John Wiebold, Boone Police Chief, October 15, 2026

Today going to take some time and visit with the Boone Police Chief John Weebel. Good to have you here. Good to have you here, Jim. Well, here we are, mid-October and it's been busy. It's been busy. It's been busy. You know, it's raining again, so it's pleasant too. Well, there's that part of it too. You know, it's that or, and then I get the questions, are we going to have snow like this too? Which we will be talking about here in a little bit, but busy here in October. Well, right now, homecoming going on in Boone, and I thought I saw a complaint or two about some, some activity going on, but nothing too outlandish didn't sound like. Yeah, thankfully nothing too outlandish. Just remind everyone that, you know, people's property is private property, so just be respectful and, you know, keep the, keep the fun to a dull roar, basically. We have had times in the past when it's gotten a little, a little more on the, pushed it a little bit. Yes, yes. So at least at this time, yeah. Well, unfortunately rain tends to slow it down. Rain will, but it looks like it should have decent weather for the game, I think. So we'll go for that and have a lot, and people watch out. Again, the big thing is going to be out there, I'm guessing they're going to have a parade. I haven't seen anything. There's no parade this year. The parade has been canceled. Okay. It was scheduled, and then a week or so ago I got an email from the school that they cancelled the parade. Okay, so, well, we got that part done. That part done. And then the dance on Saturday, so remind the youth that they're still the youth. Legal drinking age is 21. None of them in the high school are of that age or should be of that age. So, you know, don't come to the dance intoxicated. There will be, or SRO will be there, so. Somebody will be there. Yeah, every year. Somebody tries to do that, but just be smart. Yep, it's, again, follow along. That's what we got. And those are some of the things, too, that, again, we'll see coming up, too. We got trick-or-treating. That's another big one coming up, which can be kind of dangerous, especially with kids get out there. They get excited. And if they're out there trick-or-treating, which is going to be on a weekend night on the 31st, so. Yes, Saturday night, it's trick-or-treat. So, yeah, please watch out for kids. And if you're out with your kids, try and crowd them enough to make them, you know, have them check both ways before they cross streets and stay out of the roads. And I know it's exciting for everybody, but we want to, you know, a safe trick-or-treating again this year. It's always dark. Go to the homes with the lights on, that sort of thing. Again, it's a plan ahead. Big one, though, really, for the department is participating in trick-or-treat. And that comes up first. That's the 22nd. October 22nd, from 5 to 7, downtown. The police and fire will be joining together again to serve hot dogs at the main intersection of 8th and Story. So, please come by and come hungry. And, you know, there's lots of kids. It grows every year. I think last year there was an estimated 1,500 or 2,000 kids, I mean. And more and more involvement from the community, and it's just a great time. That will be, again, and it's a short, and the thing is a short time spent. Remember, remember, if you're trying to enter the round, I always say it's kind of like when you're leaving the basketball game or something, you know, allow other people in. Yes. Because we tend to have people that will come in from outside, and then they try to get into the line, and it gets pretty long. Pretty good. It really has grown. I mean, the first couple of years, it was, you know, a couple hundred kids, and it's really grown to something big. Last year was, it was shocking how many people were downtown. It was really neat. Well, if we get good weather, that will take it. Yes, it will. I mean, we'll just go ahead and take it. I remember when they were out at E-Free in the parking lot, when it started. And then, all of a sudden, well, could we move this downtown? And then you got businesses doing things too, and it can be very busy. Now, Chamber did tell me. Chamber and Downtown Boone, they're going to collaborate on this. They're trying to move the activity ones and spread them out so that it flows a little better. So we'll see how it goes. The big thing for you guys, though, is it is kind of our unofficial start to trunk or treat, or maybe it is the official start. Yeah, sorry. Or not trunk or treat, but Shop with a Cop. Yeah, that's kind of our first main fundraiser for Shop with a Cop. So you'll see our little piggy banks around down there. So please, if you are able to donate a little bit to that, we're planning for another great Shop with a Cop event. I mean, we try to go around 100 kids every year, so this will be our 24th year, I believe. Occasionally, we've had a storm or two in there, and kind of refined it over the years just to try to make it smooth, get through as much of that stuff as you can. Yeah, try and make it as efficient as possible, but still give the kids time to shop one-on-one with an officer and really try and make some people have a really pleasant holiday. The association