calls? It's extremely hard to track. They're trying to do a lot of things. And so it's not highly accurate. I think when I spoke when we did a community briefing last summer, I estimated it on any given day. Maybe 15 to 20 percent of our call volume involves homeless individuals. That's a lot. It waxes and wanes. But I think that it's hard because I think most people understand and believe you as a human. You want to help other humans, right? I think where sometimes I disagree with some folks is I think we are experiencing an influx of people coming into this community, not from this community. Right. And and I'm telling you, I've heard anecdotal stories. I had another city employee completely unsolicited in my office a few weeks ago. Unrelated. I'm not going to say what he was doing because I don't want to give out what department he works for. And he told me that he and his wife were in Denver, Colorado for a kids sporting event. And they had on T-shirts that I identified them as being Columbia residents. And a homeless person stopped them and said, are you from Columbia, Missouri? And he said, yeah. And they said, I am so trying to get there. Like, that's just a place people want to go. You heard this first first hand. Yes. So that causes and I have heard that anecdotally. I've seen Facebook things. But for someone to be sitting in my office and offer that information to me and they know they're talking to the chief of police. You could arrest my wife. But what's the draw? I think what's the draw? I think it will be here. Yeah. Like, why would somebody in Denver, Colorado be like, I really want to get to Columbia, Missouri, because I think they've heard stories about our free, wonderful attitude around here. We have a lot of services and that's a good thing. I think wanting to help people like I get asked all the time, what do you do when you find families? If we find a family sleeping in a car as the police department, we have little to no difficulty getting them services. OK, I want to be very clear about that. We have so many great organizations in this city. We have so many. We had to come up with a program just to get the cops an easier way to connect people because there's so many services we can't possibly keep track of them all. But there is a sizable group of folks in the city that don't want services. Right. So I can't make them take services. I can't legally force them to take services, whether that's housing, mental health treatment, addiction recovery, any of those things. And so people come here because they're like, oh, you can you can get these services and then you can go camp someplace. And so we're kind of playing whack-a-mole with trying to go and deal with these camps that pop up. You know, I've been to the connector camp multiple times, state property. Right. So we have to go in there and we have to work with the state to try to get because right now we're just I mean, you look at what the homeless outreach team does. There's a whole page of just they call them security checks because they're trying to go around and check on these places where we've removed a camp. But we have to make sure it doesn't pop up again, because I've had there was a landowner at the ward for meeting a few weeks ago who was very frustrated because he has private property. And if he does not constantly keep an eye on it, there's folks right back in there again. And so I think we have to I would encourage you to look at what's been going on in Lawrence, Kansas. I think that's a very cautionary tale of what can happen. You you you mean that things are worse there? So so Lawrence, Kansas, very much like Columbia, has a lot of services. They were they were starting to have this issue. I'm going to abbreviate this a lot, but you can look it up online. There's a lot of news stories about it. At one time, they decided they were going to have a sanctioned camp in Lawrence. That ended horribly. It affected the businesses around it. Businesses had to hire security. I think there were three or four deaths in the camp. But but isn't that what we're building on the business loop? And it's just a permanent campus, the opportunity campus, and it's going to cost a couple million dollars. And I recognize the fact that most of the dollars may not be coming from the city. That's not what the point is. The point is that's going to be a new beacon. It's going to be a new lighthouse shining out, saying, bring us your homeless, your tired, your druggies. Right. I think what Lawrence found was when they allowed this sanctioned camp, they had a lot of people coming in from outside the community because this was something that was being allowed there. And so they ended up having to shut it down, evict everyone from the camp because it it was not manageable. And so now the county that Lawrence is in, I don't know what county Lawrence, Kansas, is in. It's in Kansas, the county of Kansas. But they had to make a decision as a county to say, OK, if you are not if you cannot prove residency in this county for, I think it's the previous six months. But don't quote me on that somehow. And it's very loose. But you have to prove you've been there for six months. You get three days of services. And I think that's the direction things are going to start going here. If we keep having this influx of people out of town, because I hear all the same anecdotal stories. We hear about other jurisdictions dropping people off, people getting on buses, people being put on buses from other jurisdictions, other police departments dropping people off. So you've been hearing that for a while. Do you believe it? Because I've been hearing it, too. You know, we've had homeless people tell us that that they were brought here by other jurisdictions. So after a while, there's got to be some grain of truth in there. I mean, I think I'd have to call the chief of police. Bitch, don't be sending her. Right? I might take that call differently than that. Chief, you are speaking directly with the subject matter that we're talking about. And you're not sidestepping it. And you're not giving me political crap jargon over here, which is something that can happen. And we've had it happen two months ago. I'm not going to mention any names over there. But I appreciate that. And as we start wrapping up, Lee, I also want to say to you that a lot of this may fall off your control. And you're like, why am I even sitting over here right now? But you're a part of this. And I think to both of you, I think I'm going to receive. People are going to come back to me and go, you should have asked him this, this, and this. And that's fine. I may miss something. I don't just sit here and write notes. Well, thank you for that. I appreciate it. Like the homeless, you'll always come back. I can retire in October. So not always. All right. So did you say you're going to retire? No, I am not going to. But I can. I swear to God. Oh, God, please don't start that rumor. No, I want to thank you guys for coming in. I don't have any more thoughts off the top of my head. But I do feel like we haven't gotten much further. However, one parting note. Lee, you may not want to get into this. But doesn't it seem like we need to make some changes at the city council