Emails to Columbus mayor’s new account a mixed bag
An email account set up by Mayor Andrew J. Ginther as a way for citizens to report allegations of misconduct by Columbus police received more than 700 emails in its first week.
More than 400 of the emails sent to the account were complaints of excessive force being used by officers, such as pepper spraying crowds or individuals who say they were sitting down or walking away. Dozens of the complaints are from people who saw something happen on a livestream or posted about on social media but did not witness firsthand.
But the account also received more than 230 emails in support of police, 116 of which were critical of Ginther’s handling of the situation. There were 27 emails from spouses or other family members concerned about the safety of officers.
One city police officer even wrote in. He said he had been hit multiple times by frozen water bottles and bricks thrown by protesters.
The emails, submitted between June 1 and June 8, were obtained by The Dispatch through a public-records request and then reviewed by the newspaper.
According to Ginther’s office, the complaints are going to be addressed on a case-by-case basis by the Department of Public Safety with a team of people that includes the Rev. Eric Brown from Woodland Christian Church.
All complaints will be reviewed, not just first-hand accounts, to try and get a comprehensive view of what happened, Ginther’s office said. The complaints were separate from any filed with the Police Division’s internal affairs bureau.
The emails received by the account include personal experiences of protesters, with photographs and selfie videos showing people being pepper sprayed or shot with rubber or wooden bullets.
“They were all too happy to shoot tear gas, mace and rubber bullets into the peaceful crowd,” one protester wrote. “This is not the city I grew up in.”
The account received 41 email complaints about the pepper spraying of Ohio State University student journalists from The Lantern. Video and photographs show that they displayed their media identification — journalists were exempt from Ginther’s curfew order — and were told “I don’t care” by one Columbus police officer. Moments later, they were sprayed.
Three dozen messages were received about a photo purporting to show a Columbus police officer spraying a man with his hands up near the intersection of Broad and High streets, the epicenter of many of the protest standoffs.
A total of 20 emails were related to the pepper spraying of U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Jefferson Township. Several of the emails regarding Beatty ask for her to be investigated, saying she appears in some videos and photos to be hitting a police officer prior to the spray.
Another 18 messages referenced a YouTube video showing a woman standing in the middle of Broad Street with a sign who was shot with a wooden bullet.
One protester said a “single water bottle” hurled at police resulted in an “entire crowd being bombed with tear gas” in response.
Others said they were told to leave and attempted to do so, only to end up being sprayed with pepper spray or mace.
A woman who said she was at the protests emailed to say she no longer trusts police after what she saw during the height of the downtown demonstrations.
“If police are so fearful of the public that they must use tear gas, pepper spray and rubber and wooden bullets to manage a peaceful protest, they need to be removed from their jobs,” she wrote. “Their insecurity led them to lead with violence and brutality.”
The emails supporting police paint a different picture, with some who wrote arguing that police should have acted sooner against protesters and demanding the prosecution of everyone caught on video throwing things at officers.
“The city and its mayor has condemned CPD and laid them out as an offering to the protesters,” wrote a woman who said she is married to a police officer. “There were calls coming in from all over the city from civilians in need of help and those had to go unanswered.”
Another police spouse accused Ginther of being a “coward.”
“If anything happens to these officers their blood will be on your hands,” she wrote.
A Columbus police officer wrote in a June 1 email that he had worked downtown every night of the protests up to that point.
“Every evening that I was Downtown, large gatherings of ‘peaceful protesters’ were taunting us, throwing frozen water bottles at us and also throwing bricks at us,” the officer wrote. “While standing on (the police) line, cars would turn their high beams on and accelerate their vehicles towards us and at the last second make a abrupt turn away from us, then throw items at us.”
The officer said he was “disgusted by the response that we have received from our city leaders. I am ashamed that it has become normal for citizens to abuse and assault us every day in this city.”
There were 62 unrelated emails submitted, including complaints about police matters unaffiliated with the protests, concerns about the spread of the coronavirus during the protests and some emails with nothing attached.
Several emails came from the adult store Adam and Eve and from HGTV’s Smart Home Giveaway. The city’s email address appears to have been registered on those sites by an outside party or parties as a joke. Some of those unrelated emails said they were for a person named “Karen Snitch.”
The inbox also had recipes from the Food Network for hamburger stroganoff, stuffed spaghetti squash and homemade ravioli.