basically, this is their baby. Correct. And again, it's the association and the Boone Police Association. So again, they've got the account set up for it. They've got things, I think they work with Vision Bank, and I know they've gotten donations already, but this really kind of kicks off the big... Yeah, this kicks it off, and then right after that is our Chili Feed November 5th at Hivee. That's another great fundraiser for us. We donate the chili, and you get officers in uniform serving chili to you, and you can take it to go, you can eat it there, whatever you want to do. And again, proceeds all go to support our Shop of the Cow program. The Shop of the Cow program is 100% funded by donations. I mean, we get some business donations, but a majority of them are donations. They're just people giving $5, $10 here and there, and it's a great program. Just a way to do it, and all those dollars just go to that. The Association, their time and effort into it is their time. Yeah, we try and take 100 kids, and we try and spend between 100 and $125 per kid, depending on the donations that year. So it all goes to them, and it's a great program. All right, that'll be one. We'll keep you keeping tabs on two. So just see how it goes, and keep reminding folks too about all the things like the Chili Feed. So that's another one. And then I'm guessing when I look at the calendar, I'm sure that they're already looking at, because I think they pushed up when they wanted nominations in last time. Again, it's all about timing when the holidays are and things like that. Yeah, nominations are due November 9th to the PD, and I believe the shopping day is December 10th. Okay, so keep our fingers crossed. Yeah, we need that time in between the... You got to get everything organized. Yes, there's duplicates of applications, and we really want to take the kids that have a financial need. So there's some sorting of that kind of thing, and make sure they're within the age group. And sometimes one child is nominated, and then we call the family, and there's siblings that qualify. So then there's some, again, some shuffling. So it takes a little bit to organize all that, but we'll get through it. Same people stepping up to lead at this year? Yes, officer Caden Sherard is leading this again this year. Okay. He's doing a great job. So that's his mission right now. That's right. Anyway, I do keep going forward with that, too. And getting as many to help as you can. Absolutely. And obviously we do, and we get a lot of outside people to come to help, too. Yes. Oh, for officers, we get a lot of outside help. National Guard usually sends officers or sends soldiers. And we get departments from all over. Some of our former officers come back for this because they love it so much. So it's a great time. And do you get different groups come in to help, too? I think sometimes DMACC sends some of their people to help. Yeah, DMACC will send different sports teams to come. We call them ELVs. The ELVs in Help Shop. Or different organizations, whether it's banks or different charitable organizations, will come and wrap presents and volunteer that way. And it's just a great program. There's some that are already going, and we get signed up for it. Yes. You know, Officer Cain Schroerhardt. That's right. There you go. Go to him. He'll handle it, too. Well, we will be moving into that winter time of the year. But before I get there, got to ask you, new ordinance adopted on e-scooters. That's right. So some people, I know you're going, yeah, so what do you do with it? Do we give tickets to kids? No, we don't want to do that. We do not want to give tickets to kids. Well, on the public safety side, a lot of education needed. Right. So we're creating a flyer to hand out to kids. We'll have it at the schools so they can understand or take it home to their parents. If we have a violation with a child, we can, you know, give them that flyer so they can learn what is okay and what's not okay, as far as where they can ride, when they should be riding, what types of electrified two-wheeled things they can ride. Right. Because different versions of those have different rules. So, and that will be on our Facebook page as well. Yeah, I heard from Commander Slaughter when he talked about the different speeds that some of the bikes do and what kind of impact that has. Yes, and whether they have pedals or not, that makes a difference because any more, there's some essentially e-mortar cycles that don't have any pedals and those aren't legal to ride on the streets at all unless you have them licensed through the states. And the operator needs, I think, probably licenses as well too. Yes, the operator has to have a license and insurance and those things too. So, various, you know, there's, it's kind of confusing in some ways, but there's a lot of information in that ordinance that will help guide you to either purchase the right thing or make sure your children or you are operating it correctly. So, the big thing is, definitely though, for anything, follow the rules of the road. Absolutely. Yield, stop, and holding. I mean, in all reality, most of the issues are people not stopping. That's whatever vehicle it is, whether it's a scooter or a bicycle or e-mortar