Recent attention directed at downtown Columbia’s violence and crime may not be helping the problem, according to Columbia Mayor Barbara Buffaloe.
“When some of the rhetoric continues to happen, but it’s not being realized that then keeps people from coming downtown,” she said.
Last month, Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway demanded that Reign, a downtown Columbia bar, submit a written plan addressing “nuisance conditions.” Her announcement came after she was e-mailed by University of Missouri President Mun Choi.
KBIA’s Jenna Higgins spoke with Buffaloe about the city’s response to downtown perceptions and Hanaway’s decision to intercede.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Jenna Higgins: What was your initial reaction when Attorney General Hanaway issued her press release saying that she was investigating Reign Bar?
Barbara Buffaloe: My initial reaction was actually to call up the city manager and be like, ‘Were we contacted about this concern?’ and hearing that no, nobody at the city, including the police department, had been contacted about the request.
JH: We also know that President Choi emailed with the Attorney General about the situation. Did he also contact you before he reached out to her?
BB: No, I have no record of the request from President Choi to the Attorney General. I did, later on, get to see the chain of emails and saw that one of them included one of my emails from probably six months ago that had just been recirculated.
JH: Do you think that President Choi is potentially inserting himself into the situation in ways he shouldn't be?
BB: I don't really feel comfortable telling anyone how to do their job. To me, what I want to see, and what I've seen in other university towns, is a real partnership where collectively — city leadership, university leadership — are meeting and moving forward on these solutions together. It doesn't do us any benefit to Columbia to cast blame, to point fingers, especially when you might not know all of the information.
JH: Have you had any recent interactions with President Choi or the MU office about Reign Bar or just downtown safety? Are there any developments or conversations of interest?
BB: No, we had an update on Monday at a City Council work session from the Columbia Police Department. What they find is that when you are stopping some of the ordinances or laws that are being broken for things like jaywalking, minors in possession, trespass, things like that, you don't then see the escalation to more violent crime happening. If we are enforcing people being outside with an open container, they're less likely to be outside with an open container and a gun.
JH: To address downtown safety there have been initiatives involving you and the city that you've highlighted before. There's been action taken, but there's still plenty more to come. How do you balance some people's desires for immediate solutions, with the fact that some plans take time to bear fruit?
BB: That is so true, and that's one of the hardest things, right? I like to remind people that you want it to take time. How do we preventively do this? And so for me, it's always important that we also remember that we are also following the law. I can't just have an officer respond to something without having all the facts. You don't want that to happen in your home or your business, and you shouldn't want it to happen in anyone else's home or business.
JH: Do you ever feel like the conflict of disagreement is distracting or possibly exacerbating these safety concerns?
BB: Every day. For me, I think what we're seeing, when you see the noise happening at the federal and the state level, it's trickling down into local commentary. I think that the biggest scare I have is that this polarization is causing division within neighbors, and that's not going to help us move forward.
