‘Suffering on Sullivant’ demands community response
Now that our eyes have been opened to it, we can’t unsee the tremendous suffering on Sullivant Avenue. The question begging to be answered is how we will respond.
And the “we” here needs to be huge — a forceful and committed contingent that can bring resources, wisdom and energy to systematically confront issues of abandoned houses, drug addiction, prostitution and poverty.
“Suffering on Sullivant,” a Sunday-through-tuesday Dispatch series last week, drew long-needed attention to the crime-infested corridor along this 3-mile stretch from the west bank of the Scioto River, on the fringes of Downtown, through the Bottoms and up the Hilltop to Hague Avenue.
The stories written by reporters Holly Zachariah, Mike Wagner, Bethany Bruner and Jim Woods revealed more than most of us ever wanted to know about the dehumanizing existence of many who are drawn to this area and caught in its web of addiction-bred ills.
The reporting was illuminated by frank and disturbing lessons shared by Columbus police officers and community activists who know the area best.
“Drugs are at the root of 100% of our problems,” we learned from Lt. David Griffith in a Hilltop substation roll call, who added, “The narcotics breed everything else.”
“The concentration of dilapidated and vacant housing, that environment, precipitates the lifestyle here,” said Sgt. Fred Brophy, part of a Safe Streets community policing initiative to try to deal more proactively with the corridor’s crime.
“As Franklinton gentrifies, we’re seeing a migration of the women on the street moving farther and farther west down Sullivant,” said Esther Flores, an advocate and registered nurse who offers drop-in care with clothing, meals and encouragement to those just trying to survive.
What the reporters saw for themselves and learned from those who live and work along the crippled corridor was more than backed up in statistics culled by data editor Doug Caruso and researcher Julie Fulton. Also working on the series were reporter Patrick
Cooley, photographers Kyle Robertson and Doral Chenoweth and web producer Rebecca Reis.
Consider the portrait seen in statistics about this struggling neighborhood:
• More than half of all Columbus prostitution arrests in 2018 and the first half of this year, 965 of the 1,880 total, occurred on or near Sullivant Avenue.
• Naloxone was administered for opioid overdoses more often in this area than anywhere else in Franklin County, at the rate of 1 for every 18 people in a Franklinton ZIP code and 1 for every 57 people in a Hilltop ZIP code.
• The area has more than 1,000 vacant houses, with