Live October 23

Whether we like it or not, he's the self-proclaimed governor of mid-Missouri, and he's the host of TTBS, the podcast. Since we can't shut him the hell up, here's Tom Bradley. Thank you, Nikki Garman, and welcome to it. It's hard to explain how it feels so long, going from one podcast to the next. Last week was weird. It was… Would you call it weird? It was a little weird, yeah. And that's because… No, I'm giving you that signal. I wasn't sure if you knew that. I gave you the signal. I'm still learning. I'm sorry. I told you I would give you a signal. He's just pointing and pointing. I'm over here oblivious. Come around. How long were we delayed before we went on with our little impromptu What the Hell podcast last week? Two, three hours. Two hours. Two and a half hours? Yeah, it was… We just kept hoping and hoping and hoping. And we're like, oh, please show up. And wishing and praying. That's all right. And the reality is, our guest didn't show. With that being said, I want to put a little disclaimer out there about last week and about the guest. We were going to have on the show with us someone who has been, in very, very recent months, homeless on the streets of Columbia. And I believe carrying around with her an addiction to something. I'm not even sure what it was. I don't know if it's an illicit drug or alcohol. And so life's been very, very tough for her. I believe she's off the streets now and has been employed. With that being said, she didn't show last week. And that had me very worried about what was going on. She has reached out to me, by the way. And she's moved out of town. And she moved somewhere else. And that's fine. She still wants to be on the podcast. And so we're trying to schedule her up sometime in November and we'll see if that happens. I've been wanting to have a homeless person on this podcast for a long time. Not necessarily someone who has been homeless before, because we've done that. And it's probably time to do it again. She's very recent. I actually want somebody who's panhandling one of these Thursday mornings. I want to pull up at like 6 a.m. And I just want to toot the horn and they're going to come over to the car and they're going to have the sign that says, homeless, please help, God bless. And they're going to walk over to the car and I'm going to go, hey man, and I might even have a $5 bill in my hand. You have to hold it over the window, like the real conspicuous where it's laying over the window. So they'll be like, hey man, the $5 bill is just laying over the window. Is that how they do it? Yeah, I don't know. I'm just like, you've got to lure him in, right? So I want to put it, I want to use it as bait and get him over to the car and be like, you like this $5? You drive a big black SUV, too. I know, I know. It's as conspicuous as you can get. It is black thunder. And I want to be like, do you want some more where this came from? All right. And I'm like, and then say, would you like to come with me to Truman's Bar and Grill because we're doing a podcast on what you want. I love this idea. And if they don't have too much odor to them, I'll go ahead and let them in the vehicle. Well, you let me on. We're far enough away. But if they have a lot of odor, I'll be like, I'm going to drive slowly and you follow me. Okay, enough of that. That's not very… But we are at Truman's Bar and Grill and they've got more live music on tomorrow night. It's Heart Creek Ramblers tomorrow night at Truman's. Music starts on Friday night, 7 p.m. And then the following Friday, Halloween, and I'm sure the CPD loves this, lands on a Friday night, on a Friday night. And so that's this year and that's a week from tomorrow night. And there's a massive Halloween party at Truman's next week and we'll talk more about that coming up. Very cool. We have Ellis Bennis with us from Floating Acts. Thank you for being here. Always happy to be here. We are running a little bit later than usual, had an event this morning with Columbia Board of Realtors. I thought they were going to have maybe just some like danishes and coffee. They had a full breakfast lined up. I'd like to find out who catered it because it was really, really good. That's great. And I was there with Columbia Pool and Spa and I get a chance to work behind the scenes, business consulting with them. They're wonderful people. And thank you, Craig, for going to the breakfast with us and everybody for being there as well. So it was very, very good. Our guest this morning, we'll be getting to in just a moment, is Police Chief with the Columbia Police Department, Jill Schlute. Jill was almost a couple of months ago. I don't want to speak for you. I was surprised by a couple of things that she said. And I mean that. I'm so happy to bring this up. I mean that in the most positive of ways. And we talked very, very briefly when she was leaving the podcast that day after we shut everything down. And she shook my hand and had something to say. And I don't think I'll ever forget that. And you know I remember stuff. I have a great memory. Your memory is ridiculous. With that being said, I want to talk to you about what it's like to get older. What it's like to get older. I'm so far out of that. Do you know that like ten years ago, I made a comment about the Colts of the National Football League? The Colts. The Colts. And I referred to the Colts as the Baltimore Colts. Now that's not entirely wrong because the franchise that was the Baltimore Colts moved to Indianapolis. Really? The only thing was they did that… But how long ago? 1983. 1983. So earlier this week… So it's okay if we still say the St. Louis Rams because that's only a few years old. No, no. That's different because that's Stan's asshole crown key. And so no, I don't ever call them the St. Louis Rams again. But this is what it's like. We went to work out this week over Planet Fitness. Good morning Apollo and everybody over there. We went to work out. Deb and I did. And we were leaving. And it's very early. And because I'm not used to being out at these weird hours with traffic, it's just strange for me. And people drive like crap. Oh my gosh. And so this guy goes zooming in and out and around me. And I'm like, just go. I don't know what your problem is. And I'm like, this guy thinks he's like, I don't know, a race car driver. I say this out loud. A race car driver. And I started to say, he thinks he's fill-in-the-blank. I'm like, he thinks he's blank. And the first two names that came to mind were, you're not even going to know these names. Al Anser. Oh yeah. Mario Andretti. That's exactly what I would have said. I'm an old man. I'm an old man. You're probably right there with you. It's the stuff that I was saying at 16, because that's what every grown-ass man said back then. Who do you think you are? Mario Andretti? Yeah. 100%. 100%. So I go to correct it. I go to correct it. And name a new driver. So I go to name a new driver. And I think locally. And so I say, let me make it topical and more timely, Deb. Somebody like Kyle Edwards. And I laugh. And she goes, you mean… Because he's been retired for… I said, Kyle Edwards. And she goes, you mean Carl Edwards? I go, never mind. Who's also retired, by the way. I'm just going to stop. I'm just going to stop right now. All right. I need to remind you to keep your eye on the crap that will be coming up at the end of the podcast with famfocuseye.com. That is family focus eye care. Famfocuseye.com. And keep your eye on the crap. In the meantime, it's all about this. All right. Releasing the hounds with Creekside Pet Center and Columbia's and Creekside's Bed and Biscuit. And in Boonville, our great friends over at Dirty Harry's. I love Creekside. By the way, I reached out to them this week to ask if they'd be interested in buying a miniature donkey. Why? Because for some reason… Do you have a miniature donkey you're trying to sell? No. I should say not yet. I saw… They're the cutest damn thing you've ever seen in your life. A miniature donkey. And I fell in love. Not a pony. A miniature donkey. A miniature donkey. They gave the height of each of these that we're being on. It was the Glasgow Small Animal Swap. Not only is Glasgow, Missouri very, very tiny, but their animals are tiny too. And they got miniature donkeys and one was a Jenny. Do you know what a Jenny is? My wife? No. My wife's name is Jenny. Okay, I didn't know if you were making some kind of ass joke about her. No, no, no. Her name is literally Jenny. So, I'm Googling miniature donkey right now. Okay, so what's a Jenny? A Jenny is a female. And they had a female that had a Jenny, miniature donkey, named Chocolate. And it's the cutest donkey, cutest miniature donkey I've ever seen in my life. These are adorable. Thank you. Oh my gosh, they're so cute. Look at this little fluffy one. Thank you. I wish we could… We need to find a way to show that on the show. Oh my gosh, they're so cute. I know. Go look it up right now on Facebook. I'm going to look for the Glasgow Small Animal Swap, which the question became, do I have to own small animals and take them there in order to make a swappage happen? And I don't know, but I did tell the Brummett's Creekside Pet Center, you guys, we love you and keep doing the great things that you do. Here's our big announcement. Today, TTBS, big announcement. Two years ago, I told you that we need to outlaw solicitation and loitering in, on, and congregating at our busiest intersections. I built that platform, and like a panhandler, I have refused to move. I told you two years ago, ordinance, outlaw this now. And I had people telling me, that's a violation of the First Amendment, protection of free speech. No, it is not. And I mean this out of the kindness of my heart, no it is not, idiot ass. That's not what it is. Three days ago, Como City Council began the review of a study restricting loitering and such on city intersection medians, and it's about time. Is it necessary? When you look at the idea of an ordinance, is it necessary? Is it enforceable? Is it constitutional? Does it create additional peripheral problems? What are the consequences for the lawbreakers? These are things that we have to talk about, and we're in the middle of