Standing in Over-the-Rhine’s Grant Park — the recent location of one of the largest mass shootings in Cincinnati history — Mayor John Cranley and Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac revealed their plan to reduce gun violence and “stop the bleeding,” said Isaac.
“The levels of gun violence we’re seeing across the country and here are unacceptable,” said Cranley.
The City of Cincinnati has reported 68 homicides so far this year. In all of 2019, there were 72.
The $1 million plan proposed Thursday would divide funding between increasing police presence, creating a group of community safety organizers and paying for a second Cincinnati-focused special assistant U.S. Attorney. (The city is already paying for one — housed in the U.S. Attorney’s office — who coordinates prosecutions for federal gun charges, said former City Solicitor now City Manager Paula Boggs Muething, and this plan will expand that.)
“Whenever we can, we want to do more to reduce gun violence by supporting our police with more resources to have more presence, more officers in hot spot areas like Grant Park, to deter crime and to build relationships with the community…and also work with federal prosecutors to bring illegal gun charges that lead to longer prison sentences in federal prison,” Cranley said.
Last week, the city got $7.7 million from the state of Ohio and is currently slated to pay back a loan it took out to balance the budget within the next 60 days.
“One million dollars isn’t even close to enough to deal with the level of gun violence that we have,” Cranley said. “But it’s all we can afford.”
Of that million, $100,000 would go to the special assistant U.S. Attorney position, $200,000 would go to the creation of community safety groups and $700,000 would go to pay for police overtime, including adding police on bicycles and on foot to hot spot areas.
But, Chief Isaac said, this cannot be a law-enforcement only effort.
“We know that our citizens want to help and they desire to be involved in changing what’s taking place in our city,” he said, going on to describe how he envisions the role of the community safety groups.
He said the groups will focus on helping the most troubled neighborhoods, informing problem solving teams, mobilizing residents and business owners to participate in safety activities and coordinating safety events and activities.
“Right now, we have to stop the bleeding. (If) we know that violence is taking place in a specific location, we have to respond to that situation as quickly as possible. Then we need to invest in what changes communities — investing in education, investing in jobs, investing in housing. Those things are the type of things that make long-term change,” Isaac said.
“We want to help neighborhoods be able to organize and develop long-term solutions that make lasting change in their neighborhoods.”
Cranley also co-authored a report with the United States Conference of Mayors on police reform and racial justice, which he referenced during the press conference. He wants CPD to review that document and issue a response to it within 60 days.
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This article appears in The Meaning of Monuments.