The video is hard to watch: teens and young adults hitting, kicking and stomping on a man. The man in the video survived and Columbus police officers caught the people responsible. But the surveillance video tells a deeper, darker story about the emergence of something called ‘squads’, and police say you find them around the city.
Sgt. Chantay Boxill says the beating was the work of squad members. “Every week there's a new one popping up there are some well-established ones. I'd say we have 10 to 15 well-established ones,” Boxill explains. She has been with the CPD Intelligence Unit for almost a decade.
She knows the streets, the groups who claim to own them and the toll they take.
In the world Boxill polices day in and day out, a squad is a type of gang. She says squads have younger members and “violence we have seen from these squads is like nothing I had experienced in the past.”
The violence - or glorification of it - sometimes gets a social media spotlight. A post Boxill's team found included two teenagers waving guns and talking tough.
From video to the streets, a group of teenage boys spoke with 10TV about squads.
“They'll fight and shoot and talk about it,” said one teen. He also said members could be as young as grade school age, including one as young as nine-years-old. Asked about what their role is in the squad, the teen responded, “they punch on people (and) break into houses.”
While speaking with 10TV’s Kristyn Hartman, someone drove onto the lot and parked nearby - noticeably distracting him. The 15-year-old, who originally asked 10TV to put him on TV, ended the interview by saying he didn’t want his name or face used. He said he wasn't in a squad -- just that he knew a lot about them.
It was the same situation for another teenager, whose mother allowed him to speak on camera. He says squads are more savage than a gang and they cannot be stopped.
Sgt. Boxill feels the same. "I don't think it will stop, but I think through education, we can show kids there's a better way.” At schools, she tells people there are just two outcomes to the worst of squad violence: the morgue or prison. “As an African American female, I would like to see our youth grow up (and) go to college. My mission is to make people more aware of the violence (and) how violence affects everyone. These are not throwaway kids.”
Sgt. Boxill has advice for parents: Know your kids’ friends. Be aware of what they’re doing on social media. Pictures and even use of the word “squad” could be clues to dangerous behavior.