Police staffing among concerns for bar owners talked about during CPD downtown roundtable

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Columbia Police Department hosted a roundtable on Wednesday afternoon for downtown Columbia bar's and businesses over downtown safety concerns.

Police Chief Jill Schlude said that the reason for this meeting was to reengage withowners and have a better line of communication between them and personnel.

"This is just kind of trying to revamp and revive the downtown bar meeting we used to have years ago, pre-COVID, back when the downtown unit existed," Schlude said.

Schlude said she was happy with the meeting's turnout, and it consisted of collaborative conversations among the people inside.

Columbia Fire Chief Brian Schaffer said that during the meeting many topics were discussed and it was great oppurtunity for diffrent perspectives to come together and talk about what they can do to make the town safer.

"There were discussions about bottom lines and economic impacts, and at the same time, some out-of-the-box ideas on how we may make it a safer environment for students, a safer environment for people that are out of the area," Schaeffer said.

Owner of The Heidelberg Richard Walls said there were roughly 30-40 people inside, including business owners, council members, police staff and fire staff in attendance.

Walls said he appreciated the efforts from law enforcement to engage business owners to keep themselves and people in Columbia safe.

"I think it's great seeing our community come together, working on making sure our public stays safe and people can enjoy coming to Columbia and having a night out," said Walls. "The people that own the bars and restaurants in Columbia care about our community by showing up today with the crowd that we had."

The roundtable meeting will be able to provide Columbia business owners with the same avenue when it comes to being informed according to Walls.

"It will provide everyone the opportunity to work together and keep people on the same page," said Walls. "If something happens somewhere, they know that they can reach out to the police and they're on our side and we're on their side.

The main concerns Schlude said were brought up during the meeting were the lack of CPD staffing as well as people partying in their cars outside of the bars. She said not only were the concerns of folks tailgating brought up in the meeting, but these concerns have been consistent with other business owners outside the meetings and observations from CPD staff.

Due to buisness owners concerns, Schlude said there will be more enforcement downtown in respone to this to monitor safety.

"We're going to modify behavior and we can do that through voluntary compliance or we can do that through citations and potentially arrests. So I would anticipate more enforcement downtown," Schlude said. "We want to be responsive to what they're asking for help with."

Schlude said the invite list for this meeting was based on businesses that are open late and more geared towards bar and night clubs.

"If your primary revenue generator is selling liquor by the drink, then that's how you got an invitation," said Schlude. "If you're just a retail business, if you're a restaurant and you're closing at nine or 10:00, that's a little bit different animal. And not that we're not going to have conversations with those folks because we certainly will, we really wanted to focus down on the bars and nightclubs and kind of the nightlife scene in downtown Columbia.

Schaeffer said with everyone leaning towards being on the same page about communication and safety concerns, the next steps are to use ideas bounced around during the meeting, and start working towards a safer downtown.

"Overall, it was just a focus on making sure that everybody understands the same situation. The environment or the operational environment that we have downtown, and then move forward with a couple ideas on how to improve," Schaeffer said.

There was some confusion over who was invited to the meeting. Tropical Liqueurs -- a popular downtown bar that has been in Columbia since the '80s -- shared a social media post earlier on Wednesday indicating they were uninvited.

"We RSVP’d immediately because we wanted to be part of the conversation. The next day, we were told the invitation had been sent to us by mistake and that we were not actually invited to attend," the post says. "We were very disappointed. We’ve operated a bar in downtown Columbia for more than four decades, and we believe that experience gives us a valuable perspective on what’s happening in downtown and what might help make it better."

The bar wrote that it supported bringing back the downtown police unit.