Sgt. Ryan Palmer, Boone Police Department, March 12, 2026

Our guest on our program is Sergeant Ryan Palmer, Boone Police Department. Good to have you back. Good morning. And here to talk all about public safety related things.

We've got a bunch of things happening and again this is the time of the year when we're seeing some pretty, well a variety of weather conditions. Let's just go with a variety. It's been all over the place. Very well.

You guys can't even figure out whether you're wearing winter uniforms or summery. No, people are getting burnt on one day from the sun and the next day trees are burnt. Yeah, it's a potential that we do have for more snow.

We did have a sizable snow event that did come up last end of February. It was that just all of a sudden boom and we got eight inches of snow. Yeah. And we did end up having a number of vehicles got towed. I think we towed lower 40s, 40 some cars, which is a lot of cars.

The city does a good job of really advertising snow ordinances that are going to be in effect. So if people are getting towed, there's a lot of options for them to seek that information. We've gone over that before, just some of the main ways to obtain that information.

But yeah, the city put that in effect so we could keep our roads clear and ended up having to tow about 40 some cars. I know the, and we just keep referring to Nixle in again the easy way. Boone Snow, one word, all capital letters, 888-777. Yeah, and that's a cool, cool program.

You get a lot of different alerts. There's different, well, if you go to the city website, there's different things you can text to that Nixle.

But Boone Snow is really where you're going to get immediate updates on when a snow ordinance goes in effect, when it lifts to really keep your car off the street.

The other part is, if you sign up for even more, you know, find out where the streets are blocked, like a sewer project that's going on west third. That's the one that's up right now, as a matter of fact, that's going on until next week. That's a long one.

Anyway, but those are just some of the, the big thing is just even if you find out, tell your neighbor. Let them know. Yeah, the extra communication. And we do, a lot of people say, well, you guys aren't going up and knocking on doors.

Our officers work really hard to try and get cars off the street because it's a big tackle to tow all those cars. Time consuming. We don't want to tow people's cars. Nobody wants that. So we do go up and try and knock on doors. We try and make phone calls.

But yeah, if you guys can share the information ahead of time, if you know it's going to snow any sizable amount, just spread the word, text a few friends who live in Boone. So remember, get your car off the street. Things like that will really help out.

Well, hopefully, it's the only middle of March. So we could have more. We could have more. And we've seen it happen. And this is the time of year when it gets to be that wet, heavy stuff. And it makes it harder for public works to get that off the street. Yes, it does.

So we may have another one. You know it may melt quickly. Yeah. Still, it's an issue out there when they're out there plowing. All right. Well, and it's all, it's a, if people always say, it's all about timing. When is it going to fall?

And when are they going to start working on it? Yeah. But we've also had the flip side. Yeah, it's coming. Let's keep talking about spring. So it keeps coming. We've had some really pleasant temperature, weather conditions. Nobody's really been complaining too much about it.

People got to jump the gut a little bit on yard cleanup and doing some burning, open burning stuff, which by the way, not until April. But it also has brought up, you know, a lot of motorcyclists, a lot of bicyclists coming out, people walking, and scooters. Yeah.

A lot of scooters. That's one of the gripes I hear from people close. Yeah. There's a lot of kids riding scooters again. Good for the people out getting their rides on their motorcycles. I know a lot of people enjoy that on bikes, walks, things like that.

But as vehicle drivers, car drivers, we just have to be more alert to those things. Motorcycle scooters, they're harder to see. So just be a little bit more alert. Drive a little slower. People walking out earlier in the mornings, I've seen more of those. Be alert for them.

If you're a parent of a scooter rider, please give them some advice. Give them some wisdom on slow down. I've seen a lot of younger kids riding their scooters, weaving back and forth. They shouldn't be doing that. We don't want accidents.

If it might be icy in the morning, just with some frost, don't let them ride their scooter in the morning. We don't want accidents in that way either. And some wear helmets, some don't. Oh, please wear a helmet. I've seen some scooter accidents that...

We've had a couple, haven't we? Yeah. It's a scary thing, a sad thing. We don't want to see any accidents like that. If there are some, please have them wear a helmet just to prevent any major injuries. Because we can hit the springtime too.