cycle, most of the problems that the complaints are people not stopping at stop signs or at intersections. So, please, please tell your children, whether it's, maybe they're riding a pedal bicycle, you know, just stop at intersections so they don't get injured. That's our big thing. My challenge is staying upright when I get to the intersection. So, sometimes I see if anybody's coming, but, you know, you stop, use your hand signals, do what you need to do. Yeah, we've had some close calls. And wear helmets. And wear a helmet. Yes, absolutely. Well, we keep doing that. Now, let's talk a little bit about what's coming. Winter season will be here. Whether you like it or not. Yeah, we do. And, of course, one of the things the department likes to do is make sure people get signed up for notification. That's probably the big thing first, to find out if the snow ordinance will be in effect and who it's going to affect and then spread the word amongst your neighbors, that kind of thing. Yeah, contrary to popular opinion, we don't want to tow your vehicle. That takes a lot of time and resources that we absolutely do not want to do. So, please, please sign up for, you can text Boone Snow, all one word, to 888-777, to get signed up for the snow ordinance notifications. That's the big thing. And when you get those notifications, tell your neighbors. You know, tell your friends, tell your neighbors, your parents. We don't want to tow anybody's vehicle. We really don't. It's not worth, I mean, we don't want to do it. It's important for public works to be able to be out there and move the snow efficiently and get the roads completely cleared off. So, please help us in just helping your neighbors move off the road. And again, this is one of those, you may have signed up for it previously. If you're not sure, do it again. Do it again. Absolutely. You'll get, if you do it again and you already signed up, the notification that comes back will say you already signed up for this. So, you're not hurting anything by trying again. So, please absolutely sign up. And there are, if you wanted to go even a little more extensive for any kind of street closures and stuff like that, you could do that as well. But this just strictly boons snow. This is for the snow wardens. This is specifically for snow wardens. And then do pay attention to it too. Again, it's not always resident. Well, it depends on the event. Correct. Those are the challenges. And then you're not involved with determining the event. It's basically public works. When we're going to have to get people out, what we're going to have to do. And you guys have to try to be off the road. That's right. We just get the enforcement part. So, please again, please tell your friends and neighbors and get signed up because we don't want to tell anybody. And frankly, if you're thinking they're making money on it. No. You might get a ticket for parking, but that's minimal. It's not that much. $10 parking ticket. It's the tow part is the expensive part. Yeah. And we don't get any of that. And we don't want to tow. Yeah. Don't try to. Had last year ago, I know that there for a while it started out not well. Yeah. The first one is usually bad. That's when, you know, people either haven't signed up or they've changed phone numbers or whatever. So if there's, even if there's any predicted snow, just don't plan us. Just plan to not park on the road that time. Yeah. That's, it's always better to be safe than sorry, right? Just plan to stay off the road if they're going to, if they're predicting, you know, two or three inches of snow. Sure. And then watch if it's going to snow, just kind of be, watch our Facebook page, you know, like get signed up, talk to your neighbors to see if they've heard of a snow ordinance. We, we really just want the message out there as much as we can. The other one is we do have some people that in when you hit fall, they kind of expand doing some parking up into their yard. So that is permitted. Most of the year it's not permitted to park in the, in the parking and things like that, but you do allow that in the wintertime. Yep. Yep. If there's going to be snow, that's okay to park on the parking that time. Just so, again, roads are cleared and your vehicle safe from being towed. And the only reason many years ago when it started was fewer people in the department and a chance to try to move as much snow as you can as quickly as you can. That's, it takes a while to get around things that are parked out there in the road. Yeah, I'm old. So I've been hearing long enough that I was here before snow ordinance and cars would get completely covered in snow from the plow and, you know, it would take days to dig out. And, and then once they got their vehicle out, there was these big frozen chunks of snow that were in the, now in the roadway. And it just wasn't efficient for anybody. So this is, this is, does do a better job of getting the roads clear. It's more efficient for public works. You know. And I got to say some of the streets are not overly wide. So if there's vehicles out there, it's a little hard to get a plow through there or if they happen to bring a maintainer to do something, if it's that much. Now snow, again, that's for the snow ordinance on that. During