that. The study that's been commissioned has now been shared with the City Council. They'll go through to some discussions, and they'll probably vote on it in the next two to three meetings, which will be a total of four to six weeks. The ordinance is very much needed, and some folks are fighting it already. Coming up at the end of the podcast on Keep Your Eye on the Crap, we're going to talk about one of the groups fighting it, and what they have to say about it, and you're going to probably say to me, they are out of their minds, and I don't blame you for saying such a thing. With that being said, that brings us up to time to introduce our guest this week. It's our guest music bed, you know what that does. It's the music bed for the guests, not that the music bed itself is a guest of the show. Good morning to CPD Police Chief Jill Schlute. Hello. Good morning. Thank you for being here. I'm sorry that we talked so much at the front of this. It's okay. I learned a lot of interesting facts. Before we turn the mics on, you learned a lot of interesting facts about your deeply personal marital relations with Dynamite Deb. I keep saying, I think we need to work on that stuff. By the way, Jill, it's Sunday Dynamite, and you know what I'm talking about, don't you? I'm not saying a word. I don't blame you for not saying a word on this one. Can I start off saying that I am glad you were on two months ago. Is that approximate? Two months ago? My time is just nothing at this point. I actually want to bring that up. We'll hit it next. You were on about two months ago, but you were here sharing the spotlight with someone else. I want to kind of apologize about that because we didn't have a chance to really get deeper into your position on things, what's going on with you, what's going on with the police department. People talk about you and your department a lot these days. Really? And I think, I'm here to share these bits of information with you. I think, rightly so. But I don't know that right now, like in years past, they're doing a lot of pointing the fingers at you guys. We just want to work with you guys, and we want to learn, and we want you guys to share with us what you know. So we're going to do a lot of that this morning. As far as times, they are a changing. What is it like for you right now? Are you busier now than you were a year ago at this time? Me personally? In your role as police chief, yeah. I would say so, yes. I mean, when you come in, it's different. When you've been with an organization, by the way, I hit my 20 year anniversary last Friday, so I can retire. Congratulations. Dang. Do me a favor, don't retire. Can you not do that right now? Yes, yes. Everybody just says I would feel different, so I'm a little bit concerned, what I might say. Well, congratulations on that. That's a lot to be said, because being in the police department, look, in law enforcement for 20 years, is a testament to what the community and society means to you. Absolutely. Alright? You're always walking the blue line. No matter what you're doing, you're always walking that line. Thank you for doing that, and then to do it all in one department is amazing. So… Went by fast, actually. Did it really? Now, days, right now, tend to go by really slow sometimes, but you know, I think there's just a lot going on in the community. I think we're having some conversations that are a long time coming, so sometimes things just feel a little bit more intense, but right now is the down time between when the budget gets passed and when the new budget session starts. So I get a little bit of a breather, but that's just on the paperwork part of it. Do you wind up being down in the weeds with all that stuff, or is it… It almost seems like the budget kind of forecasts itself for the next year for something like your department. There's a lot of deadlines that we have to meet, so we have to submit new position requests by a certain date in January, generally. That fluctuates sometimes, but… And then that's different between, do I want more of an existing position, so if I want more police officers, that's one, but then if we're wanting to create a new position, that's a whole different process and deadline. So there's a lot of things, like as soon as the calendar year turns over, things really start moving. The time of coming out here and being on a podcast with us, does this help your day, or does it screw your day? No, I don't think it's bad. I told you I'm glad it's at 9 o'clock and not 8 o'clock, but… Yeah, an hour later this morning. Yes. My days have been really, really full lately, because I think there's just a lot of things people want to talk about. I've been having a lot of good meetings. A lot of people want to talk about the police department, and I think that's good. The communication piece is a big piece for me, personally. So we'll see. You never know. My calendar's full of things, and then one thing happens, and it just goes off the rails, and who knows? With media, podcasting is much different than what I did as a radio show, and very much different than someone that writes a column in a newspaper or online, or what a news station locally on television might put out as a 30-second bit with five seconds of a bite from you in a 30-minute conversation you had. If people are checking out this podcast, this is long form, and so that gives us a chance to go. Now, if we start doing, as you were talking about, some of these shorts, these reels on social media, there might be a snippet. Otherwise, we don't pull that out. People can catch the whole thing if they'd like to, and it's right here. And I like that. In this time, it might help you out, because you get to really talk at length, and people can go, oh, I'm understanding now. Context is a thing, so I appreciate that. There's a lot of context that gets missed in really short conversations. While we're talking at the personal level, I'm going to paraphrase what you said, because I don't want you to quote it. I'm not going to quote it. But at the end of the other podcast, I walked around the table. You walked around the table, and you shook my hand. Don't tell me what it was, but do you remember what you said to me? I do remember. Okay. I'm going to paraphrase what you said. Sure. You said, I am my own self. Yes. I am who I am. That's a fair summarization. Which is almost I am, because I said, what did God say? I am that I am. Yeah. Yeah. Super confusing. You said, I am who I am, but in different words. And I was like, wow, I get where you're coming from on that. We all need to take you at the value of what you're saying and the actions you're doing and what you're doing as a leader with the police department. Is that pretty much what you're saying? Absolutely. And hold me accountable for those things myself. You seem to speak off the top of your mind, the top of your head, straight from the gut, exactly what you're feeling, which is a lot closer to what I've been dealing with for years with the Sheriff of Boone County. And I really, really appreciate that. So I'm going to ask you some questions today about a lot of different things, and we'll kind of go on from there. You're under a lot of microscopes right now, a lot of questions being asked of you. And you said, yeah, I'm pretty busy and what have you. What's the most common thing people are asking you right now? Well, overall, the biggest thing I probably get emails and comments about at meetings is expired temp tags. Really? I wish I was kidding, but I'm not. Traffic complaints, expired temp tags is a huge thing. I can't remember the last time I went to a community meeting and did not get asked, are you guys really not pulling over people for expired temp tags? Actually, that's the other way that I was thinking, because I know there was a time when we were disregarding things like temporary temp tags. I just said temporary twice. Are we getting rid of those too? Next August, it's going to change. You'll pay your taxes when you buy the car. Yeah, so you better have your taxes ready to go at that moment, because delaying it nine months. All people used to do is they'd go out with a Sharpie and they'd rewrite the date that was on the temporary tags, didn't they? Yeah, it was like when you could change your driver's license with a pencil. Those were good days. I remember those days. Those were great days all the way through. I had a friend who changed his with an iron, and I'll share that story with you one of these days. Now, real quick, for those listening, what's an iron? I don't blame you. It's before permanent press. It was back in the days of the Baltimore Colts, by the way. So that's the difference. I thought they were going to ask, are you guys really starting to pull people over for it now? Because we are pulling people over for it now. We pull over a lot of people. We've done over 15,000 traffic stops this year, and I think in 24 we did around 4,000. Holy cow! So… Good Lord! Yeah. When I say that has increased, I mean it has increased, as the people have found out the hard way. Well, can I be one, I don't know if I'm the first, but I'm the first on this podcast, to say I am really, really appreciative to hear that. Heck yeah. Do you know why? It's not just because I want some son of a bitch who isn't following the rules like me to get pulled over. The problem that we have, I believe, is when you allow people to break all of the smallest common rules that are out there, it breeds people also breaking those rules, but always escalating it. This person did it once, I did it twice. This person only took $5, I took $10. I believe that lawlessness breeds more of that. Do you agree with me? I do, and I think traffic in particular is a great example of that, because we heard for quite a few years people were really frustrated with driving behaviors, speeding, people running red lights, dangerous driving behaviors beyond just temporary tags and things of that nature. You have to have the staff, and I know we'll get into proactive policing, but you have to have people to have time to do things besides go to 911 calls. We've finally gotten to the point where not only we have a little bit more time, we're digging out of the hole, but