Again, for people that are driving, obviously, paying more attention to it. But there are stop signs, and these bicyclists and scooters and everybody are supposed to follow those same... Yeah, that's a really good point.

A lot of people on bikes, I don't know if they don't think they have to obey stop signs, stop lights, things like that, but they do. You have to obey all the rules of the road. So if you're on a bike, make sure you come to a complete stop. That's really in your safety.

You're harder to see on a bike. And so if a car's coming through, just make sure you stop. Make sure you look both ways. I've seen a lot of bike accidents too, cars versus bikes. That's a scary thing. So just make sure you're extra observant as well.

And we see more traffic coming up downtown too. I know this is one that you brought up before, and this could be a constant reminder. But scooters, skateboards, rollerblades are not supposed to be on the sidewalk. Correct.

And there's a lot of people going in and out of those stores, young families, young kids, people who are carrying boxes, just really not paying attention to the foot traffic or bike traffic that may be going on the sidewalk.

So the city has an ordinance saying you can't ride bikes, you can't ride scooters, you can't ride skateboards, rollerblades, things like that on the downtown sidewalks for that issue. There's people walking.

So if you're going to ride a bike, again, downtown's kind of a hectic place to ride a bike. But if you're going to ride a bike downtown, it needs to be on the street. So caution. And people that are driving, be cautious. Yes.

Because if they are out on the street, yeah, then a lot of times you can't see them. Yeah, that parallel parking is going to be hard if you're backing up and not seeing a bike. So everyone just needs to go real slow downtown. People are doing a really good job.

But like you were saying, as spring gets warmer, more bikes are out, more skateboards are out, people are walking, just be a little more observant. And that's the big thing too. It's that transition time of the year.

And again, for motorcyclists, I know one of their big gripes is, yes, they've treated some of the road surfaces and you may have a little sand out there. So again, a little caution with that.

Good for you guys for getting out there and riding your bikes and enjoying doing what you do. But yeah, be cautious. All right. Those are just some of the things that we've got. We've got a whole bunch of other things. I know this the other day. I had like four scam reports.

We could do it every time. Scams, they're still there. These scammers, it's got to be a really lucrative business because they're always trying to take advantage of people.

So I think one of the common things that we brought up is if you have a parent, because we've said this before, a lot of people who are falling victim to scams is people who I would say are 70 and above.

So if you have a parent who's in that age range, stay in communication with them. Ask them, hey, are you getting any mail that seems suspicious to you? You're getting any emails that seem weird to you? Ask them that questions.

A lot of times these victims will hold that information close because they might feel embarrassed by it, especially if they fall victim to it. But I think if I just think of my parents trying to stay in contact with them, asking if some of these scams are really convincing.

So just ask your parents those questions. Share information with your friends. There's scammers out there and they're out there to get you. So we have to help each other in that way and keep us all safe.

I know a perfect example would have been a friend of mine, his elderly mother, fell victim to one of this. Fortunately, he was able to block her accounts and stop her accounts and stuff like that before it was too serious. And she thought she was doing the right thing.

And we have a lot of people come to the department and say, hey, I got this piece of mail. I got this email. I got this phone call. Can you help educate me? Is this a scam? Is it not? So if you ever have a question, come talk to us.

We'll be more than happy to sit down with you and look at it. Yeah. And I figured that's where I know you get a lot of calls. Sometimes they are people actually getting scammed. Yes. But a lot of times it's just information that this is showing up here. Yeah. Yeah.

Come talk to us. This is a spring thing that shows up. People come into your door. Yeah. Salespeople. Salespeople, roof repair. Again, especially if we have any kind of severe weather, they start showing up for roof repair and things like that. But solar panels, things like that.

There's a lot of these things out here. And for basically for Boone, I know, yeah, you're supposed to have a permit. Yes. I think all the communities around here ask for a permit.

But yeah, if somebody comes to your door trying to sell something, feel free to ask them if they have a city permit. There's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes it's a way to get them off your doorstep.

A lot of people who are going door to door don't have, they haven't gone through the steps to get those permits, whether they know they have to or not. I don't know. But our codes say they have to have a permit.

So you can either call us, we'll respond and we'll find these people and ask them ourselves. And usually they don't have one. So we tell them, I'm sorry, you need to leave town. Ask them yourself.

