Last week the Columbia Police Department launched a series of town hall meetings to improve police-community relations across Columbia.
Each meeting centered on policing in a specific department beat of Columbia. Most recently, Shepard Boulevard High School played host to one of those town hall meetings. The meeting centered around issues facing Southeast Columbia.
“With law enforcement even nationwide seeing the change that’s going on, we felt it’s important to keep our community informed of what our viewpoint is and what we need to do in this community to keep this community safe,” said Lieutenant Eric Hughes.
At the meeting, officers educated attendees on the system of beats in Columbia and the methodology behind how they prioritize calls for service. They also presented figures on crime in the region, pointing out that southeast Columbia has seen a larger decrease in call for service than the city of Columbia as a whole.
After the brief presentation, attendees voiced their concerns on a variety of topics in the community.
The number of homeless people at different parks around Columbia and long response times on the part of officers were two major parts of the conversation. One woman told officers how she had to wait 45 minutes for a police response to a burglary in progress at her storage unit.
Attendees also brought up understaffing facing the department. Hughes acknowledged the issue and said CPD is looking for way to bring more officers in. He added that the department is in need of about 50 more officers to meet the Department of Justice recommended officer-citizen ratio.
Despite the problems, many attendees thanked the officers for their time at the end of the meeting and the platform to build community-police relations.
“I think improving relationships between police and the community is actually very urgent and critical for us,” said attendee Rachel Taylor.
There will be a final town hall meeting in this series at Gentry Middle School on October 25. The meeting is open to the public and will primarily concern community policing in southwest Columbia.