Addressing School Traffic and Safety Concerns with the Clinton Police Department

SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

It is now time for our Community Spotlight, brought to you by Solid Value Contracting. This Community Spotlight is Radford Media Group’s public affairs program, highlighting the work people are doing in West Central Missouri. If you missed today’s episode, you can listen on demand at mycandycandy.com by clicking on the podcast tab on the homepage, then finding the Community Spotlight podcast. Well, joining me in the studio today for our community spotlight from the Clinton Police Department is Officer Carl Heissom. Carl, thank you so much for joining us here today. You’re welcome. Thanks for having me. Hey, glad to have you out here. It’s the first time on the radio, so he’s a little timid. But tell me a little bit about yourself. How long have you been in law enforcement, and especially how long have you been with the Clinton Police Department?

SPEAKER 02 : 0:41

I’ve been with the Clinton Police Department going on four years in December, January.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:47

Okay.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:48

All together in law enforcement about four and a half years.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:51

About four and a half years, okay.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:52

I came here shortly after getting into law enforcement and made it home. It’s a great department, great city, great people.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:58

Where’d you come from? Where was you born and raised?

SPEAKER 02 : 1:01

Born and raised in Kansas City area, lived down around Ozark, Sparta area for a while, then came back up here.

SPEAKER 01 : 1:07

So you’re kind of right in the middle of both where you grew up and where you lived for some of your life. Yep. Cool. Well, we’re glad to have you here in Clinton and a part of the Clinton Police Department. Tell me some of your roles and some of the job duties that you have there at the department.

SPEAKER 02 : 1:22

At the department right now, I’m the school resource officer for this year for the Clinton schools, which my role there is to go patrol the schools, be seen, make sure schools are safe, secure, that they’re doing what they can in the safest way to protect the children, which is a lot of basically making sure that people that aren’t supposed to be there and coming in the building and uh all the security just made and they’re they’re great about it there they have a lot of technology already that they’ve had before i started there that they use and it’s not really been anything i’ve had to do or correct that i’ve seen it’s been an easy transition then yeah yeah it’s very easy transition and then i also deal with when they have kids or students that you know act out. Everybody does. I have to kind of take reports on that and send up and sometimes sit down and kind of talk to the kids, see if we can find a different way to behave in schools and keep them out of trouble.

SPEAKER 01 : 2:25

So with you being the school resource officer, that opens up a lot more questions for me because traffic has been a nightmare going down. Let’s talk about that for a little bit because that has been a big issue personally amongst my family. As you’ve talked to my wife a couple of different times now and talked to my in-laws a couple of times now. No, nothing personal. I mean, you’re doing your job, but the school isn’t really directing parents what to do either, and there’s not very good signage. There’s just a big issue with traffic right now going down 8th Street and out onto Ohio Street.

SPEAKER 02 : 2:59

It is in… I’m not sure what the perfect solution would be.

SPEAKER 01 : 3:04

That’s fair, yeah.

SPEAKER 02 : 3:05

We’re trying to find that out. It’s always been pretty chaotic as long as I’ve been here. But this year, I don’t know why the lines are getting longer. I don’t know if it’s more students or if it’s just more car riders or what. But with all the schools being right there in the same area, most of them, there’s just not the infrastructure to handle the traffic. So, I mean, we have to put them somewhere.

SPEAKER 01 : 3:23

Right.

SPEAKER 02 : 3:24

And it’s worked well. I won’t say gray, but it’s worked for the past few years. Right. Yeah, this year we have them backing up all the way down A Street out onto Ohio. And then when you start stopping traffic on Ohio, people are going in turn lanes and people are having to stop and we’re having to back cars up. Yeah. So we’ve been telling people, you know, you can’t. You can’t stop on Ohio. It’s a busy street. We also need to not back up all the way to Ohio.

SPEAKER 01 : 3:49

So where is the stopping point of where people need to… Going down 8th Street. Now, they can kind of curve and go up Clinton Street if they like, as long as you’re back far enough from the stop sign. But where exactly on 8th Street do they need to kind of stop getting in line at?

SPEAKER 02 : 4:05

The… the driveway to Banks Motors there after you turn off Ohio onto 8th Street. Right there on the west side of the road is the side drive to Banks. Right there. Stop. Don’t go any further than that and don’t block their driveway. That way people that are pulling off of Ohio onto 8th Street that aren’t in the line can go because it forces them into the turn lane when you back up right there. And the problem is people coming off 8th Street are also in the turn lane.

SPEAKER 01 : 4:31

Yeah, and if someone’s in the turn lane, then there’s nowhere to turn.

SPEAKER 02 : 4:33

Then you have people twice. I’ve seen people have to back… out onto Ohio because they don’t have the right of way in that turn right and that’s a state highway yeah it is so it becomes really I mean you guys patrol it and so does county but but it’s a state highway and so that could really cause congestion on a high traffic location anytime you’re backing out on any busy street and you’re having to back up and And that is a busy street, and that is the busiest time for that street right there. I mean, you’re trying to pull out of there going forward. It takes you forever. Right, right. So other officers had to stop and kind of direct traffic. And like you said, go move over to Clinton Street. I mean, you can back up as far as you want to on Clinton Street.

SPEAKER 01 : 5:08

Okay.

SPEAKER 02 : 5:09

Traffic doesn’t, it’s not moving at 35. There’s not kids trying to cross street and stuff.

SPEAKER 01 : 5:14

It’s a little bit more easier to get in and out there, yeah.

SPEAKER 02 : 5:16

Yeah. And some of the local businesses right there have been letting people kind of park in their parking lots until the line moves.

