John Wiebold, Boone Police Chief, July 17, 2026

On our program today, we are visiting with our Boone Police Chief, John Weevill. Good to have you here. Good morning. I’m going to have you pull that a little closer to you there so everybody can hear you. Morning. Oh, you got anything going on? Yeah. Yeah, a little bit. Of course, I anticipated that we would visit a lot about Raghry and, you know, there’s only so many days left. Getting close. You know, in another week, it’ll have already passed, it’ll be over, and everybody will have a sigh of relief. That’s right. And next Wednesday, they’re promising like a high of 79, so the riders will be out and we can all relax. I think the riders are feeling a lot better about that, too. We do anticipate, and part of the, you know, they always talk about the crowd of thousands coming, you know, and the number of riders that’ll be starting out by Ottawa this weekend and making their way towards Central Iowa. But we are in the metro part, which tends to pick up a lot of additional riders. And we will see them go into Guthrie Center and coming to Boone and from Boone on to Marshall Town. That’s great. You usually get an increase. And so we’re going to have a lot of bike riders, bottom line. Yep. It’s going to be a lot. The last number we heard somewhere in the just shy of 16,000 riders have registered. Now there are people that join in the ride that aren’t registered, and like you said, there’s some people that pick up just this two overnight sections because it’s close to the metro. So yeah, we’re going to have a lot of people here. And then there’s going to be those that are just going to show up for the entertainment. We got a big band coming, so it’s going to be, you know, free concerts, so there will be people coming for that. And right now it’s looking like the weather might be decent for us. Knock on wood. So yeah, we expect a lot of people. Keep our fingers crossed. All right. Obviously, the one thing that I hear repeatedly is, what’s the route? Well, it’s the same thing that you told us in the beginning. They’re coming in on old Highway 30. They’re coming in on Mamie Eisenhower. And then you’re going to tend to divert them down store, South Story, down story to the South. And like I told Commander Sloater last time is, yeah, but a lot of them are just going to head off to wherever they’re staying. That’s correct. There will be bikes all over town that day. But most of the riders will be on that main route and we survey knows we’re not closing that route till 9 a.m. So on your way to work Tuesday morning, you shouldn’t have any problem. And then we’re going to open it back up around 6.30. So the Raghbri wants everybody in town by about six o’clock. So at five o’clock, the Iowa State Patrol is going to push everybody out of Ogden to try and get all the bikes to to Boone by six o’clock. So around that six to 6.30 range, depending on what time bikes are coming in or what it looks like, we’ll open the roads back up and everybody can go about their business. No, it’s and again, basically, it’s because of the bike traffic. We have closures, but we do have ways to get around. Absolutely. Don’t panic people. There are a number of ways to get around. There just are. Yeah, we have several intersections that will be staffed by volunteers just so people can get through. We don’t want to, you know, shut our citizens down from traveling through the town. So those intersections are going to be a Montana road, Marion Street, Division Street, Green Street, First Street and Park Avenue and Hancock Drive. So there will be those intersections will be staffed by volunteers. So if you need to cross the route at some point, you can go up to one of those intersections, wait patiently for them. They want to make sure everybody gets through safely. So but if you’re patient with them, they’ll open it, they’ll stop the bikes, let you pass through and you can go about your business. Patience. Patience, please. Please. That’s the biggie. It only, you know, and surprisingly, we may have some people don’t even realize where I was going to be here. We’ve already got some questions like, wait, what’s happening? What’s this? That’s going on. Anyway, again, we’ll divert most of the people down to the, down the south side of town. But like we said, others are going to be staying with other people in town. They’ve got friends. There are, there are probably riders from Boone that are going to go home. Correct. I mean, you know, that’s, I mean, that’s how it works. Yeah. And some of these people have like charters that, that organize a lot of stuff for them. So we have a big charter staying at Grace Church on South Division. There’s several charters going to stay over at the middle school. So you’ll have bikes kind of everywhere that day. So please just, just drive carefully. Be patient. It’s one day, I think we can show that Boone’s a good town and we can all show them a good time while they’re here. Now, once they get in, and usually, and this tends to be pretty much how a lot of them do it, some will ride their bikes around where they need to go. Others are going to park them. Correct. And, and they are, we do have a shuttle system that’s set up that are going to be moving people around and they’ll be bringing them uptown and go in other places too. Yes. So they’ll be shuttle service running basically all day until after, well until after the concert’s over. So a lot of the bike bicyclists, once they get to their spot, they’re tired riding their bike. I can kind of imagine that. So they will just get on the shuttle services and that map can be found on the Boone Rag Bride Facebook page. They’ll show us the, the shuttle routes, but they’ll take all the downtown and over to the middle school and all those places. So riders can get on. They can show them the, the, the area and keep going. Yeah. And they’ll, and they’ll take them back down to the concert area and they’ll run them all night. Yeah. The other one was in Andy Bartlett, I mentioned this to volunteers. If you don’t want to fight the traffic, take the shuttle. