Riley County Police director Brian Peete says his officers are “turning it up a notch” on crime prevention in Aggieville.
Peete told Riley County commissioners during the board’s meeting Monday at the Ogden Community Center that he’s planning meetings with Aggieville business owners in the coming weeks to determine how RCPD can provide better enforcement within the business district near K-State.
Peete said Aggieville is an “entirely different animal” than the rest of Riley County when it comes to law enforcement.
“Aggieville is more of a targeted area that we cannot necessarily be proactive on,” Peete said. “We just have to be resilient in our presence and rely on partnerships and cooperations with Aggieville business owners.”
Peete said he as well as his officers and detectives will be listening to the concerns of Aggieville business owners, employees and representatives, including Aggieville Business Association director Dennis Cook, to ultimately figure out ways to curb violent crimes.
“We want to make sure what we’re seeing over the last few days is not a permanent trend,” Peete said. “That it’s just one of those things that unfortunately happens within all our communities, but we want to get a hold on it as soon as we possibly can.”
Peete’s presentation to commissioners was spurred by several incidents that have occurred in Aggieville, the most recent of which happened on Sunday. Officers who were monitoring crowds reportedly heard a gunshot near the 1100 block of Moro Street just before 2 a.m. Officers located a spent shell casing and two vehicles that fled the scene, but no arrests have been made in the case.
Another incident was reported April 14, when officers heard a possible gunshot near the 1100 block of Moro around 1:30 a.m. The responding officers found a 22-year-old man with a head injury and a gunshot wound to his right thigh. It’s unclear if the man shot himself or if he was shot by another person. He was taken to Via Christi Hospital for further treatment. The man’s name and medical condition have not been released.
The Mercury additionally has reported on Peete’s thoughts regarding the unsanctioned Fake Patty’s Day celebration in March. Shortly after the event, Peete called the event a “bane” on the community and has said he doesn’t want to hinder businesses from making money, but that Manhattan’s economy is diverse enough that it doesn’t need the behavior associated with the event.
In April, RCPD’s Criminal Intelligence Unit wrote a comprehensive report that revealed that within a two-block radius of Aggieville, Fake Patty’s Day brings an average of 35.7 crime reports, based on data between 2017 and 2019 and again from 2022 through 2024.
That’s compared to a K-State home football game weekends, which using data from 2021 to 2023, showed an average of 6.2 reports.
The next Riley County Commission meeting is at 8:30 a.m. Thursday at the Riley County Courthouse.
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