COLUMBUS, Ohio — After the mass shooting in the Short North, the city of Columbus promised to make some changes to increase safety in the neighborhood.
Those changes included adding more officers, more security cameras and enforcing a curfew.
On Monday, 10TV requested the number of officers in the Short North compared to before the additions were made, along with the number of curfew violations.
10TV received the following response Tuesday afternoon:
“While we do not share specific numbers in terms of our personnel I can tell you that, as always, the amount of officers present will be determined based on the assessed need. I’m told there have been a small amount of violators of the long-standing curfew but no significant incidents to report,” read an email from Jennifer Watson, a spokesperson for the Columbus Division of Police.
The city’s Office of Violence Prevention is a little more than a year old and is led by Rena Shak. Shak’s office is tasked with looking at the city’s crime and how to stop it. Before leading the office, Shak spent more than a decade working in the criminal justice system and has noticed the changes in crime trends.
“Reducing gun violence is our number one core tenant of this office and making sure tragedies like last weekend do not happen,” Shak said. “Back when I began my career, if somebody was involved in gun violence, it could be assumed there was gang involvement or drug involvement. Now the numbers have completely changed.”
Shak said a majority of the gun-related incidents are due to conflicts and arguments between two people.
“It is more of this one-on-one dispute. We’re arguing and the way to stop that people are finding is to reach for their guns and that’s deadly for everybody,” she said.
Part of the job of the Office of Crime Prevention is to identify the people who may become violent and intervene before they do. Shak said they work to provide resources, but they also have a number of “crime interrupters.”
The city has contracted two interrupter organizations: End the Violence and Columbus Urban League.
A spokesperson for the office also mentioned Columbus Violence Reduction and Community for New Directions are a couple of the groups with interventionists. Columbus Recreation and Parks and Columbus Public Health also have trained interventionists.
“Those are really boots-on-the-ground individuals who have lived experience and are able to hear about things before they even happen. They’re able to stand in, they’re trained as mediators, they’re trained to try and mitigate any type of retaliation,” Shak said.
Columbus’ Office of Violence Prevention was formed in March 2023 and has seen immense growth since its start.
“For the last year what we’ve done is try to get community input on how the violence prevention resources need to operate to be the most effective for the community we serve,”
She said for the rest of 2024 and early 2025, they will be looking at what’s working, what isn’t and where they need to focus the most to try and curb crime in Columbus.