Columbia police parking at Plaza Tire Services to prevent crime
The Columbia Police Department is putting preventative policing into practice in downtown Columbia.
The department is parking two patrol cars in and taping off the Plaza Tire Service parking lot on the corner of Fifth Street and East Broadway Street almost every weekend.
Plaza Tire Service manager Sam Botts said CPD approached the business late last summer to request permission to park the vehicles there from about 8 p.m. to 3 a.m.
He said that they were experiencing major littering at the time, but the officer also informed him that large crowds were milling around their parking lot late at night.
“We didn’t know initially that people were hanging out on the parking lot,” Botts said. “Once he told me that, I was glad that that was going to be addressed.”
Columbia police spokesperson Jeff Pitts confirmed that the presence stemmed from groups of people trespassing on private property, loitering, and “being engaged in disruptive behavior that requires a police response.”
He said it was proactive policing.
“CPD looked at means to [sic] curtail loitering and disturbances and reached out to businesses with private parking lots where the gatherings were occurring,” he said in an email.
He said it began last year when the department was dealing with a number of incidents along Broadway between 10th and Fifth streets. This included at least four shootings over several consecutive weekends in July and August.
“There was also an increase in fights on parking lots and sidewalks in the area of Broadway between Fifth and Sixth Streets,” Pitts wrote.
According to Botts, the department took a break over the winter but ramped up the presence in the last several weeks.
A bartender at Tropical Liqueurs on Sixth Street said a shooting a few months ago in the area sent patrons running for cover. He told ABC 17 News that the owner complained to police and that the police were back in the parking lot almost immediately after.
ABC 17 News dug into the most recent shootings in the area. According to police dispatch, there were two within a few weeks of each other in that area.
On March 24, dispatch shows police responded to 19 N. Fifth St. for a shots fired call around 1:30 a.m.
There was a shooting April 6 near the police station around 2:20 a.m., but ABC 17 News had taken a photo of the police presence earlier that evening.
City spokesperson Steve Sapp said the area was a “logical point to begin” the preventative policing philosophy and that they are still evaluating the results.
Botts said the littering has been cut way down.
“Before they were doing that, it was consistently every Saturday and Monday morning [when we come in],” he said. “It’s made a big impact on that.”
He also pointed out that he doesn’t have a good feeling about people partying in the parking lot and feels like there’s been a benefit beyond littering.
“It could be trash one time, but who knows if you get a broken window in one of the garage doors,” he said.
Botts said CPD was also in the Commerce Bank parking lot across the street doing preventative policing. The bartender at Tropical Liqueurs also confirmed police were in the lot at one point to dispel the large crowds that were there, as well.
Pitts said this saves money by offsetting the cost of officers responding to calls for service in the area.
