Metro Nashville Council Member Jeff Eslick said the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) has “room for improvement” in regards to keeping the streets of Music City “safe” and “clean.”
Eslick made the comments during a recent episode of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show as he and host Michael Patrick Leahy were discussing the disappearance of college student Riley Strain, who has been missing since March 8 after being asked to leave Luke Bryan’s bar in downtown Nashville.
Eslick (pictured above), who is friends with a friend of the Strain family, said while he hopes the college student is found unharmed, he can’t help but suspect that one of the panhandlers or vagrants around downtown Nashville had anything to do with his disappearance.
“It makes me wonder what the outcome will be and if it would be associated with one of the panhandlers or one of the vagrants that are on Broadway that I’ve been working to try to help find a way to clean up,” Eslick said.
Eslick described a recent incident that saw a musician who was walking to her vehicle after having played a gig on Broadway being attacked by an individual who has been arrested at least 35 times.
“There was a young lady that works for one of the bars as a musician. She and I believe her band were walking to their vehicles after having played their shift on Broadway and, out of nowhere, she was punched, hit, and knocked in the face by a person. They were able to track the person down and hold that person until the police came and that person…has up to 35 arrests on their record,” Eslick explained.
“I believe this is one of the same types of people that I put together a list of for the DA to start looking at. These are people that are arrested habitually on Broadway for public intoxication, for resisting arrest, for blocking passageways, for assaulting, whether it be a police officer or first responder, or in this case somebody that works on Broadway,” Eslick added, noting, “This is how you kill the golden goose.”
Eslick explained how downtown Nashville, specifically Broadway, is a “money-making machine” for tourism and stressed the need for the area to be clean and safe—both for tourists and residents of the city.
“Things like this, whether it’s Riley Strain or the musician that was attacked, having Broadway be an unsafe area for tourists and for the employees of the area is not good for what is a money making machine of tourism for our city. It brings in a lot of money from property taxes to sales taxes and that pays for a lot of the services that keep our taxes as residents and taxpayers lower. And we need to make sure that our police force, our court systems are doing the best they can to help keep this area clean and safe. I think there’s room for improvement, just to be kind,” Eslick said.
In regards to Strain’s case, Eslick said nobody knows whether or not another person had an involvement in the college student’s disappearance; however, he continued to stress the need for addressing vagrants that are seen around the city.
“I do think looking at the fact that the history of Broadway shows that you can go down on any night and see people sleeping on those grates where the heat comes through, you can see them sleeping in door wells or door areas, and the police will not get them out of there,” Eslick said. “That needs to be something that we emphasize. Let’s talk about it. I know it’s sensitive and I know people don’t want to do it, but I’m not sensitive about it…We have services. Let’s push them to them.”
– – –
Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Jeff Eslick” by Jeff Eslick. Background Photo “Downtown Nashville” by Sami99tr. CC BY-SA 3.0.
