VIDEO: The Process of Party Permits

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – City leaders say the ordinance was put in place for safety reasons.

The city says it isn’t against a large public party, but they are against not knowing about one.

The two-year old ordinance was passed in reaction to a 2014 murder, which took place at a party at the Fairgrounds.

“The ordinances are set up so that the people within the city, that are responsible for public safety, are notified about the event in particular. That means law enforcement with our police department, and the fire department with our fire enforcement,” says Columbus Public Information Officer, Joe Dillon.

However, that’s not what happened this weekend when an unsanctioned party at the Fairgrounds turned violent.

“It asks for basic information about how many people you are expecting, who the organizer is of the event. We’re also asking for a $250,000 liability policy just so if something happens, there’s insurance to cover something like that, that happened.”

The city isn’t trying to restrict events, and getting the permit just takes a little time, and $75 dollars.

“We got a 911 call that shots were being fired, and then the next thing we know, there’s a person injured, so we weren’t aware of that, had we known about this event, we would have adequate officers to come and respond to this incident, know what we had, know there was a large crowd of people there. We would have done several walkthroughs,” says Columbus Assistant Police Chief, Fred Shelton.

If you don’t get the proper permits for your private party, you can expect to find yourself in the same predicament as Jane Jordan.

“The biggest issue here, is that we just didn’t want to have an ordinance and not have any teeth in it. There’s some penalties because again, we’re not trying to stop people from celebrating, having a good time, we want people to be safe, and we want people to have what they need to have, and if something does happen unfortunate, we’ll be able to respond and take care of it.”

Although the Fairgrounds is considered private property, it’s still considered a public event and requires a permit, but that’s not the case for city owned property.

“It would have already gone through our offices, to where we’ve already issued the permit. The person has already paid the fee to rent it, so we’re not exempting ourselves from our own rules, but we’re just not asking for a duplicate because we would’ve already known about it,” says Dillon.