I've asked plenty of them who come to my door if they have permits and most of them say no. A couple of them will show me. Yes, I have one. I'll still ask them to leave. But yeah, yeah. Ask these people if they do have a permit.

If they don't, tell them they need to leave your doorstep. Yeah. And once again, it is a requirement. Yeah. And if they get belligerent, call. Feel free to call us. We'll talk to them. I know last time when we visited, we had commander Slaughter with us.

And one of the things he wanted to let people know about was parking enforcement was going to be stepped up and primarily focused in the downtown area, especially where we have our longer term parking lots. Or some are longer term, some are shorter term.

But there were some issues that people were having with that. And so we had that stepped up. Yeah. We're trying to really monitor some cars down there in some of these parking lots.

And the ones who are sitting there for any duration of time or ended up, whether it's a 24 hour lot or 48 hour lot, can't remember the exact time right now. We've got some two hours. We've got some four hours.

We're really trying to monitor those times, giving tickets if we have to tow a car because it's just been parked there. We'll tow a car if we have to. But we're trying to create a little more space for parking.

One of the things that he mentioned last week was on the downtown streets, business owners or people shopping at businesses.

If you know you're going to be there for any duration of time, an hour, two hours, all day if you're a business owner, try and not park right out front of your store because that's really going to limit the amount of parking for those 15 minute parkers who are just coming in and out.

So finding additional parking that way on some of the different lots would be helpful too. So we've got that. And again, we do have a lot of people that live downtown. Yeah, we do. And use some of these lots. Might be a little distance away from where they live, but... Yeah.

Having the parking problem to me seems like a good indication that we have people using our downtown, which is an awesome thing.

So we just really have to work together to keep cars going in and out of some of these parking stalls and downtown streets and just everybody doing our part to help make a space for somebody else to park, if that makes sense. Yeah. And it gets pretty full downtown sometimes.

It does. It does. It's a little too diagonal. Some people are still getting the hang of that. So far, they all seem to be doing pretty good on the flashing red lights. We haven't had that I know of mini accidents down there at all because of all that.

Usually little things, minor fender benders and stuff like that. That's okay. We'll do that. And again, unless somebody's riding their bike down the sidewalk, hopefully we're not running into them. I did want to ask other things. Let's see.

One was we started last week, the Citizen Police Academy. Yeah. Chief had told me, I said, so how did the sign up go? And he said, well, a couple dozen. So we have a good group of people. What happened first week? That was just started a week ago.

And so this would be the second night for tonight. Yeah. The first week is it's really like when you're in a class or when you're in school, you got to get the, I'm going to call it boring. Our stuff isn't boring, but you got to get the PowerPoints.

You got to get some of the more mundane thing, the introductory stuff out of the way. So last week was some introduction to the program, introduction to the police department.

We had the county attorneys come in, which is always actually a wealth of information because there's, when people think of police, we do a lot of cool things, but we also partner with county attorneys and city attorneys. And so they're a huge part of criminal justice.

So they came in, gave a presentation. We gave some information on the history of the Boone police department, which is always cool, especially for the history people who enjoy that. Again, they got a free meal. So that was neat. I think everybody had a good time.

Tonight, we're getting into week two. Dispatch is coming in and dispatch is a huge component of law. We couldn't do our job without dispatch, them getting all the right information, relaying that to us.

So they're going to come in and explain the hows and whys behind what they do, some of the technology that they use for dispatch. So that's always a really cool thing. And then I think if we have time, we're also going over our hiring process and the training process.

A lot of people don't understand it takes a full year to get an officer from start to finish before they're on their own. And that would be somebody just starting without having already gone through the academy. Yes. That includes the academy. It's a full year.

So we'll kind of explain what that process is like. We have a 22 week field training process plus the academy plus other time. So yeah, we'll explain some of that as well. Which is why you try to keep retention is big. Yeah. Yeah.

And again, not just for our department, but all of them. Yeah. And once you get done with that year, it's not that they're, I mean, they're a competent officer, but they're still really new to a lot of things. So there's still a ton of training that has to go on after that. Yeah.

Some professions don't take a full year to get somebody spun up, but law enforcement is one that does. Do you have other, obviously you've got qualifying things you have to do each year, things like that. Is there other training available that you continue to do? Yeah.