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. For the volunteers, absolutely. Because they’ll get you down there and drop you off and then you don’t have to worry about finding a place to park and everything else too. Because there could be a lot in, we know that a big area where a lot of riders are going to be, we’ll be around DMACC, but we have other areas that, as you mentioned, Gray, Gray’s down on South division. That’s got that big shop, the big Charter. Big Charter. Yeah. And surprisingly, yes, people are going, what’s this? What’s it? That’s one of the new phenomenons that has been generated by Reg Bride. The, he’s, I mean, people just want to have, they want to ride. They don’t want to have to worry about carrying it all the, everything. And so the old Reg Bride semi-trailer where they would haul everything in and dump it off. And I mean, that’s kind of, I don’t know if it happens anymore, but it might. But still. We’re still doing that. This is a lot different now. Yeah. They’re still doing that part. But a lot of the people now hire a Charter group because the Charters will, I mean, the bigger Charters will provide them meals and they’ll have showerhouses and all those things that they could possibly need. And so they pay that company for that whole week and they don’t have to worry about any of their stuff. They can just ride and get to their spot and everything’s there set up for them. And just enjoy themselves. That’s right. Well, we’ll see. I just got a light going. The other one, of course, that a lot of people came in, how are they leaving town? Yeah. So that’s easier. So to leave town, they’re just going to take Hancock Drive over to Corporal Stedden Drive or Airport Road as it’s more commonly known in Boone. And then up to Mamie and out east of town. And then they are out of town. So they will not disrupt very much of town. Story Street between Park and Hancock will be closed. But again, we will have volunteers there to get people through. And again, we’re shutting that down at 5 a.m. Some of the bike riders will start leaving then. And by 10 o’clock, everybody’s supposed to be out of town. So it won’t be very long. It’ll be for a little bit in the morning. During the morning commute, some of that will be closed. But there’s plenty of ways around Boone to get to 30. Well, and the big thing is avoid going on Old Highway 30. Yeah. Old Highway 30 is going to be a little busy that day. So and then actually. Even taking the north, say, if you’re going over to Ames, even taking the north route. Yeah. Because once they leave town, they’re going to go over to 17 up to 190th Street or 22nd Street as it goes through Boone. But and then 190th out east towards Gilbert. So if you’re going east, you might want to come down to New 30 and just take that road over to Ames or wherever you’re going. So again, there’s so you just plant and just plan ahead. It’s one day we’ll get around it. And hopefully, like you said, by middle of the well by noon, really, pretty much getting back to normal. Yes. Except we’re going to pick up everything that’s down. Well, there’s going to be some cleanup, obviously, but that should be going on simultaneously as the bikes are leaving. So hopefully that that section of South story where the stage and everything’s going to be that should all be cleaned up by noon on on Wednesday. So keep, keep, keep us right. Just keep everything together. So you you are. You do have some extra. I mean, obviously, well, just your department itself, you’re down a couple of people just because for a variety of reasons, but not everybody is able to be out there on the street. So you’ve got a couple others that are coming in and the state patrol does have that’s correct. Be they just go along with Raghbri. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, that’s one of the nice things is the Raghbri contracts with the state patrol. So there’ll be 10 troopers in town just for the concert area. Not that doesn’t even include all the ones that are doing traffic control during that day. They’re during the whole Raghbri route. And then, you know, the sheriff’s office is helping out with a couple of people and otherwise it’s all hands on deck for us. Yeah. And folks, you need to remember the sheriff’s department. They’ve got Raghbri coming in from the south, coming all the way up on 169 to Ogden. So yeah, they’re going to be kind of spread out there as well, too. Yeah. We’ll make it. It’ll be great. I mean, we’ve had them come through. It was only a couple of years ago. What? 2018. