Mayor Smith addresses the City's Crime

Mayor Jimmie Smith held a press conference today in downtown Meridian to discuss recent and upcoming events in Meridian's Arts & Entertainment District.

With the recent violent crime spree in Meridian, some people may be questioning if it’s safe to come out to events in Meridian.

Mayor Smith addressed the crime issue ensuring that the public’s safety is the city’s priority.

“Our community is great”, said Smith. “We have some problems and we’re going to deal with that. We’re going to make sure that our community is as safe as possible. When we have these different festivals, people should come and enjoy themselves, we’re not going to let anyone stop us from doing what we want to do.”

The mayor believes that rebuilding the police department is going to be vital in the decrease of crime in the Queen city

“We have to rebuild our police department”, stated Mayor Smith. “We have to rebuild manpower. The chief is doing a really good job. It’s unfortunate that some things happen that we don’t have any control over. If we had a thousand police, some of these crimes we couldn’t stop. If we can get the manpower that I would like, and I’m saying I would like two police officers in a police car going down every car and every avenue.”

Mayor Smith also said that there will be police patrolling at all upcoming events in the city.