News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Crossville Police Chief Jessie Brooks said he wants stricter regulations for bus companies operating within the city.
Brooks told Council Members during a work session Tuesday multiple county prisons drop their newly-released prisoners off at an abandoned gas station next to the Waffle House off I-40. Brooks said the prisoners are released there so they can catch a Greyhound bus, but the bus schedule is inconsistent and the stop is abandoned.
“It’s a mess,” Brooks said. “Because you have to, you have no way to regulate it. I can go ask the inmates or former inmates, ‘What time’s your bus?’ They don’t know.”
City Clerk Baylee Rhea said bus companies sign contracts with local business to use them as bus stops, and the ordinance would prevent them from using an abandoned location. Rhea said it would also require bus companies to have a set schedule that they share with the city.
“That business is currently I think contracted with Greyhound, but the only stipulation Greyhound has from my understanding is that it’s a well-lit area and they leave their lights on at the gas station,” Rhea said. “That’s how they’re getting away with that.”
Brooks said the former inmates have no way to keep time or know the bus schedule beyond the information on their printed ticket, so if they miss the bus they are stuck in the city.
“If one of them misses the bus, then he’s, he’s here,” Brooks said. “He can’t board the next bus. He is here. And I don’t want that to happen. That’s happened a few times where they just stay here.”
City Attorney Randall York said there is already a draft of this ordinance written up, but it needs to be edited further before the city can consider it.
“It says that the penalty is two to fifty dollars that they can be fined for that,” York said. “Well, you know, the question I have is who, so they pay the two dollars or the fifty dollars of court costs and they just keep on doing it and keep on doing it. I want to make sure that under the administrative review act that our city court has the authority to review this.”
Brooks said they had an incident at the stop after a man get dropped off in the county after serving over twenty years for manufacturing methamphetamine.
“I had one of my narcotics officers, he’s got a very plain vehicle, and he asked my narcotics officer where he could score some meth,” Brooks said. “So his twenty years in prison’s really not done much to rehabilitate.”
