Myrtle Beach City Council candidates talk crime rate, public safety during forum

Nearly all of the eight candidates vying for three seats on Myrtle Beach City Council heralded public safety as a top issue in a candidate forum at Myrtle Beach High School on Monday night.

They were at odds, however, on the solutions. Some said the crime rate has improved from 20 years ago while others still see it as a major stumbling block.

Mary Jeffcoat, who served on the council from 1983 to 1991, addressed public safety as a “big issue” drenched in complexity.

She added that the city needs to make sure officers are paid well and have the resources they need to do their jobs effectively. These are “serious complex issues and they need serious and complex answers,” she said, but she added that statistics show crime is on a downward trend.

Incumbent candidate Councilman Michael Chestnut said that statistics from the FBI show significant decreases in violent crimes and property crimes in the city over the past 20 years.

“We are trying to hire more police officers,” he said, but “it’s not an easy job.”

Mark McBride, who served as mayor from 1998 to 2006, said that one of the top issues that drew him into the race for council this year was the city’s crime rate.

“If you want to sit up here or sit in the council chambers and say there’s not a problem, that’s fine,” McBride said, adding that last year’s 8 percent tax increase was earmarked for new officers, even though vacancies still existed in the department.

“When I went out in 2006, we roughly had 200 police officers on the force in patrol,” he said. “Now, we have roughly 200 police officers (total on the force).”

Two hundred officers, he said, to police the city and districts like The Market Common that have been exploding in growth.

He suggested the city take the millions it allocates to the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce to spend on out-of-state tourism advertising each year to help public safety instead.

First-time candidate John Krajc listed public safety as his first priority followed by a better job climate so young professionals will not be forced to move other places “because there’s no jobs here.”

His suggestion for public safety was to increase community patrols to foster better public relations, which, in turn, encourage residents to aid police in the fight against crime.

“We need police officers on the streets, walking in pairs in our community, going up to front porches asking for sweet tea and a piece of pie, smiling at you and saying, ‘I’m part of your community’ so they trust us and we trust them,” he said.

Better pay and leadership, he suggested, would help battle the department’s turnover rate, which is among the highest in the area.

Robert Palmer listed public safety as one of his top priorities. “Our police department is doing an excellent job,” he said, but he added that the city should support and supplement its force by hiring retired officers living in Myrtle Beach to work part-time. Retired officers wouldn’t need the training of a rookie and would bring a wealth of knowledge to the position, he said.

But, he cautioned, “there is no magic bullet” to stop all crime.

“Crime to us is a major issue. Public safety needs to be first,” said Jackie Vereen, a Myrtle Beach native who runs a business on Ocean Boulevard. “Businesses aren’t going to come if we can’t get a control on crime.”

Vereen said the city needs to increase the pay of its police officers, adding that they shouldn’t have to work multiple jobs – as one she knows does – to afford to live here.

“I believe that all of us on this panel would agree that any crime is too much crime,” said incumbent Councilman Philip Render. He noted the city’s actions to stay ahead of the national trend by equipping officers with body cameras and donning the city with surveillance cameras “through proper budgeting.”

But he cautioned, “we can’t police our way out of a crime problem,” urging citizens to help the police by calling 911 when they see something strange in their neighborhood.

Political newcomer Rick Sarver, who moved to the city six years ago from Charlotte, said he has heard that crime is an issue from residents who want more police presence in the city. But he said the issue goes hand-in-hand with cleaning up blighted areas and redeveloping downtown.

“Criminals do not feel comfortable in well-lit, well-developed places of the city,” he said, mentioning former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s success tackling crime in Time Square by cleaning up the center.

“Most locals do not want to come downtown especially after 9 o’clock,” Sarver said. “To me, that’s a problem. … Cameras cannot replace good old fashioned police presence. … We need to make sure that our locals and tourists are safe.”

At a workshop and city council meeting following the debate on Tuesday, city leaders presented what they called a more accurate look at crime rates that factored tourists into the equation.

Citing an estimate from D.K. Shifflet & Associates, Ltd., a national firm that attempts to keep a tab on tourists, the city’s Chief Financial Officer Mike Shelton estimated an average of about 17.2 million people would visit the Grand Strand in 2015. He said they divided that number by 365 to get an “average daily population” they estimated at 188,000. Adding the city’s 30,000 permanent residents into the mix, the crime rate plummeted.

According to the city’s calculation, Myrtle Beach’s reported violent crime rate was nearly half of the nation’s reported violent crime rate in 2013 and the city’s property crime rate was almost a third less than the national rate. No statistics were shown comparing the city to the state.

City Manager John Pedersen cautioned the 17-million visitor estimate was proposed for all of the Grand Strand, which includes Myrtle Beach and several other coastal cities. “But I think that’s a fair calculation because we are the center of the Grand Strand,” he said.

The crime rate factored in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report used incidents of crime compared to the city’s permanent population, which leaders say is misleading because the city’s residency swells exponentially during tourist season.

Krajc asked the council at Tuesday morning’s workshop why this new information was just now surfacing with the election a week away.

“These stats first came out in February,” he said, referring to the FBI report. “Why now?”

City leaders offered little answer, saying they needed to run the math.

“This has been an annual question for all of the 17, 18 years I’ve done this,” said Mark Kruea, city spokesman. “It’s an annual question. We address it annually. As a matter of fact some of the news media don’t even ask the question anymore because this comes up so regularly and it is so inaccurate.”

After the meeting, Kruea said he didn’t see the timing as having anything to do with the prior night’s debate or the impending election.

The election will be held Nov. 3. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Emily Weaver: 843-444-1722, @TSNEmily

This story was originally published October 26, 2015 at 11:59 PM with the headline "Myrtle Beach City Council candidates talk crime rate, public safety during forum."