you have to prioritize and you really have to teach proactive policing. Someone doesn't come out of the academy automatically knowing what that looks like, what our expectation is in this community. That's interesting, because we all need to be taught what proactive policing is, but I've never even thought about the fact that the cops don't know that. Yeah, I would have thought that would be covered in the academy. You do talk about it, but when your whole workday, when we're understaffed, I mean, we've been understaffed for, I would estimate, a decade, and when I say understaffed, I mean the amount of positions we could fill. We had a lot of vacancies. I'll get into the whole thing about how we need to add more positions. We've been understaffed for probably a decade, so you've got a decade of cops where their day-to-day work is you just go from call to call to call to call to call, so when you get in that mindset… No downtime. Right. Very, very little downtime, and in that downtime, you've got to go to the bathroom, you might want to eat something during a 12-hour shift. So when that's your day, every day, day in and day out, you don't think about, hey, I'm going to go out, and I know this intersection is a problem in my beat, I'm going to go work that intersection, try to reduce accidents, change driving behaviors. You just don't have time to think about that type of problem-solving, and that's something we're relearning, I think, at CPD. So there's so much that you've just opened up right there that we all need to learn and understand. Like you mentioned, 12-hour shift. Are cops, are they generally working that many hours? Yeah, we've been on 12-hour shifts for several years now, and that was a function of staffing. You know, I know nurses, for instance, that do, what is it, three on and four off or something? So they work 36 hours over three days, and that's a full week for them. And I know it's long and difficult, I certainly understand that. I cannot even begin to understand how a cop is working a 12-hour shift, and what if something extraordinary happens in the second or third hour, and another one in the 11th hour, how the hell do you guys handle that? Sometimes we have to pull people from specialty units to have them come in and help. We call people in and ask if they want to come in on overtime. That's one of the big challenges with it, because you have, most officers come in at either 6 a.m. or 6 p.m. We've been able to add back in a swing shift, which has been really helpful, so now we have folks that come in at 3 p.m. and work from 3 a.m., so they're that really busy, high-intensity call time between 3 and 9, and then they handle bar close as well. So one nasty wreck on the highway, one shots fired call, those things start layering on top of each other. One guy getting hit by a dump truck. Exactly. Everything comes to a grinding halt. And that's a great example, too, because we should have six officers and a sergeant in our traffic unit. We have one officer in the traffic unit right now. I know we're going to talk about homelessness and the ordinance that's being discussed with the city council on medians in the area, and it sounds silly to even have to bring it up, but we're going to talk about that in a little bit here. But twice this week, I got into a conversation with someone where I said, well, it comes down to, you know, you've got a homeless person doing this thing, whatever it might be, and does it take precedence over the 911 call that's being made, the concerns? And I started to list things. There must be 25 different types of events, being real and simple, that cops have to go to that we don't think about. If there's a house fire, is there a police officer there? More than likely, yeah, just to do traffic control sometimes. It has to be there. When you have a guy on a bicycle come into a collision with a dump truck at an intersection the other day in Middletown, how many cops had to be called in on that event? So it's a pretty large intersection, so you're talking the traffic officer that got called in because they have the knowledge to work a fatality accident and do the reconstruction, which is a really big job. There's a lot of math involved, so I never did that as an officer. But you have to have people blocking traffic. It's now a crime scene, potentially, right? So there's a lot of different people that are coming in and out, and you can't let people drive through there, so it sucks up a tremendous amount of resources. I think we drove by it, because that's two blocks from my church, and we were going to church Monday night for an event. And so I think there were at least six cars there, CPD cars there. So I'm going to say at least five, but could be as many as ten at some point, right? Absolutely. And how many cops would have been working on an actual shift on the streets that day? So I think at last count, we're up to the point where we have, we try to balance out all the shifts as much as we can. We're a little bit heavier on night shift now, because we added that swing shift in, but generally we try to, right now I think we have about 16 officers per squad, but that's if everyone's at work. So if everyone was at work, well, probably half of them were at that particular, and nothing, we needed them there, I understand that, but every other kind of 911 call that could have been coming in was coming in. Right. So those just, sometimes, and so you think of a police sergeant, they're really like an air traffic controller, right? I mean, really that's what they're doing. They're coming in and they're looking at priority calls coming in, and they're trying to figure out who they can send where and peel off, and what can hold, and what needs to be handled right now. And so our street supervisors have a huge responsibility. So just so I understand, you said 16 officers per shift. So literally when there were, like if there were six officers yesterday, there was only ten other officers in all of Columbia. If everyone was there. Everybody was there. Right. Wow. Holy cow. Now, right now, because of the swing shift, we have another usually about eight that come in at three in the afternoon, and what that really helps with is then all the guys and gals that came in at six in the morning, hopefully then they can go work on reports and evidence processing. That have to be taken care of. That have to be taken care of. So they get off on time. And that swing shift laps over the two. Yes. Makes it like a band-aid. Yes. That's probably a good point there. More traffic problems and calls in the afternoon than in the morning during a weekday? Depends. People here like to get in wrecks when the weather is perfectly nice, like today. It's very strange. Well, that's kind of them. At least you're not saying it in the rain. Exactly. Exactly. But it seems like as soon as we have nice bouts of nice weather, it's just like for some reason we get tons of accidents. Obviously all the construction on the highway is a nightmare. Yes, it is. And just the level of impatience and inattention of people. And it keeps getting rerouted. I mean, sometimes just when you get the traffic pattern down, it changes. And so that throws people for a loop. And then throw in college students and other people that may not know the area very well. It's not fun. I don't know if we'll have the time. But if we do, we'll come back to it and talk about staffing and numbers. Where we've been, where we are now, and the future. Because the only way it's going to go is up in the needs that we have. So we'll get into it and talk about it. Your busyness over the last few months, I'm sure, was escalated to probably about as busy as you can get with the shooting, the homicide that we had on the streets of downtown Columbia back at the homecoming, which is almost a month ago. It was in September. It was the morning of September 27th, I believe. And that was a Saturday. It's what I do. Your memory blows my mind every time. I like numbers. I really do. So at that time, everything got ratcheted up, right? With that came comments and decisions, or whatever you want to call them, by the mayor of Columbia. I'm sure in front of and behind the scenes with the city manager. And we also had the chancellor and president over at Mizzou and MU, Moon Choi, getting involved quite a bit as well. And then you. Those are the four. The four horsemen of the apocalypse, right? I mean, those are the four. You were right up there with. You're probably about as busy as you could handle during that time. The worst thing about it is that there was a shooting and that someone was struck and killed. Back from that. Tell me about it. Just share with me your perspective and what you've gone through in the last month. Well, I think we were talking about context earlier, and context is important in this case because I have some great people on command staff. I mean, I could not do this by myself. It's a team sport for sure. And so I have some very engaged commanders. My patrol commander, Mark Fitzgerald, is a very data driven guy. And so he had actually been digging into what's been going on downtown several months prior to this happening. So we had actually increased staffing downtown in June in response to shootings that we'd had downtown. And they weren't homicides, thankfully, but people shootings that we knew happened. People getting shot, an officer got shot at downtown. And so we tried to add more people on overtime. Then in July, we had some more people get out of training, so we were able to add those eight officers on the swing shift. So we'd been bumping up staffing to try to help downtown for the months prior. So we went through a good, geez, I want to say 60 to 90 days where we did not have any violent crime to that level downtown where we were having shots fired, things of that nature. And then we added up enforcement on some of the lower level things you were talking about before, and I think that's helpful. So we had actually been keyed in on this before this happened. Unfortunately, I think we had 11 shootings downtown where someone got shot or not, but we knew someone had been shooting a gun downtown in about an 18 month period. Three of