Police Chief Timothy Jackson talks with the City Council’s Public Safety Committee about an increase in calls seen down at the city’s code blue warming center. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

An increase in calls to the city police for problems at the Code Blue warming center on Washington Street has prompted some discussion from the City Council’s Public Safety Committee.

Jeff Russell, R-At Large and committee chairman, said he had heard of an incident involving a woman smashing in the windows of a car with a paint can in that area, but Police Chief Timothy Jackson said he was not sure if that call was actually connected to the warming center or just happened in the area. Other rumored incidents involve tampering with vehicles at nearby car dealerships.

“The biggest issues that I’ve been told directly from the business owner down there is littering, harassment by employees when they’re leaving work, fights, and disorderly people,” Jackson said. “Those are the biggest issues that I’ve been told.”

Russell noted that extra patrols have been placed near the warming center, and Jackson said there is a two-officer car there from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. because that’s when the car dealerships, specifically Dave Warren, and other businesses open and close, and is generally when the problems are occurring.

The extra patrol is an overtime cost, but one that is being paid for by a DOD grant. Russell also asked if some of the issues might be related to any mental health issues and if the department is getting any help from local mental health organizations or social workers. Jackson said there has been no help that he knows of for those issues.

“Obviously for offenses such as littering there is no place for a social worker, and fights,” Jackson said.

Drug involvement is also a possibility in some cases, and for the case involving the car windows being smashed by a paint can the offender had been arrested a few times the day before, the committee noted. Jackson reported that Dave Warren has been happy with the help the police have been providing, but Russell added that he hated to see any business lose revenue because of this kind of thing.

“I’m sympathetic towards that population, but also we have to look at the totality of the circumstances of our businesses and employees down there and we have to look at the whole picture,” Russell said.

Russell brought up the issue again at Monday’s full council work session, saying that the lack of help from other organizations for some of these issues was concerning.

“Now we’re saddling the police department to be social workers, to be addiction specialists and I know this was a big push three or four years ago, there were certain groups and individuals that didn’t want police responding to mental health calls, people in crisis, drug addiction,” Russell said. “I guess I challenge those individuals now, and I say ‘where are you? Where are you? Where are all the specialists in these fields that three or four years ago they didn’t want the police handling these individuals? Where are you?'”