COLUMBUS, Ohio — Owning a business, like anything, requires to give and take.
Just ask Crystal Alward.
“I guess just flexibility,” she said of what she loves about running a business. “You never know what’s gonna come your way and it’s different all the time.”
Alward has owned Porter’s Coffee House in Pickerington for the last three years. To her, the community and the people she serves are everything. It’s why she feels the need to be a barista of better decisions.
“I think that it’s important that we demand better,” she said.
Two weeks ago Alward posted to Facebook. It was a PSA, of sorts, for parents to remind their children of how to act in public. With the post, she also posted a picture of a hole in her business’s glass, which was the apparent work of a BB gun.
It’s a problem Pickerington is seeing more and more.
“Probably more than 10,” Pickerington Police Commander Greg Annis said.
In the past month, Annis says it’s happened close to a dozen times.
“We’ve responded to multiple situations where not only things like Orbeez guns are being used, but also gel blasters, airsoft rifles, [air] pistols as well as BB guns,” he said.
Orbeez guns are toy guns much like BB or airsoft guns that shoot gel or water beads. Annis says teens are finding ways to make them even more dangerous than they sound.
“We do have people who are actually taking those Orbeez pellets and freezing them,” he said.
On top of that, he says some of the targets are innocent people on the side of the road and businesses. Annis likens it to drive-by shootings.
These types of incidents, he says, are currently a problem nationwide. A Google search shows multiple pages of incidents reported by news organizations in the last couple of months.
“Parents, just please have your kids understand really about how serious this is,” Annis said.
Alward says the two holes in her shop’s glass likely will cost thousands of dollars to replace.
“However that message gets to where kids know…we’re paying attention,” she said. “We’re gonna demand better. We’re gonna expect better.”