Tuesday, Mayor Andrew Ginther and city leaders offered an update to the city’s comprehensive neighborhood safety strategy.
The plan was released six months ago with specific goals in place. Since then, the mayor and others have instituted several commissions and coalitions to combat violent crime across Columbus.
Mayor Ginther says entities like the Columbus community safety advisory commission, Violent Crime Review Group and CARE (Community, Action, Resilience and Empowerment) Coalition have made great strides in preventing and responding to traumatic crimes.
One of the major focuses for Ginther and the Columbus Division of Police is solving homicides. Chief Kim Jacobs says they have already seen improvement in capturing suspects and solving murders.
“It’s basically just giving our Homicide detectives more time to concentrate on those cases that are assigned to them, said Chief Jacobs. “We’re also going to send them to training, [and] give them some more information about how to use that. We’re also setting up for digital forensics help, so they can have better evidence.”
Chief Jacobs says, as of February, the department solved 62 from 2017, and named 79 suspects.