Palm Springs business leaders ask police to prioritize issues with homelessness
Palm Springs Police Department's Chief Andy Mills is continuing a series of community meetings to hear about chronic problems, this time focusing on businesses in the city.
The goal is to listen to the business community and find solutions to ongoing issues.
The meeting covered a range of issues from traffic to violent crimes and property crimes. But business leaders said they want police to prioritize improving the issues surrounding homelessness.
Aristotle McDaniel is the president of McDaniel Co which is a sales and marketing business in Palm Springs.
"There's a lot of homeless, obviously, that are out here. And they're not bad people. They just need help," said McDaniel. "And for the most part that we've run into- that I've run into my business, they just need a place. They just need somewhere to put their stuff."
McDaniel came to the town hall meeting to make sure his voice was heard.
"We have challenges that we're trying to take care of when I see them on the property. I talked to them I ask them, hey, can you not leave a mess, and go becuase we have a lot of windows, I don't want the windows broken," said McDaniel.
Joy Meredith also often sees homeless people near her business. She owns the store Crystal Fantasy in downtown Palm Springs.
"Some of the people in particular that are violent, are the people that we want to make sure that we could help them however we can to get them off the street," said Meredith. "[PSPD is] gonna need to get the community to support funding that will help them be able to have more officers on the street and have more resources available."
Police chief Andrew Mills made sure to listen to the input.
"What they really want us to focus on is the quality of life so that their customers and their employees can walk out and feel good about coming to work coming to their shops. And that's exactly what we're going to do," said Mills. "We'll take the data will analyze it-- crime data, as well as calls for service and the opinion of the community. And then create a plan that everybody can take a look at and agree upon."
All of the opinions will be used to re-brand the department. Creating a new mission and values that align with the community's needs.
"With this meeting with the police chief really wanting to do something, I think we're making, you know, like they say how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. And that's what we're trying to do," said McDaniel.
A previous series of meetings focused on neighborhood concerns.
As News Channel 3 has been reporting for months, PSPD is working to apply solutions from community members to solve rising crime citywide. This comes after hearing from residents during a series of town halls in all five voting districts earlier this year.
"The gun violence problems in the northern part of our city. That is priority number one. We cannot afford to have people driving through the neighborhood and getting shot," said PSPD Chief Andy Mills.
The input shows homelessness is the next big concern, next to gun violence. In a surprising move – officers knocked on doors in the northern Desert Highland Gateway Estates neighborhood a couple of weeks ago in the wake of violent crime there.