those, an officer was there at the time it happened. One of those, the officer was actually shot at by the suspect. Were they okay? Was the officer injured? Yes. No, they were not injured. So props to him. So officer presence alone does not deter some of these folks from making really stupid decisions. I mean, if I could fix stupid, honestly, I mean, there's so many things that absolutely. And there's sometimes people, you know, you have alcohol involved. Now we got a lot of marijuana involved. Just got all these other factors involved. And then some of these folks, a 15 year old, I mean, with a gun, absolutely. So what is your mental capability at 15 years old? And you don't really understand the outcome of the actions that you're taking. So there's a lot that goes in that. So then here we come, here's homecoming weekend, right? I actually happened to not be in town. My middle stepdaughter got married out of town that weekend, so I wasn't even here when this happened. Yeah. I didn't even know that. That's got to make it tough also for you. It was, you know, it's supposed to be a good weekend and there's this thing that I know is looming and going on and I felt so awful for the families of everyone involved. And you know, get back in town Sunday afternoon and then it's just a whirlwind of activity since that time. And I think some good conversations have come up, right? I think, you know, Assistant Chief Fitzgerald, we were all at a meeting downtown with the downtown CID about a week and a half ago. And his kind of speech to that group was, welcome to the conversation, right? We've been having this conversation about things going on and our need to up enforcement and presence downtown prior to this happening. So I think, unfortunately, it took something like this to really get some folks' attention about what we've been dealing with. I've had people reach out to me and say, and they didn't mean anything derogatory toward the people that were injured or killed in this particular event. Why now? Why now is it different? And I looked at them and I said, people, for whatever reason, are drawing a line in the sand now and saying no more. That's it. Even if violent crime is on a decrease, a decline, or you guys are doing a great job of helping, you know, reduce whatever it is, that's where they drew the line in the sand. That's where Moon Choi, when I talked to Moon Choi a few weeks back, he said that's not when it started for me. It started some time ago. And he brought up his conversation with the Chamber of Commerce back at the beginning of September saying, you guys, we've got problems and if we don't fix this thing, if we don't get in front of this, if you as a business community, you've got the power, you've got the money, don't get involved with this, we are going to have major problems. Someone's going to be struck and killed. And it was only a matter of like two weeks after he spoke to the Chamber at their quarterly breakfast that it happened. So I think for a lot of us, it's been building to that point. Okay, we've all noticed it now. Is this more pressure on you as the police chief or is it good because now you get more help in doing what you need to do? I think the pressure comes in the form of people want a quick fix. And rarely is that something that's possible, right? And you have to acknowledge about crime in general that we could have a thousand police officers, we are not going to prevent every violent crime. This is not Minority Report, right? I mean, it's not. It's coming, I think, but not yet. And so we will do a lot of data-driven, you know, intelligence-based predictive models and we try to, so what we did downtown, we said, hey, we've got a violent crime hotspot downtown around 9th and Broadway. It shifted up to the 800 block of Walnut and we've been watching that and so we deploy more resources. With that comes pushback because people are saying, whoa, we're writing tickets for things like standing in the street and not walking on the sidewalk and open containers and things that before we didn't have time to address because we're running from call to call to call to call to call. And so I've gotten… I don't think it's just that. There's also been some groups of people that have tried to come down on you for one thing or another. Back to the temporary tax, they were talking about a headlight being out or a taillight problem that you're creating a pauper's prison because people that can't afford to fix these things are not going to go pay for fines and have court time and everything else. So there's been a lot of that. And that same thing goes for jaywalking. Why are you talking to that person? Because maybe they are not a citizen of the United States. Or maybe they're of a certain racial or ethnic background or age or something else. You get a lot of pressure on something like that and I think that forces you also to put all of that into a category of very low priorities. And I try to, and I've been very explicit about this, if people don't know, there is a state statute that dictates how I can be terminated from my job. And it outlines the things that I have to be guilty of, essentially. And then there has to be… Because otherwise it's wrongful dismissal? Absolutely. Okay. There's already been a chief that the process was not followed. I won't speak to whether or not they should have been dismissed, but the process was not followed and so he won some monetary damages. With that being recent enough history. Okay. Alright. So I'm aware of that. I'm boiling it down, but it's like I can't be an alcoholic or a drug addict. I can't commit a felony if I'm willfully insubordinate, which means I have to be given an order to do something and then I don't do it, right? It's just not that we have a disagreement. So I'm aware of those things and I can say 100% truthfully, I don't get pressure. And there's only one person that I report to and that's the city manager. By charter, the council people, including the mayor, are not allowed to direct any department heads to do anything or not do anything, right? And so I think there's a lot of noise that goes on about, well, they're doing this because someone told them to do this, or they're not doing this because someone told them not to do this. You don't think that occasionally you feel some of the vibes, because I know what the vibes are. I come from the city council and it could be because of the way they voted or what they're paying attention to or not. You don't think you feel some of their vibes coming out, even if they never talked to you? I certainly do, but I view my job, and I could get on a whole rant about this, but… Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. That's what we want to hear. We… Good thing I got my 20 years in, right? We put so much on police officers and policing and law enforcement, including sheriff's deputies and highway patrol people, and our job is to enforce the laws that are enacted by the legislative body, right? And so if you don't like a law, that's where you go. But asking us to pick and choose and pick winners and losers, which is, I feel like, what we're doing sometimes. And to your point about, oh, are we causing, you know, exacerbating poverty by… That's not our lane, okay? And I think we've looked to the police to fix all these social problems, or going, well, if we just don't do this anymore, maybe. And that puts us in a really bad spot. Which isn't that exactly what I was talking about with Moon Choi, and actually some of this was off the record, in that if he's concerned about his students and their safety, he cannot be concerned about a 3-year-old unless they're enrolled at Mizzou. He cannot. He can't back up to what someone with a 9-millimeter in their waistband, what happened to them when they were young, and they're up… He can't focus on that, and I agree with him. As the chief of police, while you can show compassion and empathy toward what's going on today with children, if it's not a police matter, it's not your concern. And we encourage and teach our officers to engage in problem-solving. If you can figure out a way, if you're going to the same house or the same business over and over and over, try to figure out a way to solve that problem long-term, right? That's one of the goals. But there are things that are happening that started so long ago that sometimes all we can do is enforce the law or try to connect somebody with services or whatever that is, but we're not social workers by nature. We're not psychologists. We're not psychiatrists. We're not addiction counselors. We're not any of those things, but we get put into those places, and then we go, why are all these people wandering around the streets that need mental health care? Why don't you guys just go… There's a whole process to commit somebody by state statute that you have to meet to put them into MUPC. I see this very much like a lot of other people in their roles and their careers. Our daughter, Jessie, works with autistic children. Her job is not to figure out what causes autism. That's not it. Her job is, through everything she can, to help that child grow, learn, and live an incredible life if at all possible. That's what her job is. Your job is to help try to keep us safe. By the way, if that's a three-year-old that's not safe right now, you guys are going in. That's not a question at all. We're having a great conversation about real life in society, which I believe that we need to have a police force if we're going to have a community. It's going to have to happen. Right. That's not it. Her job is to do everything she can to help that child grow, learn, and live an incredible life if at all possible. That's what her job is. And your job is to help try to keep us safe. By the way, if that's a three-year-old that's not safe right now, you guys are going in. Right. That's not a question at all. To me, all these things, we're having a great conversation about real life in society, which I believe that we need to have a police force if we're going to have a community. It's going to have to happen. I think there are some that don't appreciate that. And over the years, we've seen some defunding police groups out there. That seems