SPEAKER 01 : 5:23

Okay.

SPEAKER 02 : 5:24

It’s not ideal. It’s different than doing it last year. But like I said, all these cars came from somewhere and we got to put them somewhere.

SPEAKER 01 : 5:30

Right, right. And I know that school district is looking to address some certain things. Everybody has their own idea on different things. But you’re just there as the facilitator to kind of keep things moving, but also keep things safe for everybody as well.

SPEAKER 02 : 5:46

Yes. Yep, that is what I’m there for, and I didn’t think traffic was going to be part of it. I mean, we always go and patrol the school zone, so we do it every day. Right. It is the busiest part in town, and you have so much foot traffic from kids and so much vehicle traffic, and you have two roads where you have… vehicles that are side-by-side. One’s a travel lane just passing through and the other one is the line for either drop-off or pick-up. It’s also moving in the same direction at a different speed. These bulkheads are trying to cross. So we’re always over there patrolling. I didn’t think this was going to happen this year backing out onto Ohio, so through a new problem

SPEAKER 01 : 6:20

I had a new problem that you discovered, and you should have asked Shane about that one, as you’ve assumed the role since Shane Lawson stepped down from that position. And that’s one of those things where you wasn’t expecting that, huh? Traffic.

SPEAKER 02 : 6:31

I don’t think… Well, we were expecting traffic, but I don’t know where all these cars came from.

SPEAKER 01 : 6:34

You’re like, I have no idea. And also throwing buses, because you got the bus lane from the Clinton Intermediate School coming out there right in the middle of this bus lane.

SPEAKER 02 : 6:42

So, yeah. It is. Yeah, it’s chaotic, and there’s just… There’s not the infrastructure right there for all that traffic. But it’s… You’ve got to do something with them cars.

SPEAKER 01 : 6:50

And just try to be courteous of other drivers, but also be safe and not block roadways.

SPEAKER 02 : 6:56

Yeah, I mean, I don’t like having to get out and tell people not to park there. And then they always ask why. And, of course, I would explain it to them. And once you explain it, they usually get it. Because nobody intentionally does that to cause the problems. They just don’t realize they’re doing it. And, you know. Go park somewhere over there. Go get on this street over here. And they’ve been cooperative. They’ve moved. And, you know, once you tell them, you see the next day that same vehicle is parked in the lot over there. And the school, they have sent out emails to parents through the system they use and letting them know all that. So the school has communicated the best they can after consulting with me, you know, what we need to tell the parents. Yeah. But if they’re like me, they don’t always check emails.

SPEAKER 01 : 7:37

Yeah, right, exactly. It’s one of those things that you’ve got to work together with the school. The school’s got to work with the police department. The police department’s got to work with the community. I mean, it’s a three-way teamwork because everyone’s got to work together to make sure the kids are safe and everyone’s able to pick up their kid after school.

SPEAKER 02 : 7:56

And that’s the biggest thing, the kids being safe. Because like you said, it’s… The traffic, it’s so busy. Right. And when people want to go, they usually have to shoot the gap and go. And at the same time, you also have to be really careful.

SPEAKER 01 : 8:09

Make sure there’s someone else that’s shooting the gap. Yeah.

SPEAKER 02 : 8:11

And make sure there’s not a kid there. Yep. Because one thing you almost always guarantee is the kids are the ones that are not paying attention when they walk across that road. Right. For sure. Or they’re trying to pay attention, but like I said, you have three lanes of traffic at that point in time. Going everywhere.

SPEAKER 01 : 8:26

Yep. It’s… It can be very confusing. Well, today on our Community Spotlight, we’re talking with the Clinton Police Department Officer Carl Heissom. He is a school resource officer for the Clinton School District, as well as just a patrol officer for Clinton PD as well. Well, first off, we’re gearing down to our spotlight here today. Thank you for coming out and joining us on our program. But is there anything else that you wanted to touch on before we got off here today?

SPEAKER 02 : 8:50

No, that pretty much covers it, considering that… I didn’t have a whole lot of time to prepare to get any topics together. But when you brought up the traffic thing, that is actually a great topic to touch there. I said, I will add that, you know, before I went to the schools, I went to a week-long training for SRO. It’s now a requirement in Missouri. You have to be certified to go through a certain program. You have so many hours of this type of training if you’re going to be a school resource officer. and i come up here to go look at all this stuff and i’m like well our school’s already doing doing great whatever it needs to do there were little things they weren’t aware of and they’ve got it fixed like that and we have several very very very secure buildings and um next week is our we’re doing some like intruder training and all that with the teachers okay me and um the one of our prior school resource officers, Corporal Williams, which used to be, well, it’s Corporal Williams then, it’s Corporal Eubanks now. Okay, yeah. She’s going to assist me on this because I’ve not done this training before. We train the teachers. Come in and help out with it as well, yeah. She’s done it before, so I’ll learn on that and help her out. Cool. We kind of went over it this morning, is what we’re going to be teaching. So we’ll help the teachers and the schools make sure their buildings are secure and also kind of how to react in an unfortunate incident, if it ever does happen, of, you know, a threat there. And so they know what to do.

SPEAKER 01 : 10:13

Good preparation is always better than not having any preparation because you at least have some sort of a plan to put in place.

SPEAKER 02 : 10:19

Absolutely, because usually in a situation, any kind of like mass situation like that, even with preparation, there’s still going to be chaos.

SPEAKER 01 : 10:25

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, Officer Higham, Officer Hysom, thank you so much for joining me here today. Thanks for having me. Hey, greatly appreciate it. That’s the Clinton Police Department featured right here on our Community Spotlight, brought to you by…