events, we do have designated snow routes where public works will get out and move snow just to keep traffic going. Usually like Story Street and Mamie and Division, Marion. Those are the common snow routes up around the hospital. They got there's designated areas and they're all signed. I mean, if you're, if you're curious, you can look at the sign and that's no parking from October 1st through April 1st. Yeah. Yes. It's there. Yeah. So again, watch for him. Yep. Just pay attention, pay attention. Again, get yourself signed up if you're not signed up for the snow ordinance. And again, let people know when it happens. Yeah, absolutely. We would really rather not have to enforce. We will enforce if we need to, but we'd rather not need to. I mean, I've told people for years I'd love to be put out of a job because people just behave and we don't need law enforcement anymore. That would be all right. That would be great, wouldn't it? So we don't desire to do that. We just need to sometimes. A couple of quick things for you. I always got to ask this. What's the new scam this time? Oh, then it continues to be gift cards. Okay. We just had another one. Do not pay any government agency with gift cards. The IRS isn't asking for gift cards. Your mortgage company is not asking to be paid by gift cards. Please, please don't ask for gift cards or don't don't don't use those scams by paying someone that you would normally pay through your bank or through a credit card. Don't pay them with gift cards over the over the phone or the computer. Also, don't send gold, gold coins to random places. That seems to be one that we've worked with the attorney general on some stuff is that that's the new one is send us 14 gold coins and people are and then they will even tell them to be very secretive about it. And so then they're secretly gathering these gold coins and sending gold. You can't track that. You know, there's no tracking of a gold coin. They're not serialized. So once that's gone, it's gone. Yeah. So very difficult. So folks, they come up with the new ones all the time. Yes. If it sounds fishy, it probably is. It's kind of, you know, that old saying if it sounds too good to be true. If it sounds a little suspicious, be suspicious. Yeah. Double check. I'm guessing you get some people will come in and say, I got somebody asked about this. We would prefer you come and ask. Oh, absolutely. If you're, yeah, if you have questions about it, please reach out to us. Or if you, if your parents are maybe doing something that you think that sounds a little strange, reach out and we can tell you pretty quickly if it's a scam or not because they keep trying different things and we keep, you know, hearing about it and they keep being caught. So the other thing, of course, coming up after we get into the new year, we'll be looking for people that might be interested in going to the citizens police. Citizens police again. Yes. Absolutely. December will, December, January, we'll put out the applications for that. Yeah. It's a great time. We, we try and get 25-ish people in there and we hope to have a full, full room. Again. But you had a big crowd last time. Yeah. Yeah. It's been great. And every once in a while, you get somebody to go through a second time. That's right. We do. We had, I think, even one third timer. That's right. Yeah. So I think we've been doing this for 15-ish years, something like that. Yeah. It doesn't cost, it costs you time if you, that's really the big thing. Yeah. It's just your time. Yeah. We just need Thursday for a couple hours and we'll feed you and teach you all about what we do. Yeah. It's not like the academy. It's more like, basically, you learn how things are done. Because people always wonder like, well, you know, I had this complaint and nothing's happened for like two weeks. Well, it doesn't happen overnight. Unfortunately, we are not CSI. We don't have our own crime lab. Can't get it done in an hour. What? Can't get fingerprints back in half an hour. But no, it's about what we do and then a lot of it's about why we do it, you know. So we kind of give the why, because there's always the questions of why the law enforcement do this or why this. So we try and answer those questions too. And there's a lot of time for Q&A. They can just see an officer and, hey, what's going on here? What about this? It's a good program. It'll be coming up. But once again, that'll be after the first year or more on that. And the announcements will be out too. Right now, though, the big thing is we got homecoming the rest of this week. And then we turn right into trunk retreat on the 22nd. Trick or treating it. I know there's going to be more downtown activity and occasionally we get streets blocked off or that's if people pay attention. Barricades mean don't go through. Yes. Please don't. Yeah. That's a great one. Don't go through. The road says closed. It means for you. It doesn't mean everybody else but you. So don't forget we got a Halloween parade this year. Oh, yeah. So that's going to be a busy Halloween night. Yeah. We've got a lot of things. And it's a Saturday. And a Saturday to top it off. Again, Chief John, we've all our guests on the program. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, Jim.