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they came through town. Oh, yeah. But since then they’ve come through the county. Yeah. Two years ago, they came through. They kind of lost on 270. Yeah. So they’ve been here before, then they left and went down through Madrid. Remember that? That’s right. I think this is my fifth Raghbri in my 25 years. Yeah. Well, and the big ones we know, the overnight, those are the big ones where you get a lot of pressure on and a lot of things going on, too. The big thing, just people getting around town, again, because of that day, it’s going to be busy. We’re going to have a sizable increase in our population. That’s right. And a lot of it, a lot of these people are just going to be coming to town to see things. They may not, they just are going to be walking around looking at things, or you might encounter somebody going, you know, where is, where can I find this? Yeah. Little patients, help them out. Yeah, please. Let’s just listen. This is a great community. Let’s just show everybody all 20 plus thousand people that come here and visitors that day how great we are. I know we are, and I think we’ll do a great job. And one of the things that we haven’t talked about yet is not only are there, you know, maybe 20,000 riders coming in, there’s also another 1,000 support vehicles. So we’re going to have a lot of extra vehicle traffic, and some of those are RVs, bigger vehicles, too. Yeah. I know a lot of them, you’re trying to park them in certain areas. The big thing is they’re supposed to come into the racetrack basically to come into town so they can get to their designated spot. Right. Because we have kind of campgrounds all over the place, they’re all over town, to organize all of that, the easiest way we figured is to bring them all into the speedway because it’s a great big area. It’s used to big vehicles. It’s going to work out perfect. They were gracious enough to let us do that. And then from there, we tell them which parking lot or which campground they’re going to, and that should make this so much smoother and less vehicles driving randomly through town trying to find their place. And then they’ll have to come back and get into town, and then probably that south side you’re going to have a lot of traffic as they come forward. Maybe a lot of traffic. Yeah. Maybe a lot of traffic through town. So pay attention to that. Again, plan accordingly. Have some patience. If you need to go down to the south side, and so many of the things I think, I know some of the businesses and things like that, some are going to be closing down, others will be shutting down early and opening up the next day. And so, again, there’s been a number of businesses that have closed down and had their people all volunteered to help with Rackbrite. So that’s been very great. Awesome. Awesome. A lot of people helping out. We need that. We need the volunteers. We’re actually still short some, too. Still short some volunteers? Yeah. We can definitely use some volunteers. I think Andy had said he could use some people out there at the check-in at the raceway. Check-ins. Andy said that’s usually pretty fast because support vehicles are usually all here by noon. Yes. We’re expecting them all to be completely in and in their place by noon. So yeah, that’s a short shift. Yeah. We’ll take that one. Yeah. We also need some more volunteers to do some of these traffic control intersections I talked about. I know you got some of your people from the Citizens Police Academy. Yeah. A lot of them have come out and helped again. Volunteered to step up and do some of the crossovers. There are people, remember, there are ways to get across Mamie Eisenhower and across Story Street just because we will have traffic control going on. Yes. That’s a long day for them. It is. We have three-hour shifts. You get different shifts. Yeah. So we’re trying to make it a not a long day for them. So if they still want to help volunteer for that to go on to the, is it just the Bragg Bride page? Yeah. The Boone Bragg Bride page or they can get a hold of the police department. We can help. If they want to help with some of these intersections, we can easily write them down for that. Okay. So just contact. Don’t call 911 for that. Please don’t. No. Just call the PD. Yep. That’ll be the easiest way. Got it. Well, you never know. Or stop by. Yeah. Someone’s in the office and you can say, I’d like to help with this and which one can I work at and when can I be there? Absolutely. And by the way, it is looking otherwise a lot better. Oh, man, it looks so much better than it is this week. We’re going to enjoy a break from Monday might be a little oppressive, but otherwise, that’s our, that’s our break in that’s set up. I’m sorry. That’s going to be tough on those folks in the afternoon. It might be a one of our hottest days. Yeah. Out of this spell. Yeah. But we’ll get through. We’ll get through. Stay hydrated. That’s right. And if you have, again, like in my case, I know I’ll have some people coming to my place and the neighbors got some coming in as well. So that’s great. We have a little bit off of the beaten path, but again, they’ll show up and we’ll make sure they get to where they need to go. That’s how to say. All right. Now you are going to, like I said, we’ve got the shuttles going on and maps for that again on the on the ragged ride page, ragged ride page or the boom, please run page. Okay. We got that on your Facebook