Daniel Frost and two other individuals from the southeast part of Great Bend were back at Monday’s City Council meeting to voice their frustrations about loud music, reckless driving and gun shots that take place in their neighborhood at all hours of the day. Frost previously attended council meetings in April and June in 2024, when he also mentioned similar complaints in the area between Kiowa Road and Plum to Third Street.

Frost’s house is just outside the city limits but he said the neighbors with the loud music are inside the city limits.

“I can sit there (by the front door) watching them shoot from their fence, across toward our way, toward the dike,” he said.

“There’s nothing being done about it,” Frost said. “I called the police five times the other day. Not one ticket was issued.”

He continued, “I keep on getting told it’s firecrackers. I’m watching – I know it ain’t firecrackers. But the police have to see it personally, themselves.”

Frost was told a video on his phone would be sufficient, but then he brought up a different incident.

Police Chief Steve Haulmark was asked to respond.

“I can’t speak to anything specific unless I know what we’re talking about,” he said, adding he would like to speak to the concerned citizens after the meeting. “I do know that we’ve taken a couple of accident reports in the past month or so about fences being struck. There was a DUI and there were tickets issued on the other issue.”

Councilman Cory Urban, who was presiding over the meeting in the absence of Mayor Cody Schmidt, asked what Frost wants the council to do.

“I want you guys to enforce the law. You are bosses of the chief of police; he can tell his officers they need to step it up.”

Urban and other council members told Frost the police can’t be in every neighborhood 24 hours a day.

“I’m not a law enforcement officer, but my suggestion would be, anytime there are issues, call in complaints,” Urban said. “I mean, obviously we can discuss with Chief about the performance of the units, but that is something that would not take place here.”

Also speaking on the topic were Jack Love, who lives on 8th Street, and Misty Burdett, who lives on 2nd Street.

Love said he has to call the police often for loud music.

“And I’m going to tell you the police are doing good for me; they come down there,” Love said. “They shut that music down, but shortly after they leave, they start again. Sometimes six o’clock in the morning, I hear it. I have one suggestion: After the officer comes there two times in the night, you can issue citations to try to stop them. Maybe if they had to reach in their pockets and pay money to aggravate the people, they might quit doing it.”

Burdett said she has also called the police about drag racing in the streets and loud music at night. 

“There seems to be an ongoing karaoke festival, or a never-ending chicken dance, and I’ve called them twice already in the last few nights.” She believes an officer did go to the offending home. “I said, two seconds after you leave, they’ll be right back at it. Can’t we do something – anything?”

In answer to a question from the council about saturation patrols, Haulmark said his officers did that every weekend for about two months.

“We still have a sign-up sheet,” he said. “We have regular overtime now just to cover our basic shifts, but if we have other people, we have a sign-up sheet for a two-man car to work a saturation patrol on Saturday nights during the evening hours.”

He said officers made a felony arrest in that neighborhood last Friday and there were officers there as he spoke (shortly after 6:30 p.m. on Monday). “I can’t really talk about that right now, but there’s people down there doing stuff.”

Haulmark concluded, “In response to ‘the police are never there, we never do anything, we can’t do anything,’ I would say, without specifics, that’s just throwing eggs.”