to be a little quieted down now. But there are still people that don't show a lot of support. What does it mean to you? How do you know that someone supports the police when they have to do something on the streets? How can you tell that they're supporting or not supporting? You know, I think sometimes it's just people's willingness to understand that the 15-second clip that they saw on social media is not the entire totality of the circumstances. And that's a legal term that we use a lot. But it really, when I review, so I discipline officers, right? So when I review a video to discipline, I watch a huge portion of that video, right? Because what happened in the very few seconds that the complaint's hinging on, what happened before that leading up to it, right? And so I think we get in that same, you know, we're in this society now where you can just scroll through all these videos and watch five or ten seconds, which a lot of people do, and then you just draw this conclusion from it. You have no idea what the total context is to the situation. And so I think people's willingness to understand and really not just make snap judgments. Understand that we have processes that we have to follow. Due process is a thing for police officers just like it is for the people they arrest. And so when people understand that there's a process and it's not, you can't believe everything you see on the internet. I know that's shocking. I think that's part of it. And I think people recognizing that, here's a big thing for me. We have to be able to talk about two things at once. Me coming out and saying last year, I need 51 more cops. It's probably ticked closer to 60 now. Is not because I think if we just have all these cops, there's not going to be any crime. That's an insane thing to think. But you have to have a capacity. This is a city that is almost 70 square miles to patrol and police and try to keep people safe in. Which means how many more miles of roadways? How many more intersections? How much more highway? How many more traffic accidents? How many more people calling in about all various sorts of things? And then pile in that a decent percentage of those folks are students. A lot of them are just learning how to be young adults and they make choices that are questionable sometimes, right? And whether that's just leaving your car unlocked and your things get stolen or you do something that's much more egregious. There's all this work to be done and we can't move the needle on some of the things I think we could if we don't have enough people to do something besides go call to call to call to call to call. So when you think about when I'm asking for people, kind of the generally accepted best practice in staffing is a police officer should be able to spend a third of their day going to calls for service that they get dispatched to. A third of their day should be spent doing administrative paperwork. So writing a report, processing evidence, whatever that looks like. A third of their day they should be able to spend proactively going out and saying, hey, there's a problem with speeding in this school zone and I'm going to go out there and write some tickets this morning and hopefully keep the kids safe. Or I'm going to watch the dope house down the road. Right? Even just existing in an area too. Let's talk about that for a moment. When I went downtown the Friday night a week after the shooting that took the young lady, the nursing student at Stevens College, wow was I happy. There were so many cops down there. And I say cops. I don't know if we had troopers or deputies or if there was a mall cop. I don't know who all was down there. And I saw cars. And I saw cops. And everything felt brighter. We were already scheduled to be down there with our good friend Johnny Henry at Nash Vegas that Friday night. And so I went down. It was glorious. Were there more cops there than there were the following weekend after that? Which weekend was this? So this would have been the Friday night a week after homecoming weekend. Were there more cops then than there have been every weekend since? So we added extra people. We've been adding extra people every weekend up to that. Once that happened, we also got the Highway Patrol's been helping out. Boone County's been helping out. MUPD's been helping out. We've had, jeez, I think we started doing kind of a special detail. So I think they had 27 cops down there, which is way more than there normally are, down there helping just be present. I can't say that I'm upset about that. There are more people partying, smoking weed, and drinking, drinking, drinking. And a lot of them are barely of the age to do that in that little, you know, few block area. I mean, it's nothing like any other spot in town on a Friday, Saturday night. I have a big vision, too. In going to a lot of different places and, you know, you visit places and you see, hey, this is where we're going. City's growing. I feel that way about downtown. When I first moved to Columbia in 1995, you know, you went downtown to go to the bars. Those things were down there, restaurants. Now we have thousands of people living downtown, which is very different. And so I feel like something we need to look at is creating an entertainment district type, which means ordinances that apply to the entertainment district. It's a little weird to me that people move right next to a bar and then they complain about live music. Like, you're living downtown. I'm not sure what you expected. Do we have ordinances that are specific to downtown right now? Only some random, like, peace disturbance ordinances about your stereo in the downtown. And they're very old. So I really feel like, you know, we're not power and light district yet. We're not to that level. But I went on the Columbia, South Carolina trip, and that was very interesting how they are handling. They have a couple different five points as kind of their big bar district, but they do hard street closures. I think that's something we need to entertain because of the amount of people walking around. Is there a temporary thing at night? Yeah. Okay. I've talked with friends about that for 30 years, about the possibility of a closure like that on a regular basis, or making a plaza out of several areas and allowing then businesses are able to use alleyways to get their goods back and forth. And we've got, it's a walking district. It's just, it's like a lot of other things in Columbia, and people have heard me repeat this a million times, and I'm going to probably, it'll be in my dying breath. We are not a town anymore. We are a city. We are the fourth largest city in the state of Missouri, and we have to start thinking and acting like we're the fourth largest city in the state of Missouri. I liked it. And I think, I agree. It's tough on some of us. I run into people all the time, all over town that I know. I feel like I can't go anywhere without seeing somebody that I know. To me, it's a very small town. Yes. But it is a city. Let's go to the geography. You said 70 square miles. If you had 70 cops, each one would be in charge of a square mile, which means all four sides of their square is one mile long. I don't want to be in charge of that area or the people that live within there. That's a lot. It's a lot to police, and we set up our beats by call volume. So if you look at our beat map, those were, those are based on, we run the number of calls periodically and we say, okay, we can make this beat bigger because there's fewer calls in that area. The challenging thing about that is if you look at the map, some of those areas also contain some major retail centers. And so if we had more presence in certain places, I feel like we could probably drive down some shoplifting calls. I think retail theft's a huge issue in this community that just kind of, we just kind of go, uh, it's going to happen, but it affects everybody. So back to that, you said drive down some shoplifting, which we'd all like to see that happen. We make arrests sometimes. I don't even know how often we arrest one of the shoplifters because we have the footage and then it becomes, it's a pile that you guys are getting every single week. But if we make an arrest, it's not like that person isn't going to do it again. But are you suggesting that a cop being there in that shopping center might reduce shoplifting? There's a lot of cities that are, especially now that we're getting away from like indoor malls. There's a lot of cities that have these bigger, you know, rehab dicks. You know, I would say that's kind of one corridor. You've got the Connelly corridor. They'll do, you know, a retail unit. And so not only they're there as a visible presence to kind of help deter that, they get to know the prolific shoplifters. It also makes people feel safer in shopping areas. They can help with traffic flow. You know, we have flock cameras now. So we can actually, if we have somebody who's a prolific shoplifter who's wanted, we put their license plate in the camera, it will, I get alert on my phone. I got one this morning. Oh, somebody that has warrants at Smiley and Rangeland. That's awesome. So, so let her dig. Not that they're out there. Yeah. Let's go get them. Let's go on the road. Yeah. Leveraging that technology is huge. Yeah. We, we're going to run out of time, so I've got to start moving on a few different issues here. And can we ask about the median? Are we going to talk about that? Yeah. We're going to, we're going to go into the medians. Everybody in the comments is asking her opinion. Okay. Okay. We're getting on medians in a second. Back to the number of officers. I feel like you said we've been down for 10 years. I feel like it's a lot longer than that, but you've been there all this time, so you should know. Okay. So when we finally get the officers we're supposed to have right now, we, we're not going to have enough officers, are we? We're, we're always going to be trying to play catch up right now. So that's my goal is to say, hey, I think, I think we need 61 right now. Here's how I would deploy them, which includes fully staffing patrol, more officers and detectives. I mean, we went through a period of time, not, in my