Kamal Karriem stood before the Columbus City Council and said that sometimes, it’s O.K. to change.
The council disagreed.
Karriem, a former councilman, spoke to the council Tuesday evening on behalf of 15 convenience store owners who wanted modifications to a new ordinance that limits convenience store hours.
The ordinance mandates a 10 p.m. close on Sunday through Thursday and 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday for some convenience stores in the city.
The council unanimously approved the proposed ordinance on Sept. 1. They voted unanimously to put it into effect Tuesday, after a 30-day waiting period.
The store owners requested reprieve from the early closing hours, asking for a one-hour extension to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and midnight on Friday and Saturday.
Ward 5 Councilman Kabir Karriem and Ward 4 Councilman Marty Turner wanted to extend hours on Friday and Saturday. The rest of the board voted down that proposal.
Kamal Karriem — who is Kabir Karriem’s brother — said many of the store owners felt the ordinance unfairly targeted them for problems that don’t happen in their stores.
Ward 6 Councilman Bill Gavin said the ordinance was created and passed as a result of community meetings held earlier in the year.
“The only thing that came up at every one of those meetings was that they had problems with the local stores staying open, people coming down and drinking late at night, making loud noise, loud music. People wanted that stopped,” Gavin said. “They attributed a lot of that activity to crime, so we were asked, as a council, to do something about the crime.”
Kamal said the store owners agreed that steps have to be taken to resolve issues with problematic stores. However, he said it was not fair to target every store that fit the ordinance’s specifications for problems that only happen at a few.
“To group the stores and just close them all at the same time — that’s not going to solve your crime problem,” Kamal Karriem said.
‘Something has to be done’
Kabir Karriem said he knew some stores, like OK Foods on Seventh Avenue, are problem areas. He said he walked into OK Foods recently and saw people gambling.
Still, he said he wasn’t sure how to address the problem without enacting the ordinance.
“I don’t know the best way to approach that, but I know something has to be done,” he said. “I don’t feel that the citizens I have to represent should have to put up with some of the debauchery and activities that are going on around this particular store.”
Kamal Karriem suggested further research to determine which stores are the problem spots.
The city had records of calls in the proximity of the targeted stores, but it was hard to tell how many incidents actually occurred on store premises. Columbus Police Department Assistant Chief Tony McQueen told the council he could not say how close incidents, as listed, were to the stores.
“What I did was I contacted our 911 office and told them, ‘Look, we’re looking for calls in that area,'” McQueen said. “As far as how many blocks out they went, I’m not sure how many — if they went four blocks or 10 blocks. We were just looking for some numbers in that general area.”
McQueen said the statistics were gathered in a period that stretched from April to a few weeks ago. He said they include arrests, disturbance calls and possession calls. (View accompanying chart for a breakdown.)
Kabir Karriem said he did not think the statistics painted a fair picture of what was happening at the convenience stores.
“Even with that argument, you could say Helen’s Kitchen got the same amount of stuff in the same area,” the councilman, whose family operates Helen’s Kitchen, said. “They would be fit in this category if we were up on the category. What I’m saying is, how many, at these particular stores, were the calls given or arrests made?
“What you just spewed out, I mean, how many happened at Walmart, or how many happened right here at the municipal complex?” he continued. “In the proximity, we could have those same statistics. I want to be fair as we move forward — those numbers are skewed.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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