COLUMBUS – A report has found that Columbus was unprepared for the size and energy of last year’s protests over racial injustice and police brutality.
The report, conducted by former U.S. Attorney Carter Stewart and Ohio State University’s John Glenn College of Public Affairs, says once protests began in late May there was a lack of coordination and regular communication between city leaders and police command, and between the highest levels of command within the Division of Police and lower ranks.
The report released Monday also said most police officers felt abandoned by city leadership during the protests and often received conflicting orders about crowd management and appropriate levels of force.
“Before the summer of 2020, [officers] recalled being praised as the best police department in the country. Once the protests started, police felt vilified as being racists and out of control during the summer. They also felt that their own leaders were paralyzed and didn’t allow them to execute the tactics they were trained to use,“ the report stated.
From late-May to mid-July, approximately 1400 officers were deployed and 147 protesters were arrested, the report found.
The report said that division-wide training on dealing with civil unrest had not been conducted since 2015 and that officer morale was universally described as low.
“Police felt that elected leaders removed key tools for crowd control without consulting them and in ways that made physical conflict [with demonstrators] more likely,” the report found.
The investigation was commissioned by Columbus City Council and funded from the Division of Police’s Drug Asset Seizure Fund.
Columbus City Council Monday night approved 11 members of a civilian review board, which will oversee police operations and appoint an inspector-general. The review board was approved by voters in the wake of the summer’s protests and a number of officer-involved shootings.