Where else can one hear the following stories all within one hour and in one room?

• A planned land mine explosion at Fort Jackson Army Base.

• Several snatch–and–drag purse thefts in the Columbia area.

• A shooting at Club Level, a Blanding Street nightspot that’s known for violent activities that seem to occur frequently around its 3 am closing time.

• The arrest of a woman attempting to shoplift two pairs of high–heeled shoes at an area Belk’s store by stuffing them down her shirt – an incident that ended up in a full–scale fight between her and store police.

At the Columbia Police Department’s bi–monthly meeting with area commanders and surrounding law enforcement agencies, wherein the crimes are reported and strategies discussed about how to handle various crimes around the city. This particular gathering was at Gonzalas Gardens off Forest Drive, but are normally held at police headquarters on Justice Square.

“It’s a great way to analyze crime and compare notes in order to get a big picture of what’s going on,” said Police Chief Tandy Carter. “We find it to be very helpful.”

The meeting is filled with some interesting and some mundane reports from representatives of each patrol region in the city – metro, south, west, and north – as well as an analysis of what is being done to deal with spikes in particular crimes during two weeks between meetings.

For example, Metro region Capt. Scott Desrochers, explained that in order to help fulfill his region’s stated goal to cut crime by 50 percent, he is putting a bike patrol on the streets where officers will travel “from the zoo to the university to Two Notch Road” to help raise police presence in areas that have been hit recently by residential burglaries.

Carter also asked Derochers to set up a meeting with the owners of Club Level, a nightclub that the captain said “seems to have some sort of fight every time they close and put people out on the street.”

“We need to meet with management and have a discussion about what is going on in their club,” Carter said.

And there was this report from West Region Capt. M.E. Johnson: a woman allegedly attempting to shoplift a pair of high heels from an area Belk Store got into a “physical encounter” with two of the store’s loss prevention specialists.

“She put one of the shoes in her purse and then stuffed the rest of the shoes down her shirt,” Johnson said. “In the confrontation (with the loss–prevention specialists) there were some clothes thrown, a physical encounter, and she is now in jail.”

Other reports included:

• the south region’s crowdcontrol strategies for Thursday night’s University of South Carolina– Old Miss football game.

“Thursday is a big event and will be quite a challenging day,” Carter said. “We want to have as many people as we can out of their cars and very visible.”

• a success story regarding the surveillance cameras recently installed in Five Points, which help lead to the arrest of a man who allegedly broke into several commercial establishments in that corridor.

• an analysis of a three–month special operation in the Bethel Bishop and Colony Apartments, which netted 47 arrests and the confiscation of dozens of firearms.

The meetings are open to the public.