level so that they can direct the city manager who can then direct our police department to take care of some of these issues? Do you agree with me on that? Here's the advice that I give to people. And I've been in police administration for a while now. I've seen a lot of councils over the years. I think the key here is people making their voices heard. I see one of my key roles as the police chief is I need to be a good advisor to the city council, to the city manager. I know Lee feels that way, too. And so I give my advice when it's asked for, sometimes when it's not asked for. And I think then that's one piece of it, but it's not the only piece. And so I look at projects like when we did the Flock Camera Project, right? So we pushed that forward, but it took the Chamber of Commerce. It took a lot of different people coming forward and supporting the council and saying, hey, we want this, too, not just the police. And so that's what I encourage people to do. If you have feelings about this either way, you need to come and be heard. Because if your voice isn't in the room, I think sometimes it gets lost. Well, and I think it was very telling what you said about look at Lawrence and look at what they had to go through. That's something that we actually should look into. And I will follow your suggestion on that. Chief of Police with the CPD, Jill Schlute. And it's been a long time, and I appreciate you being here. And Lee Kotwicz, Manager with the Neighborhood Services. My neighborhood's doing really well, so you're doing a hell of a job. So keep it up. I appreciate that all the way through. As we play our bet over here, and excuse you guys, and I want to bring your mics down at this time. And I know that we're running out of time as well. And the thing is, I said at the beginning of this deal that we don't do any editing. And then there was an audio issue, and now I feel like we've got to edit. And we could try to lip sync what happened and put our words in. I don't think that's going to work. You're recording locally, right? So maybe the local actually picked up the audio. I don't think it did either. Well done. But I appreciate your thought on that. It was me screwing it up all the way through. Before we get out of here, keeping your eye on the crap, which is something that I think everybody has to do. And you said you did get to hear this the other day. Is that right? Yeah, that's good. I want to make sure I've got that thing ready to go for us. Are you ready? You've got to keep your eyes on the crap. You can't handle the crap. Looky here. There's a big difference between shit and Shinola. As my great-grandfather always said, Matumba, keep your eye on the crap. Absolutely. I want to bring this up, and we're going to keep this local with the City of Columbia. Keeping your eye on the crap. I heard this report this morning. Thank you, KOMU. By the way, as a guy in media, I've got to tell you, KOMU, they do this a lot, and they've been doing it for a few years. You know the morning news person? She has to sit there and read news story after news story after news story after news story. She doesn't just pop it open and say, and today we have this report coming in from Ottawa. It doesn't work. She's reading, reading, reading the whole time. She's working her ass off. I'm just saying. They mentioned this morning about the City of Columbia and cost of electricity. They want to put a 2% increase on us. 2% for me. Right now, I can't handle a 1% increase on anything in my life. I'm telling you right now. With that being said, 2% isn't the end of the world. But I do want to point something out to you that's really, you have to understand this. The City of Columbia has set up goals for us, and the amount of energy that we consume has to be a certain percentage of that. It has to be from renewable resources. Renewable resources electricity means more expensive. Now it's not just as easy as that, because I want to throw out a thought to you as you're keeping your eye on the crap. There's a good chance that all the good natured people in the world that say, I don't want to use fossil fuel electricity. I want to use wind energy. Or one of these electrical generators that have these floaties that are on waves coming into the ship. Have you seen those? Yeah. I'd like to ride some of those. It looks like a good ride. If you could swim out there. That's a little terrifying, I think. It is a little terrifying. The more that we think we're doing well for the planet and saving the planet by using this, there's a good chance right now all we're doing is pushing off the fossil fuel electricity. To other markets. And they're buying it up. And don't believe for a moment that that means, well, at least they're saving money on that. Only in comparison to renewable energy. Now look, I never took an economics course in my life. But I'm fairly certain when they say that, well, the tide will raise all boats. It will lower all boats too. And it doesn't matter what size the liner is that you rowed in on on your cruise. If it's going to raise all boats, it will raise all boats. And the more money we spend on renewable doesn't necessarily mean we're saving the planet. Turn your air conditioner off today if you want to save the planet. And I don't think that you will. Again, I don't know economics. I'm just throwing it out there. We will have more expensive electricity in Columbia than surrounding communities that don't have the same percentages out there. For every little tiny kilowatt of renewable energy that we buy, someone else is getting a kilowatt of fossil fuel energy. They get it cheaper than us, but that doesn't mean that they're getting it cheaper and cheaper and cheaper overall ever. The cost of everything is going up. And I quote one of the guys with utilities that was on channel 8 this morning saying that. So the cost keeps going up. With that being said, I'm pretty sure it's time for us to skedaddle. Is there anything that you know that I missed? No, I don't think so. I would say from the energy, I didn't know we were going to talk about the energy, but this is a big passion part for me too, that I don't understand why we're not building more nuclear power plants. They are 100% clean, and this is a really cool nugget of information. The Callaway nuclear plant, people have talked about getting rid of the nuclear waste piece from that. There is a roughly Olympic-sized swimming pool in there that's three to four times the depth of a normal pool. But they have every rod ever spent used from that plant since 1985 when it opened in that one pool, and it's not even a third of the way full yet versus all the other renewable energies. I mean, solar panels have problems. They break down. They're expensive. They mostly come from China. So I was like, my opinion is build more nukes. I don't necessarily disagree with you, and I'm glad you brought it up. But I want to remind you that that pool is not for swimming. That's true. Okay, don't go swimming in the nuclear-spent fuel rods. It's really warm probably. Yeah, I'm sure it is. That's one way to look at it. We've got to get out of here. What a day. What a day. What a morning. My friends, live this day as if it were your last. I say to you, hookah hay.