tenure, there was one detective assigned to all property crimes in the city of Columbia. Oh my God. Imagine having that job. Whoa. So we've got to expand our detective unit. We've got to expand our street crimes and narcotics units. So there's a bunch of things I'd like to get back into doing. The downtown unit. When I started the police department, we had a crime prevention unit. Crime prevention is high on the list of things that people are surveyed that they don't feel like the city does well. I think we need to be responsive to that. But you guys did have that. I mean, you guys did a lot of work on crime prevention and how to work on this stuff. And now it's just, what, it's just gone by the wayside? Yeah. When, when it's just, hey, answer the 911 calls. You're like, okay, that's what we're going to do today is answer the 911 calls. So how many, you, you mentioned 61. Is that the number of officers we're still short or not? How do we short right now? So we are authorized 185 officers. That's for me on down to patrol. So as of, as we sit here today, I have two sergeants vacancies and 12 officer vacancies. That was five until the new budget year. And we moved some things around because I have absorbed the park police. Those are now a specialty assignment in the police department. So they were park rangers. Now they're going to be just police officers. Same thing with airport operations. But that means you've got to take care of the parks and the airport now also. I was doing it anyway. We just basically, not me personally, but, but we, those were different positions. I mean, you can craft on coming and going here. You can't win for trying. Am I right? Well, in that sense, it, it, it was problematic that there were people who were commissioned police officers carrying guns that didn't report to me. And so I, I totally agree with that. And I'll tell you the folks, we're going to eventually have four people in the parks unit. We have two in there right now. They're doing a phenomenal job. I mean, I've seen, they have written so many tickets for camping and parks. So I know they're focusing on making sure that people are following the rules when they're in the park. And that includes, I mean, not to be, and I'm going to get some flack for this, but making sure your dog's on a leash. You know, all these different things that kind of, to your point earlier, when we don't pay attention to little things, things tend to start bubbling up. Kind of like, hey, nobody's paying any attention. It's just like a kid. I mean, if you let them get away with a little, they're going to get away with a lot eventually. And their brother or sister is going to do the same thing. And I will tell you, in the aftermath of everything that's happened, I've gotten a fair amount of communication from parents that are upset because we're downtown writing tickets for open container and minor in possession and people walking in the street. We had someone get hit last weekend that thankfully they weren't killed, but someone was hit it and hit in Broadway because they walked out into traffic. I just want to give you a big poster that Jim Carrey screaming into the phone from Liar Liar Liar, stop breaking the law. Guess what? You don't get in trouble for any of this stuff if you just don't break the law. Like, they're mad at the cop for enforcing the law. It's maddening. It's maddening. Well, there's a little bit of this idea that it's either or, or you should only ticket those people and not these people. And from our view, public order is a thing that we're constantly trying to keep. If there's 5,000 college kids downtown drinking to the point that they're blackout drunk, what do you think the outcome of that's going to be? Yeah, it's not going to be good. And that number, by the way, what is, how many students, I shouldn't say students, how many people on a game weekend, football season game weekend, how many people are downtown having a great time from about 9 until 1.30 in the morning? Is it thousands? So I went down and worked after the MUKU game. I worked from 9 at night until 3 in the morning. And there were a lot of people. And that's another thing that's changed. It used to be you went out, you went downtown, you went to the bar, and then you went to either the Hot Dog Cart or El Rancho. And that was like really your food options. Way back before that, you tried to drive to Shoney's, which was a bad idea, or Denny's, remember that? Shoney's. Wow. Breakfast buffet. Oh my gosh. I'm aging myself there, but that's okay. But now we have all these food trucks, all these food carts, there's restaurants that are open late. You've got all these different things. And they live down there. So when the weather's pretty mild, you're like, my apartment's right there. I'll hang out here, talk to my buddies, you know, do whatever. And so we're having to now, whereas used to the bars would dump people to get their food, and usually by 2, 2.30 we're good. We're now seeing we're having to staff people down there until 3 or 4 in the morning. And on the numbers thing, I know you're not going to have this on top of your head, but since you got here in 1995, the number of people that at least during the school year live within that area that is the downtown district footprint. So between, let's say, I don't know, Walnut-ish and up to the campus, that number has gone up by the thousands. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I'll add something on top of that about staffing. So I went back to, from the year 2000 on, and looked at the city budgets to see how many sworn police officer positions were added each year. And what's problematic, and I want people to understand, this didn't happen overnight. Okay? We didn't get into the state that we're in overnight. I think the highest number of officers I found in any year during the past 25, we added seven officers in one year. And that sounds really great, but the reality is it takes three full-time police officers to have one police officer 24 hours a day. So that was really like 2.333 cops. And when your population grows, on average, Columbia grows about 2% a year over that 25 years. You're not even keeping up with the population growth and the annexation. I tracked how much land we annexed each year. I mean, it's just, I personally think, if I had to hypothesize, I think that's a function of the crime rate in Columbia has been so good that I don't think it was like, oh crap, we got to add police officers because there's all this stuff going on. It's like, eh. I mean, there's years they added zero or one. I mean, that does nothing, essentially. And we've had growth every single one of them. So we have 185. Springfield has 360-ish, I believe. And Springfield has about 40,000 more people than we do, for perspective. That doesn't add up. That math doesn't work. And they're doing much, much better with their ratio of cop to population than we have. Columbia, South Carolina, I think they had 380 sworn, and there are 141,000 people. No way. So that brings up the other thing that I wanted to talk about, and I talk about all the time when I'm not on here, which is even if we do get to a point that it's what we were aiming at for the number of officers on the force, we're way below where we really should be or could be. And I think the key to that is planning. There's never been a long-range plan for, okay, if we know we're growing this much per year, we need to plan to add X number of police and firefighters and linesmen and whatever that looks like per year for the growth of the city. And then how do we factor in paying for that when we expand and we annex and we build more things? And I just don't think that… I think we have to come up with the number we need right now, which is what I'm saying. I think based on how outstanding our training and recruiting unit has been doing, getting people in the door and getting them trained, I think we can do that. We have 16 in the academy right now. So I was kind of hesitant at first when I brought this up. I think if they said, yeah, we'll give you the 60, I think I could easily hire 20 a year for the next three years, and then we just need to keep going at it and come up with a number that we need to add each year. We're committed to doing it. Let's jump into some stuff with the homeless. Last time you were with us, you talked about a percentage of calls on a regular basis, daily, weekly, monthly, that have to do with people that are living on the streets in the Columbia area and that you guys are responding to calls. I think you talked about 25-ish percent, maybe higher on some days. Is that correct? Or is it still feeling that way? You know, I think it's day-to-day some days, honestly. I think there's still a very high… So I had our analyst run some numbers. Sorry. Well, you're at that retirement age. I know. I know. I shouldn't be surprised, but I am. So he ran these numbers for me. I got this from him on October 6th, and in 2025, so context is everything, right? So the only way we track calls regarding homeless individuals right now is when an officer clears a call, they have to pick a nature code out of their computer, and so that can be cleared by arrest. That can be false alarm. There's a litany of things they can pick. We asked them to, in order for us to try to track this more accurately, we created a code that says unhoused, and so we asked them to start using that. So there is a huge amount of human error involved in this. So whatever I tell you is probably grossly under-reported because they're busy, they're not always going to choose the right thing, it happens. So at this point in 2025, there had been 2,736 calls coded as unhoused, and then they'd made 410 arrests inside those calls. That's this year? That's year-to-date? That's year-to-date. That actually sounds like more arrests than I would have said because that is 20%, is that correct? So about 20% were the number of arrests they made out of those calls. Well, I guess it says, well, if a call came in, there was something bad going on, right? Yeah, it's about 20% of those calls they had to make an arrest on, interesting. And so that raw number across this year so far feels like what