COLUMBUS – With homicides in the city at a 25-year high, Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther wants to end an often-criticized anti-crime initiative and put more officers at street-level to combat violent crime.
He plans to ask for $2 million in next year’s budget for a “neighborhood safety strategies fund” to pay for overtime costs for expanded bicycle and foot patrols while ending a summer anti-crime program that community leaders say has fostered distrust between the police and neighborhood residents, according to a report in The Columbus Dispatch.
“Violent crime creates a ripple of trauma and crisis throughout the entire neighborhood,” Ginther said.
Ginther’s announcement Thursday comes as the city faces a soaring homicide rate, with 113 slayings to date this year, the most since 1992.
Ginther noted that nearly half of those killings is unsolved with no motives or suspects and has acknowledged that many residents say their faith in the police department has been shaken. He says community cooperation is important to helping reduce violence.
The budget also would include $1.8 million for “neighborhood crisis response” in the city’s new Department of Neighborhoods. That would pay for safety related programs such as street lights, after-school programs and code-enforcement, the mayor said at a news conference Thursday afternoon.
The plan also includes money for youth job programs, crisis intervention training for police officers and funding for a team the city formed this year to deal with trauma in neighborhoods racked by violence.
Columbus has to start thinking differently about how it polices its neighborhoods as it deals with a growing number of homicides, the opiate crisis and distrust of police among some residents. More than half of the 113 homicides this year are unsolved, and Ginther said opiate addiction is creating desperation that leads to more crime.
“Every resident in every family deserves to be safe in every neighborhood,” Ginther said. “If we are to achieve this goal we must begin new initiatives to address crime differently while continuing to invest in proven safety strategies in our city.”
Ginther’s plan also calls for directing more officers to investigate unsolved crimes to address the number of gang- and drug-related homicides and earmarking more than $500,000 in new initiatives to combat opiate addiction in support of the Franklin County Opiate Action Plan.
The plan also calls for the formation of a Violent Crime Review Group and Neighborhood Safety Committees to address the homicide rate by bringing together community leaders and law enforcement officials to help direct resources to high-crime areas.
Ginther also proposed two new 35-member police recruit classes and vowed that, by 2020, half of all “frontline, community-facing” police officers will have received the crisis intervention training currently being given to all new recruits.
He also calls for establishment of an 11-member a Community Safety Advisory Committee to advise on training, policies and procedures with the assistance of an independent consultant.
Ginther will release the full proposed 2018 General Fund budget on November 14, according to his office.