Alicia Franklin's 4-year-old son is terrified to go outside most days during the daylight hours due to the almost constant sound of gunfire and occasional shouting coming from a location about 500 yards from their Lincoln Heights home. Her oldest son, who is 10, struggles to concentrate on the schoolwork he is doing remotely during the pandemic due to the noise.
Calling law enforcement wouldn't do any good for Franklin or her neighbors. The police are the ones doing the firing.
Since 1947, the Cincinnati Police Department has operated a firing range and training facility at 10139 Spartan Drive, which sits between the municipalities of Evendale, Lincoln Heights and Woodlawn.
On a recent weekday shortly after noon, the fusillade of pops and bangs bounced off the ranch-style houses that line Prairie Avenue in Lincoln Heights and the neat lines of apartments in nearby Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority development Marianna Terrace.
"For more than 30 years, I've heard these gunshots," Franklin says. "My kids have to deal with this all day, every day. They can't just go out and play when they want to. I'm a stay-at-home parent who works from home. I hear these gunshots while I'm on calls all day. This is unfair to the community. It's time for this gun range to go."
Residents of Lincoln Heights and the other communities bordering the range have long complained about the noise. But recently, the push to have the site relocated has intensified. The mayors of the three municipalities asked the city in July to close up shop and move somewhere farther from residential areas.
Hamilton County Commissioners have offered the city help in moving the gun range, and some Cincinnati City Council members are joining the push to relocate it.
Cincinnati Council held a hearing Oct. 6 about the possibility of moving the range. Some council members have even toured a potential alternative location.
Cincinnati police indicate they’re open to moving the range if a suitable location can be found. CPD officials say vital training that helps officers respond to situations like the 2018 Fifth Third shooting downtown takes place at the range and it simply can’t be closed.
But residents and elected officials in Lincoln Heights, Woodlawn and Evendale say there are numerous reasons the range should be moved — and quickly.
University of Cincinnati Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Professor Brian Earl calls the noise from the range so close to residential areas “too much.” Earl says he took a sound meter on a tour of the area around the range and found noise regularly exceeded 85 decibels — the level at which sound becomes harmful to human ears.
"I was able to be an ear witness when I got a tour of the neighborhood,” he says. “We have an acoustic reflex when our ears tell us it's too much. My ears were doing that.”
Earl said he was concerned about the psychological effects of the shooting sounds on young people around the range.
Many residents and elected officials have raised concerns about the trauma of hearing gunfire so regularly, saying it likely causes what experts call adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. Those experiences contribute to behavioral and learning challenges throughout a person’s lifetime.
"If the children can be accustomed to silence, to family laughter, we've done something," Earl says.
Princeton City Schools Superintendent Tom Burton has similar concerns. Some of the district’s students live near the range.
"Each one of our students deserves an environment that is conducive for learning,” he says. “Our students are hearing gunfire throughout the day. That's not OK. We know the trauma that causes."
Beyond the psychological issues that could stem from exposure to gunfire, there are also potential physical impacts, including lead exposure from spent rounds.
Center for Closing the Health Gap President and CEO Renee Mahaffey Harris is concerned about that potential.
"Lincoln Heights’ gun range has not been assessed in 80 years,” she says. “Lead poisons the soil, poisons the water and emits particles into the air."
There are other concerns as well. Evendale Mayor Richard Finan says the range’s 30 acres would be much better put to use as a manufacturing facility that could provide jobs for nearby residents. The range technically sits in Evendale’s jurisdiction.
"A gun range is not the highest and best use of this property,” Finan says. “We're not too impacted by the noise, but the economic side of it is this is a valuable property right alongside I-75.”
A number of attempts have been made to convince the city to move the range, but those have stalled in the past. Then-police union President Keith Fangman pushed back against an effort by Cincinnati officials to move the range in 1999, calling it a “smokescreen” to aid Lincoln Heights in annexing the land the range was on for economic development.
But now CPD officials say they're open to relocating it if a suitable replacement site can be found. Moving the range could be on the table, but so could enclosing it — a $2.9 million project, according to city reports.
Hamilton County Commissioners recently passed a motion advocating for the relocation of the gun range.
Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld says it will take more work to nail down how to move the range, but pledged to make sure that happens. It could take federal help, too. Sittenfeld says both U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman are engaged in the conversation around moving the range.
“We’ll be meeting again soon to distill what needs to be done, what funding needs to be secured, to move forward with this,” Sittenfeld said at the conclusion of the Oct. 6 hearing.
"I understand the importance of having a gun range where our Cincinnati Police Department’s 1,000 members can practice target shooting and where the K-9 units are trained,” Councilwoman Jan-Michele Kearney, who convened the Oct. 6 hearing, said last month. "But it must not be located in a residential area. We are harming the neighboring communities, and that must stop. We know that Black and Brown communities are more likely to be victimized by environmental hazards, adding to the higher rates of health problems. The gun range is yet another example.”
Lincoln Heights was one of the first predominantly Black municipalities in the country when it incorporated under Black leadership in 1947 — the same year the gun range opened — and today almost nine in 10 of its residents are Black. Like many small municipalities, it has struggled with revenue issues and other troubles, but those have been compounded by the fact that the land Lincoln Heights' founders were allowed by Hamilton County to incorporate did not include factories and other tax revenue-generating industry sought during an earlier 1939 incorporation attempt. That first attempt was stymied by the opposition of the community's white neighbors.
Despite that, Lincoln Heights still thrived for a time as its residents found gainful employment in the area's bustling industrial corridor. But that began to change in the 1970s and 1980s as deindustrialization began. Unemployment rose, tax revenues fell, and Lincoln Heights suffered population loss and poverty even as nearby suburbs boomed.
Throughout Lincoln Heights' rise and decline, the shooting range has been a constant.
"Gunfire has been the soundtrack of our entire lives," Lincoln Heights resident Carlton Collins says. "We need to understand that there are maybe 10,000 people who can hear these gunshots. Enough is enough."
Collins is a member of The Heights Movement, a community advocacy group seeking to boost Lincoln Heights and its residents. One specific goal of the organization: Get the gun range moved and use the land to benefit Lincoln Heights.
Collins, along with Heights Movement Vice President Daronce Daniels and other advocates, held a news conference outside Cincinnati City Hall Sept. 17.
The event also drew leaders from the Greater Cincinnati Urban League, Princeton City School District and other groups to express support for the drive to relocate the range.
Daniels, an educator and coach at Princeton, said that he heartily supports police training, but that keeping the gun range in the area is not an option.
"You're asking another generation of kids hearing gunshots and explosions and police yelling 'shoot, shoot' while they're trying to concentrate on school," Daniels said.