percentage? Well, compared to last year, so in 2024, all of 2024, there were 2,929 calls coded as unhoused. In 2025, year-to-date, which was for this report, was through the end of September, we were already at 2,736. So we were within 200 calls of the entire year, and we've still got the full first quarter to go through. So that's three quarters of a year. I told you I love numbers. So that sounds like it's going up, and it was already too much last year, which is another thing that we have to talk about, and the reality of it. You guys probably have your own personal headaches going on with this stuff because if you've got to make a call to my house, which is almost never going to happen, what are you guys dealing with? If you make a call to a homeless situation on the streets, and you're dealing with all the hell that is their life, and I understand it, they're in a place that nobody would actually want to be in, given sobriety and mental stability, right? No one would ask for it. So you're going to deal with all their hell, it becomes part of it, and you have to deal with that. I know that must be a pain in your ass. I'm sure that it is. But all you're doing is your job. So at that moment, you're not going through the same thing that I'm going through when I drive by and see them on the street, and I'm like, what the hell are they doing over here now? And I get a real attitude. You guys don't have a lot of attitude. Is that right? Would that be fair? I don't think so. I think that officers on the street, though, would tell you, when you have to go deal with the same person and the same thing over and over again, there's a level of frustration that sets in with it, especially with folks that you know, they're always intoxicated when you deal with them, or they're generally under the influence of fentanyl or something when you deal with them. Isn't that against the law? Like public intoxication? No. There's no public intoxication. Oh. And if it was, that would probably be a city ordinance, is that correct? It would be, but then I always like to talk with people like, let's talk about the practical application of that. So then what do you do with them? You want the liability of a drunk tank? I don't. You have to take them home. I don't think Dwayne Perry does either. You got to give them coffee, put them to bed, or whatever the hell it is. I mean, that's where we have to think through like, how do we actually apply this ordinance in real life? And that's one that's problematic. That's gone away in a lot of places. With the illegal drugs, if they have a needle in their arm that's an illegal drug, that's a narcotic. That's a felony. So that's a felony. That's arrested immediately. You're going to Buchanan Jail. You're going out to see Sheriff Carey. And that's Sheriff Carey's problem. Morning, Dwayne. We're bringing another one by. These things about law, it's incredibly important to talk about, which I did at the front of the podcast, in the idea of the new ordinance being discussed for the medians. There are rules in place that are being suggested, and the city council is going to look at this and probably come up with something. It has to be enforceable, otherwise why are you even… That's my call. Why are we even talking about it? Where are you on this median issue right now? We've got a lot of people… The comments are blowing up. They want to know what your opinion is. Here's my thing. People need to remember, we police behavior. I don't police housing status. I don't police race. That's not… We police behavior. If someone asked me, if you came up to me and said, hey Jill, I think I'm going to go stand out at Broadway and Stadium today on the median that's yay big, and I'm just going to set a launcher up there today, and I'm going to count every red car that comes by. I would be like, that's a horrible idea. Have you looked at the medians? They look like I ran over them with a bear cat. That alone should be evidence that is not a safe place. So I think what's getting conflated here is you have people going on the opposite side of this saying, this is just about panhandling. I don't think, as the police chief, I don't think anyone should be sitting on those medians for any purpose. Remember when the firefighters used to collect money in the boot? They shouldn't be doing that. It's dangerous. Oh, and they were so pissed when they were told they couldn't do it anymore, by the way. They were. They're like, come on. I was a firefighter. I know. They have the calendar. People should know. There was a lawsuit in 2021 in St. Louis. It's Fernandez versus St. Louis, where this was a First Amendment issue. And so St. Louis tried to outlaw that you couldn't stand on the median and panhandle. You couldn't hold up a sign. And that's protected. It is protected. But not holding a sign, soliciting, voicing your concerns, bitching about heaven above. That cannot be prohibited. But where you do it and how you're doing it can be. The safety part of that is what we're addressing here. You don't want anybody standing on that median. I don't care if you're asking for… I don't want the firefighters with the boot. I don't want somebody asking for $2. I don't want… It's across the board. Yes. Don't stand out there. And I'll also speak for everybody out there. I get it. There are a lot of us that are like, I don't want to see him and his sign every single day. I know. We're going to get our way. But it's not going to be because we don't like him and because we don't like what he has to say. It's going to be because it's an unsafe place to be. And that's why the ordinance is going to wind up getting passed. I hope this conversation also kind of transitions to and to, okay, if you want to give money, what are appropriate places to do that in the community? We've been having conversations about there's community Boulder, Colorado. They have signage. Hey, you know, kind of reinforcing the idea that here's places that you can give money to if you want to give to this cause and get people help. Here's a QR code. Here's a way you can donate. But handing some guy $5 that I'm sorry, and I know I'm going to get flack about this. I'm telling you that money is going towards alcohol, fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, any litany number of things. And there's a much better way to get those people. There's so many service providers in this community that do such good work. That's why they keep coming here. Giving them that money through Como Gives, through United Way, all these different things. You are then guaranteed that that money is being used for a legal cause. When you mentioned these illegal activities, and there are more out there, including extortion and prostitution and along those lines, human trafficking, I know that I believe this. Tell me that I'm wrong. That those levels of crime follow the homeless community. Well, we've seen, we've had cases here where somebody was utilizing homeless individuals to cash fraudulent checks, right? So they were getting them to go in and do that. I personally think, you know, we talk about sexual assault. The amount of sexual assault that I believe goes on in camps is so grossly underreported that I think that's one of the unrealized things that when people say, oh, you should just let people have these camps and just let them. I've never even heard that. I didn't know it. I didn't imagine it. Sometimes I feel like I live this sheltered life, and I'm sure I do. I never even thought about that. So when people are in an encampment together, down off the highway in a riverbank, someone that evening may get sexually assaulted. Domestic violence. I mean. And who's going to help them down there? Right. Right. That's horrible. That's very frustrating. That is terrible. I know we're going to start wrapping this up. On the median ordinance, if it passes, and you guys have to enforce this, does it become, I'm going to say not for the CPD, but for the rest of us in town, does it become a tool to make everything safer for us? Are we putting a good idea out there? Does it appear to you that it would be a good idea? Do you want to endorse the ordinance? Well, I'm sure I'll be asked about it. You just were. Well, at City Council, I'm sure I will be. But I've been part of this process since it was even discussed. So I get to read the draft ordinance. I give input on that. Give my concerns. I personally think any time we can try to keep people safer, especially in the roadways, because we've all seen people with their legs out in traffic. It's a distraction to drivers, and we have enough bad drivers in Columbia. I mean, I saw, I was in traffic at Nifong and Providence the other day. A guy crossed three lanes of traffic to go get a dollar from somebody. Well, you have all these people behind them honking and upset because they've already been waiting. And road rage is a thing in this city, apparently, because there's a lot of people flashing guns and shooting guns. So it just kind of perpetuates this whole problem, I think, with it's just not safe to be out in the median. I wouldn't take my Girl Scout troop and be like, hey, you know how we're going to sell cookies? We're going to stand in the median. There's a reason why they're in front of Sam's Club and not on the median. So I think, to me, it's common sense that being on a traffic median is not safe. And so I don't, that shouldn't really be an uphill battle in my mind. You know, we'll do an education campaign, of course, but we'll start writing tickets. We're going to talk in, keep your eye on the crap, we're going to get back in the medians on that. Unfortunately, we have to. Can I ask a question, too? I just want to know, if the ordinance comes up or whatever, how can we voice our concern? How can the average person, the people listening to this podcast right now, every single one of the comments, we want this, we want this, we want this, how do we reach out to our people? Who do we talk to? Who do we tell? Please, please, please pass this. It's super important people know who your council person is, know what ward you live in. There's maps on the city's website. Reach out to them. Emails are always great. No matter how you feel, for or against