page. Yep. I think that’s most of it, at least for ragged ride. Yeah. I hope so. They got a great entertainment plan. They got great vendors planned. If you do want to go down there, there’s lots to do. Please just be patient and let’s have a great time. And that’s that’s so much focus is on this. You still have to have regular officers doing regular work. Yeah. The town doesn’t stop for this. So we have all the regular stuff we have to do and officers will be on patrol all over town to make sure everything goes as planned. So last time when I visited with commander Slaughter, we were talking about the e-bikes and things like that to again, those, I see a bunch of them still out there, emotos and things like that. There are certain ones where people need and should be licensed for, but others and don’t ride them on the sidewalks and once again, follow the rules of the road that basically traffic laws. Right. Complaints in the last, and not just us everywhere, every city’s having the same complaints. I’ve talked to several chiefs and everybody’s having the same problems and it’s one of those things where technology is outrunning the, you know, the laws at this point. This happens all the time, you know, where new technology comes out and these e-bikes are more powerful and cheaper than ever. And so yeah, there are some rules and we’re going to, we’re really going to start pushing that stuff out after Rai gets through, we’ll be pushing out what the rules are on our Facebook page and really just educate your kids to watch out, follow the traffic laws. I mean, most of the complaints we get are, a kid ran out and rode out in front of me either on a scooter or went through the stop sign or, you know, or came off the curb just right through it, right into the traffic lane. So just educate your kids to be careful. We certainly, we’ve had, you know, one accident that was an injury accident this year. We just don’t want any more. Yeah. And we’ve had in the past, we’ve had several where they follow, they’ve wiped out basically, yeah, where it’s been no outside of the fact they’ve lost control and tip crashed, things like that. Road rash is a little nasty at that. Yeah. Listen, we do love seeing kids out and about. I mean, a couple of years ago, we didn’t have as many kids out and about. So this, these, these e-bikes and e-scooters are getting kids outside, which is great. We just want them to be safe and obey the traffic laws. Yeah. And before it was always about bicycle. Right. They were riding bikes, make sure they were following, you know, following the rules or roads, stop at the stop signs and look both ways and wear a helmet and stay safe. So we still have all of that going on too. I was going to say, yes, then we move right from that into the planning for the Farm Progress show. That’s right. So we are going to end up again with a whole bunch of new maps coming out on the best way to get to and from and out of town for that too. Yeah. We’ll have the same issues coming up. Yeah. The thing about the Farm Progress show is the work they’ve done out there on 17 has really helped the traffic flow through town. It helps spread it out. So it’s not just a constant stream and it’s been much better traffic wise the last year. So we follow that up then with, with super nationals, super nationals and then right in the right into Pufferbilly is 50th anniversary for that. So again, yeah, we’re going to keep a little busy. That’s okay. Well, and then in the midst of all of that, school starts again. School starts and yeah, college football starts and all of those things have to. So Raghbray really the big thing to pay attention to and again, people looking for maps will get them posted at www.com as well. But on the police department, Facebook page, that’s an easy way to access them. And the again, the Raghbray website, which is on Visit Boone County, go to Visit Boone County. They got a Raghbray page. They’ve got everything on. Find it there. Easy. I know a lot of people feel inconvenienced by it, but it’s one time. It’s one time. It’ll be a great time. We’ll show all the writers how great Boone is and it’ll be a good time. Look for them to come back and visit us another time. That’s right. Otherwise, I can’t. I think that’s more. Oh, I know. I was going to ask you about ATVs, UTVs, still permitted. Yes. And once again, they should be on the lookout for bicyclists out there as well. Absolutely. Might almost be a little easier for them to get around. Might be, actually. Yeah. Anyway. I’ll be on one that day and several of my people will be on those. Yeah. You’ve got to get back and forth to different locations and stuff. So, again, our visitor, Chief John Wiebold from the Boone Police Department, keeping updated. A lot of things going on and once again, we’re hoping for a break in the weather and it’s looking like it right now that we should do pretty well and just looking to have a good visit to Boone and put on a good impression and look forward to a lot of these people will be looking at things and places they may go to, rail explorers, stuff like that. Might not be able to ride it, but you can expect they might be coming back. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Look forward to seeing them again. Yes. John Wiebold, our guest on our program today. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, Jim.