The Carbondale Police Department held a community meeting Monday after a sexual assault was reported Saturday evening.

At the community meeting at Old Thompson Barn in Carbondale, Police Chief Kirk Wilson said he would release as much information as possible about the suspect, describing the description as a man in his 30s, wearing a sweatshirt. black hood.

Any other information about the suspect, Wilson said, is false, and he asked the public to stop spreading rumors about the suspect’s race because they have no information on whether to confirm or deny anything. what else about them.

“This is not a political issue,” he said. “A lot of people have been playing politics online… when people post this misinformation, there’s a human being who lived through a horrible, traumatic event, reading everything, that everyone in that community and the agitators outside from the community, publish.

He also cleared up misinformation about whether there had been a kidnapping.

“This is not an incident that lasted 48 hours,” he said. “The time frame is about 30 minutes to an hour, give or take, depending on his (the victim’s) memories.”

Wilson said they are looking for this person on charges of sexual assault, and he said more charges will be added to this person’s arrest later.

Some people in the crowd asked why law enforcement didn’t come to the victim’s neighbors to tell them what happened, for their own safety.

“We have two officers working at any given time,” Wilson said. “We had one person transported to a medical facility; an officer was to accompany him. This allowed an officer to stay and collect evidence on scene before that evidence was lost. Our first and foremost responsibility is to preserve the premises, so that we can hopefully achieve successful prosecutions in the future.

He said additional officers came to help gather the evidence, but the department had a total of 18 people and 15 sworn officers.

Another question asked was why more information could not be shared about the incident.

“As a practice, the police department does not share information about sexual assaults with the public,” Wilson said. “It’s to protect several things: first, it’s the victim. There’s a victim… if we release all the information about the case, just to make people feel better about what’s going on, if someone comes in and says he did this, and it doesn’t, it makes it very difficult. for us. »

Some in the crowd were curious if police had the suspect’s DNA.

“We can collect DNA evidence. Unless this person is in CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) as a DNA response, as if they had DNA in the system, even the DNA evidence we collected that night will not be conclusive as far as identifying a person,” said Lt. William (Bill) Kirkland. “We collected DNA evidence; it’s sent to a lab to be tested, but unless the person the DNA belongs to is in the system,…it doesn’t just create a person and tell us who it is.

Yet others wanted to know how they knew this sexual assault was not an isolated incident and how police would protect them.

“Do we know this is an ongoing threat? No,” Kirkland said. “We have no way of saying that’s not the case, and we have no way of saying that it is.”

He said he would like to put a police officer with everyone in the room to help people feel safe, but that wasn’t practical and they can’t.

“Community safety is a shared responsibility,” he said. “We need to keep each other safe. The police department can’t do this for everyone…do we think it would behoove people to lock their doors and windows? Yes.”

Kirkland said he understands it’s Carbondale: People don’t think it’s something they want to do, but maybe it’s time for things to change as the community evolves .

Wilson said adults can carry pepper spray, meaning anyone 18 and older, but minors might not be able to, especially on school campuses.

“It’s not that we don’t want to give you information. The information we give you is what we have,” Kirkland said. “People who are victims of a crime, especially a crime like this, go through a very traumatic experience. It may take time for him to remember this information.

He said they spoke to the victim after arriving on scene to get that information and remained in contact with her.

“The information we have is what she was able to give us at that time,” he said.

The Police Department will post updates to the public on the City of Carbondale website and people can sign up to receive alerts at carbondalegov.org.