Especially in certain areas. Yeah. There's state mandated training. Like we have to have a certain number of firearms. We have to have driving training. There's a whole laundry list of trainings the state mandates us to maintain hours on.

But then our department's really proactive in sending people to training. Most of our officers will have anywhere from 30 to 130 training hours a year. It just varies on what we're able to send people to. But that's a really progressive stance in training.

So our department's always trying to push training to make sure our officers are the most capable that they can be. But yeah, the state mandates set amount of hours of training every year. I know.

And well, so that's part of the different things that people learn when they go to the Citizens Police Academy. Again, it's not the academy training you get, but it's basically an understanding of what's happening. Yeah.

And I can understand that, you know, like the county attorney, yes, when I see cases that they handle and it'll say investigated by a different agency's boom, please. And we know it's not like on TV.

It'd be a lot easier if it were, but no, it's you can't get it done in like 40 minutes. No, a lot of our cases take a week to two years to investigate, just depending on a lot of different circumstances. We'll get you'll have more into that when you they get in.

I'm guessing other classes coming up all about how you collect all the evidence and everything else and get to build a case. They'll get to actually walk through a crime scene. Last year, I actually played a dead person on the floor for two hours.

Did they do the tape around you and everything? They did everything. It was a good class. But yeah, you'll get to walk through a crime scene and everything.

Well, that's what again, that's part of what this is all about, letting people understand what it is like to actually go instead of what you see on TV all the time. Yeah. A couple other other things besides the Citizen Police Academy. This does go towards what, the end of April?

Yes. I think it's every Thursday. And really, having a couple of dozen signed up for it. That's pretty good. Yeah, that's good. What other things do you have for us here? The extra patrol. I always want to mention this.

People, you have a lot of people go on vacations in the winter, but then families are going to start taking some vacations, especially spring breaks coming up over the summer. Get ahold of us if you want. Say, hey, we're going out of town for a week.

Can you put my house on the house watch list? All that does is have an officer drive by your house a time or two a day, kind of make sure there's no doors that have been open. There's nothing suspicious.

If you want to notify us of what lights are supposed to be on, we'll monitor, hey, are there additional lights on now? So it just keeps extra eyes on your house. You'll give us a start date and end date for that, and we'll monitor that. Businesses can also do it.

So we'll drive by your business. Typically we do that at night because nobody's supposed to be at the business at nights. We'll make sure the doors are locked when it's nice. We'll get out and walk around the business.

So house watch checks, business checks notify us of those things. We're happy to do those for people. And I know even in town, we always say, if you see something, say something. Yeah. Which is interesting.

Sometimes a lot of people, those who are up at one, two, three in the morning, maybe they can't sleep, maybe they're just sitting up. A lot of them are the ones who call and say, hey, somebody suspicious is walking by my house and it actually turns into something.

Had they not said something, we'd have never known. So yeah, if you see something, say something. And we do know once you get nicer weather conditions out there, you do have people that tend to be out early in the morning, late at night. Please keep your car doors locked.

Every year we go through a rash of people getting in cars, stealing change, stealing titles, those things. Keep your car doors locked. That's the best way to do it. We do again, just the simple reminders, potential on snow. Remember, listen for any snow ordinance things.

You get yourself signed up for that. Again, if you have kids that are out there riding scooters, bicycles, things like that. I see most of them are pretty good. Maybe on the neighborhood sidewalks they're staying on those and staying out of the way.

But you get a whole bunch of them out on the street and that's where people get a little concerned, especially if they're coming through stop signs and things like that. Yeah.

Well, and I want to add real quick, I don't know if I have time, but we're always wanting to work with the community, build that relationship with the community.

So if you see something that you think the police department needs to be doing more of or we're doing a good job of, communicate that stuff with us. We want to know how we can serve the community better.

Just like the snow ordinance we put out a thing, how can we communicate this more with you? We don't want to tow 40 some cars. So let us know how you think we can be doing things a little bit different to make some accommodations. So I want to hear if you don't say up.

Yeah, give us feedback. Don't speak up. We can't address it or take a look at it. All right. Sergeant Ryan Palmer, our guest on our program today. Thanks for joining us. Thank you.