I attended the July meeting of the Marshall Downtown Business Association at the Marshall Area Chamber of Commerce office on Wednesday.

This group is made up of downtown business owners and they meet early in the morning on every first day of each month. According to Sam Lund, event specialist for the Chamber, the MDBA works in conjunction with the Chamber in helping to coordinate or plan events such as Crazy Days — an event that is just around the corner. The MDBA has budgeted funds that is made up from fees collected from the various members who are owners of retail shops, restaurants, bars, etc.

Lund explained to me that MDBA members work hard to promote the downtown and the community.

I like to attend the meetings because it’s a good way to keep tabs on what is going on in the downtown area. Every so often, some interesting topics pop during the meetings.

Jim Marshall, the director of public safety for the city of Marshall, was on the agenda Wednesday. He delivered an interesting report on a number of subjects. We will save some of that information for another time.

For now, this column will focus on community policing.

“When we spoke with some of the business owners about people on the roofs, remember that’s a good example of what community policing is when we can come together and identify problems or issues within our community and we can work together. At the time, I know that business owners worked with us, improved lighting, improved camera systems on roofs. I think we really saw a downturn in the activity on kids on roofs. At least I haven’t heard anything,” Marshall told the group.

“You did things on your end and we obviously increased our presence and especially late night, early morning hours — as well just doing routine patrols and trying to watch some buildings back then.”

Marshall continued his report on other subjects when he transitioned to another example of community policing.

This time it wasn’t kids on roofs or maybe the subject of shop lifting. No, it was look out for the scooters.

“Not just in Marshall — every (TV, radio) station was talking about scooters and out of the complaints that we received — I bet you 99 percent of them that I received — are regarding motorized foot scooters. Not bikes, not e-bikes. Maybe a little bit of the motorcross ones to some degree — but mainly motorized foot scooters,” he said.

While Marshall indicated the Marshall Police Department doesn’t keep statistics on accidents involving motorized foot scooters or bikes, he said the Minnesota Hospital Association keeps numbers through reports from emergency rooms.

“We know there’s an uptick in reported accidents that people need medical care,” he said.

Marshall shared that he was on the phone one day with a city council member concerned about foot scooters and what can be done.

“I’m on the phone with him when we had that accident with the young kid that was transferred on for other medical treatment,” he said. “And since then, we’ve tried to pay a little more attention. It’s always kind of a fine line of what do we do for enforcement. Like we don’t know if we necessarily want to be chasing kids on scooters and that was maybe our initial approach, but we knew that we had gotten to a point where we needed to take a little bit more aggressive action. And we’ve done that in the last few weeks.”

Marshall said he told a group last week that the police have stopped over 100 kids on motorized foot scooters.

“Starting doing our thing from number one, just trying to educate them about what you can do and can’t do. If they’re in violation — didn’t have their helmets on or on the sidewalk or not old enough — we would make them walk the scooters home, take their names, sometimes reach out to their parents,” he said.

“If we had contact with them again, it’s to the point where we’ve actually taken some scooters and we’ll make the parents come down to the law enforcement center and claim them. And we can have that conversation. And the third step will be, if it continues to happen with repeat offenders, we’ll charge the parents, take the scooters again and then we’ll make sure that there’s some criminal law, whether or not the court does anything. But that’s kind of the options that we have.”

A lot of conversation between Marshall and the MDBA members in attendance followed. Some members brought up the speeds these foot scooters are capable of reaching. One member told of learning one scooter can reach 60 mph.

“I still see scooters downtown,” one member said. “I’ve personally seen them going down the sidewalk. Sometimes they’re two on them. I see one of the non-classified e-motos, the motorcross looking ones. I see two last week going down the other side of the street. One, I don’t know how old he was. He was wearing a helmet, the other was not. I seen one on the other side of the road, heading that way. He was cruising with traffic.”

Marshall told the members to let him know if there’s anything else he could do to monitor and work with the business community to control the situation.

A lot of back-and-forth conversation followed. There was a lot of concern for shoppers or other members of the public getting hurt after getting hit by a fast-moving foot scooter.

The subject of signs came up. Would more posted signs help?

Most of the youths on the scooters ignore the signs was brought up.

“I think educating people that they can have bikes downtown, but just got to get off and walk your wheels,” one member said.

Another member said he has a moveable sign that he uses outside his shop. He suggested moveable signs with “walk your wheels” displayed might help.

Even Marshall suggested his department may be able to help out with the purchase of such signs.

“How we could probably invest in some signs because I feel we would use them. Crazy Days — there’s other events,” one member said. “A-frame sign would maybe come in handy. We would just slide print it on the side.”

“Change off the signage for whatever,” another member said.

The motion was made for the MDBA to spend up to $500 of its own money on signs. There was a second and the motion carried by the group.

It was interesting to follow the conversation that developed from Marshall’s report that emphasized community policing. And just like the roofing problem, possible solutions followed.

Maybe purchasing signs will not become the total solution in getting scooter users to follow the rules, but it can become at least part of the solution. And the MDBA members were willing to spend a few bucks in attempt to keep their Main Street safe.