Latest killings prompt call for action
City leaders united: ‘We need your help’
As gray skies filtered through the windows of the Columbus municipal building atrium Wednesday, city leaders — weary and emotional from an unthinkable triple homicide less than 24 hours earlier — put it plainly:
“We need your help. We need your participation,” said Columbus Public Safety Director Robert Clark. “We need you to not treat this as a normal day in the city of Columbus.”
Assistant Police Chief Lashanna
Potts made a similar plea hours earlier on Tuesday, speaking to media near the crime scene over the cries of the mother who’d just learned her children had been taken from her in part of what police later described as a targeted assassination.
Police said that 9-year-old Demetrius Wall-neal and his little sister, 6-year-old Londynn Wall-neal, along with 22year-old Charles Wade, had just gotten into a car Tuesday evening at a Southeast Side apartment complex when two gunmen approached the parked vehicle and fired dozens of rounds before fleeing.
“We need the community to help us. This gun violence has got to stop.” Potts said at the scene. “...This should be an outrage to this community, and we have
to say enough is enough.”
Officials have made similar calls to action in recent days and months as the city’s death toll rises in another recordsetting year of homicides.
But what exactly should the community — individuals, local groups and nonprofits, faith leaders and businesses — do?
“It’s almost as if we’ve reached the point where we can’t even answer questions any more. We have to form a whole new way of being,” said the Rev. Tim Ahrens, senior minister at First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ in Downtown Columbus
“Everyone is frustrated,” said Bishop Timothy Clarke, senior pastor of First Church of God on the Southeast Side. “Frustrated in the sense that this is not the Columbus many of us have known, but it is the Columbus we are becoming if we don’t do something.
“The question of what we should do is as varied as the people you ask,” Clarke said.
Coordinating efforts
Community leaders have joined the calls of Clarke, Mayor Andrew J. Ginther and Police Chief Elaine Bryant, urging anyone with information about Tuesday’s triple homicide or any other violent crime to come forward to detectives.
Beyond that, there are numerous efforts throughout the city and its communities to address and prevent violence, said Malissa Thomas-st. Clair, founder of Mothers of Murdered Columbus Children. Her organization hosts violence-prevention rallies and offers support to what she calls the “unfortunate sisterhood” of mothers who have lost children to violence in Columbus.
But getting those various groups to work in tandem to tackle the city’s violence problem can be a challenge, she said.
“Everyone’s doing something, but we’re not doing it in a collective effort,” Thomas-st. Clair said. “I think that a lot of organizations are trying to figure out, ‘How do we collectively unify?’ That’s the brick wall we’ve hit right now.”
On Wednesday, Ginther called on community members to “raise your hand and volunteer as a mentor for atrisk youth,” urged local business leaders to specifically hire young people in the community and asked faith leaders to welcome at-risk youth into their congregations and faith communities.
Much of that is already occurring, Clarke said.
“We have to do more of it,” he said. “We have to be much more intentional, much more strategic, and, I think, consistent.”
Bringing back block watches
As calls mount to “see something, say something,” Thomas-st. Clair and Clarke envision the return of neighborhood block watches and volunteer patrols like those that flourished in the 1980s.
“We cannot hide those who bring this kind of violence and pain into our community,” Clarke said, adding that he has noticed more communities saying, “We have to look out for ourselves.”
Thomas-st. Clair remembers the block watches and neighborhood meetings of her youth and believes similar efforts could help today.
“The neighborhoods were unified, first and foremost,” she said. “That street was a family.”
When people have their cup of coffee in the morning, Thomas-st. Clair urged, they should open the curtains and look out in the neighborhood. Those who are able-bodied and can spare the time, should consider siting in the car and standing by at the neighborhood bus
stop to make sure kids get on board safely; residents should keep their porch lights on at night, she said.
“We have veered so far away from the culture of families within our neighborhoods,” she said. “... If we just bring back the culture of family, when you’re un-biologically connected, that would be a phenomenal start.”
Finding common ground
On a fundamental level, the community must come together and revisit what they have in common, leaders said.
“The root word of community is common,” Clarke said. “There are many more things we have in common . ... We all want our children to grow up. We all want our children to be safe. We all want to live in a community that we’re proud of. Let’s find unity around what we have in common.”
Part of that shared humanity means communicating with others, finding a path forward where people can use words instead of guns, Ahrens said.
“Words have been replaced by guns,” he said. “And guns are fired instead of words.”
City and community leaders seem to agree that stemming the violence in Columbus cannot fall to just one group, person or entity.
“The call to action is that we stop playing the blame game and begin to collectively, as a community at large, start to participate in proactive, consistent action,” Thomas-st. Clair said.
Ahrens, too, stressed the need for collaboration.
“I really do believe that it will take all of us, working together,” he said. jsmola@dispatch.com @jennsmola