When a recent health care forum turned into a shouting match, U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill told the crowd, “I don’t understand this rudeness. I honestly don’t get it.”
Despite that outburst, Maria Speiser, press secretary for McCaskill, says the overall tone of the forums the senator has hosted in Kennett, Poplar Bluff and Jefferson County have not been boisterous.
“I was at the three that were last week, two in Southeast Missouri and one in Jefferson County. I think overall when you look at them, the entire event, they were good, productive, substantive town hall meetings where people were able to ask questions and it was not screened in any way and Sen. McCaskill did her best to answer them and while also hearing the concerns the people were expressing both in favor and in opposition of the idea of health care reform and the various pieces of legislation out there,” she said.
McCaskill’s office announced Tuesday that the senator will be conducting a health care listening forum in Hannibal, beginning at 9:30 a.m. Monday, Aug. 24, in the gymnasium at Veterans Elementary School, 790 N. Veterans Road.
Because of the level of emotion seen at some forums throughout the nation, security concerns have been raised. Last week a forum planned by McCaskill at University City High School was called off by the school district over safety concerns.
Security for the upcoming event in Hannibal is in the hands of the police department.
“We let them know what to expect and leave it to the local folks to do what they deem necessary,” said Speiser, regarding local security arrangements for upcoming forums.
Lyndell Davis, chief of the HPD, says security plans are being formulated.
“We have some preliminary plans together on what we intend to do. We will be in contact with her staff the rest of this week to get the details worked out,” he said. “I really don’t want to get into particulars of how many officers I’m going to have there and exactly what we’re going to do. Events like this are not foreign to us. We’ve had political dignitaries here before. Obviously this type of event with the national dialogue that’s going on has got a lot of people’s attention and we will try to have adequate staffing there to make sure this is a productive meeting.”
Regardless of how many officers are in attendance at the forum, Davis says that regular patrols will not be taking a back seat to the event.
“This won’t effect our staffing levels whatsoever on the street,” he said. “I may decide to utilize staff officers or plain clothes officers. I may have some officers come in on overtime. I’m reserving that judgement until later this week.
“We’ve had to deal with other things during the years that were controversial situations or would have a tendency to get emotional. We don’t anticipate any problems, but we’ll be on hand to make sure it’s as peaceful as possible.”
|
|
|
When a recent health care forum turned into a shouting match, U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill told the crowd, “I don’t understand this rudeness. I honestly don’t get it.”
Despite that outburst, Maria Speiser, press secretary for McCaskill, says the overall tone of the forums the senator has hosted in Kennett, Poplar Bluff and Jefferson County have not been boisterous.
“I was at the three that were last week, two in Southeast Missouri and one in Jefferson County. I think overall when you look at them, the entire event, they were good, productive, substantive town hall meetings where people were able to ask questions and it was not screened in any way and Sen. McCaskill did her best to answer them and while also hearing the concerns the people were expressing both in favor and in opposition of the idea of health care reform and the various pieces of legislation out there,” she said.
McCaskill’s office announced Tuesday that the senator will be conducting a health care listening forum in Hannibal, beginning at 9:30 a.m. Monday, Aug. 24, in the gymnasium at Veterans Elementary School, 790 N. Veterans Road.
Because of the level of emotion seen at some forums throughout the nation, security concerns have been raised. Last week a forum planned by McCaskill at University City High School was called off by the school district over safety concerns.
Security for the upcoming event in Hannibal is in the hands of the police department.
“We let them know what to expect and leave it to the local folks to do what they deem necessary,” said Speiser, regarding local security arrangements for upcoming forums.
Lyndell Davis, chief of the HPD, says security plans are being formulated.
“We have some preliminary plans together on what we intend to do. We will be in contact with her staff the rest of this week to get the details worked out,” he said. “I really don’t want to get into particulars of how many officers I’m going to have there and exactly what we’re going to do. Events like this are not foreign to us. We’ve had political dignitaries here before. Obviously this type of event with the national dialogue that’s going on has got a lot of people’s attention and we will try to have adequate staffing there to make sure this is a productive meeting.”
Regardless of how many officers are in attendance at the forum, Davis says that regular patrols will not be taking a back seat to the event.
“This won’t effect our staffing levels whatsoever on the street,” he said. “I may decide to utilize staff officers or plain clothes officers. I may have some officers come in on overtime. I’m reserving that judgement until later this week.
“We’ve had to deal with other things during the years that were controversial situations or would have a tendency to get emotional. We don’t anticipate any problems, but we’ll be on hand to make sure it’s as peaceful as possible.”