an issue, contact your council person, contact the mayor's office, send an email. In person's always great. I know people always appreciate when people come and give in-person testimony about something. I think the council appreciates in-person, so that's, those are a couple different ways you can make your opinions known about that kind of stuff. That's what I would encourage people to do because, you know, the council people are trying to make decisions based on what they think is best for their constituents. Well, you have to hear from their constituents and not just this same little group all the time that's super vocal. So I think it's important that people reach out, whether it's through email or in person. I think it's great to be reminded of exactly what we're supposed to do. And if you don't know your city council person, you never ever want to know who it is, there are people like that too. And I don't know who you should talk to. Just reach out to City Hall. Yeah, there's tons of emails, addresses on the website where you can just put in a contact form. I mean, even if all you're doing is putting it on social media, at least it's a beginning that you're joining in with saying, this is a problem and I'd like to see something done about this. The dangers that we have in our community are very, very real. The work that you're going through, the pressure on you is also very real. I want to have you back, what is, what are we in here, it's October, maybe how about January? He's so good with numbers, but he forgot what month it was. I'm kind of there too. And I don't know if it's Carl or Kyle Edwards either. How about January, can we bring you back in January? That'll be a slow month for you. Is there a slow month? You just jinxed it. Right there. If this ordinance actually shows up, when might this even pass? Let's say everything goes perfect, when might this even pass if it does pass? So it was read for the first time at the last meeting, the mayor was not going to be at the next council meeting, so she requested at the meeting just last Monday to actually do the public hearing and the vote at the November 16th meeting. So we're in that kind of last few weeks. And at that meeting they could decide to vote on it at the next meeting, which would be two weeks-ish later. Right now they are supposed to vote on it on the 16th. Oh, really? I would be very shocked if that doesn't happen. November 16th? Yes, November 16th. You need to reach out. If anybody wants to vocalize about this, you need to do it ASAP. So that's the way that it… Okay, all right. Which means if we talk to her in January, we might be able to talk about the new ordinance that's in effect. Maybe. So we won't be doing the podcast in January on a median if it passes through? I've been thinking about doing it. I want to do it in her car. We're not ever going to do it. Can we do it in her car? We can't. She can say yes, but I'm going to say yes right now. Police Chief Jill Schlute, Columbia Police Department, thank you so much. Thank you so much. And please stay in touch behind the scenes as well. Absolutely. Wow. I know we went late, if there is such a thing. It was worth it. It was absolutely worth it, right? Absolutely. A lot to talk about. And we're going to jump right back into it as well with keeping your eye on the crap. And I kind of feel… What are you laughing about over there? One of the comments pointed out that there's a reason why Girl Scouts don't sell cookies on medians. Yes, there is. It's because we don't want little girls hit by cars. Right. We don't want adults hit by cars either. I'm pretty sure. We don't hate these people. We literally don't want them to die. I want people to live. Yes. I know it doesn't sound like it because I have a lousy attitude quite often. We complain a lot, but it's out of frustration because we know these people's lives are made worse by these… If they're in a camp and they're getting assaulted, if they're being taken advantage of, that's worse. That is very, very real. The other idea too is the lawlessness, which if we see that happening out there, all these different things that are affiliated with these individuals that are going through tough times, I think it also brings more bad things. And that's true. That's true. Let's move on. Are you ready? You've got to keep your eyes on the crap. You can't handle the crap. Look here. There's a big difference between shit and Shinola. As my great-grandfather always said, Matumba, keep your eye on the crap. Thank you, Matumba. And it's great to have you with us again, as you are each week on TPBS, the podcast. Okay, keeping your eye on the crap. So I have to share this with you. And thank you, Bonnie, for posting this. There is a group out there, and there are probably many of them, that are against the ordinance of keeping people off, whether they've got a boot and they're a firefighter, or they've got a box of cookies and they're a Girl Scout, or they're homeless and high as hell on who knows what and begging for money. There are people that don't want us to keep them off the median. They think it's bad for us to keep people off the median, that it's wrong. Keeping your eye on the crap brought to you by Family Focus Eye Care. As I've said my whole life, how can you keep your eye on the crap if you can't see, boy? If you can't see, how can you keep your eye off the crap? And so thank you to Family Focus Eye Care locations in Columbia and Eldon and soon all the way down to the Lake of the Ozarks. I'm going to go down to the Lake of the Ozarks, and I'm going to get them to make, Did you know that they make snorkeling masks, like underwater diving masks, that are prescription glass? No joke. Did you know that? No, I had no idea. I never thought about that. Yeah, if you have bad eyesight and you're underwater, it's like, oh, it's really pretty. It's just a big blur. Do you see that beautiful fish? No. No, I don't. Do you know how dorky people look when they put the mask on? It kind of smashes their face. They're like, how are you doing? Wouldn't it be funny if you had to put that on with Dr. Rich at Family Focus Eye Care? You put it on, and he's like, okay, can you read the lowest level? Can you read the lowest level? And he's like, do you see a clownfish or a crab? You know, I just thought of something. There was a Seinfeld episode where George had his glasses stolen, and he had to wear his goggles that were prescription goggles. I totally forgot about that. No, I didn't. I've never seen that. Yeah, that totally, that is an episode of Seinfeld. I worked with a guy on radio that made way too much money. Good morning, John. And he made way too much money, and he was talking about stuff, and I said, have you ever gone scuba diving? And he goes, oh, yeah, yeah. And I said, when you go there? And he goes, no, no, if I go, I take my own gear. I go, of course you have your own gear. He goes, oh, you know, I like specifically my fins, and this, this, and I've got a snorkel, and I've got my prescription mask. I go, what? Oh, man. Of course you have a prescription mask, you son of a bitch. There's a white flex right there. This is what you need to know. Your question to the chief about if you want the ordinance to pass to keep people off the medians in our town. Isn't that stupid, the stuff we've got to talk about? Yeah. If you want that thing to pass, what do you do? I want you to know something. When you are a level-headed person, you go, well, people shouldn't be standing there anyway. Do you realize for every one of us that's level-headed and reasonable, there's some idiot ass out there. Take for this, Bonnie posted this, encouraging us to take a moment and comment on the local motion social website page about pedestrian safety. Here are some of the clips that the group Local Motion wants to make to us. The study that the city is looking at right now, it didn't find any evidence of pedestrian standing on medians causing any crashes or deaths. There's no evidence. Let me get this right. So there's no evidence in the study. That means we should just pitch the whole thing and say to hell with it? No. There's more that they shared. Based on this data you're giving us, the proposed ordinance would restrict behavior without providing additional safety protections. Bitch, at no point do I have to tell you that something's illegal while I also offer you another. Come on, you're the religious guy. When God closes a window, he opens a, and I'm doing it backwards on purpose, a door. I don't have to open something for you. If I say this thing is illegal, you're not going to do it anymore. That's it. I don't have to give you extra, oh my God. Furthermore, we encourage the city to build on positive steps like the pedestrian level of comfort map, complete streets policy as well to guide design changes that make walking and rolling safer for everyone. Walking and rolling, they included rolling. That's good. Because they would include everything, including skateboarding and bicycling and roller skating and everything. But that takes years and millions of dollars to put anything like that into effect. And the reality is on I-70, on Highway 63, we ain't never going to let you get out there in a wheelchair, on roller blades, on a bicycle. It's not going to, and we're never going to be concerned with it. But you know what? These folks at Local Motion would love to see that as the case because you know how many cars they would like at every single intersection? On any given day in existence, fewer. They want fewer cars, and that's what they ultimately want to see. I'd like to have fewer as well. I would like there to always be fewer cars out there, not including my car. I want my car to be there. I want to be the only one. Yes. Now that you understand that. With that, we've got to get on out of here now. So we're going to go ahead and bid farewell. As I hear that music bed comes up that says we are very late but out of time. You've done a hell of a job today. Thank you to the police chief for coming by. We've got to roll. My friends, don't live this day on a median in the middle of an intersection. Instead, live this day though as if it were your last, and I say to you, okay.