A Crime Prevention Task Force report nearly a year in the making is complete.
Task force chairman Leroy Brooks, who serves as District 5 Lowndes County supervisor, presented the report to the city council on Tuesday and provided copies to local media on Wednesday.
Former mayor Robert Smith formed the task force in January and asked Brooks — who has led similar efforts in the past — to serve as chair. The task force of community members broke into four subcommittees that each offered recommendations in the final report: law enforcement enhancement, education; community revitalization and recreation/youth development.
“It’s been a blast,” Brooks told the council on Tuesday. “We’ve enjoyed working together. Any time you can get citizens coming together to address some of their own problems, you’re certainly farther on down the road.”
Brooks said the report offered a practical approach to addressing crime and other issues in the city, but he warned it was “not a panacea,” rather an acknowledgment of and response to those issues put together by “people who have seen it and felt it.”
“They came with a heartfelt desire to put forth ideas that hopefully will help the community,” he said.
Brooks also asked the council to allow the task force to remain in place as a liaison to the community and police department in implementing its recommendations.
“Crime prevention is not something the police department is going to solve alone,” Brooks said. “The mayor and city council can implement all kinds of policies. It is a shared responsibility. If you want to make your neighborhood or your community better, you’ve got to be a part of what we’re trying to do.”
The report
The report’s most robust and detailed recommendations came from the law enforcement enhancement committee, which set a goal of reducing crime in Columbus by 25 percent per year.
To do that, it recommends recruitment and retention strategies, including incentive bonuses, that will build up the force to 70 officers. It also suggests forming stronger partnerships with other law enforcement agencies, such as Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office, and implementing a more data-driven approach to enforcement and prevention.
Columbus police need urgent technology upgrades, including replacing its analog radios with digital equipment, as well as a designated training officer who will also focus on collecting data.
Other recommendations included bolstering neighborhood watch programs, establishing substations and creating opportunities for officers to interact more often with citizens, and forming a volunteer police service of civilians to help with fingerprinting and small administrative tasks so officers could spend more of their shifts in the field.
In community revitalization, the report suggests a more aggressive approach to abating blight — calling dilapidated structures and overgrown lots “safe havens” for criminal activity. It also recommends community partnerships and forming organizations that will help keep neighborhoods looking nice.
The report recommends improving the condition of all city parks. The education subcommittee, led by Columbus Municipal School District Superintendent Cherie Labat, submitted for its report a “Truthful Eyes” study of Lowndes County — compiled by the Children’s Defense Fund-Southern Regional Office — that links education outcomes to poverty and geography.
Mayor Keith Gaskin told The Dispatch on Wednesday he has reviewed the report but still needs to study it deeper. He called it a “good jumping-off point” for addressing crime issues in the city, and he supports hosting town hall meetings that allow citizens to review and ask questions regarding the findings.
“When you have information like this and you’re trying to learn from it, you have to get the community involved,” Gaskin said. “This type of information is too important not to try to move forward.”
Police survey
The report also included an anonymous survey of Columbus police officers that addressed topics ranging from crime causes to department needs and morale.
Only 31 of the 55 officers employed at CPD at the time responded to the survey, but most of those who did gave low marks to department morale. Moreover, almost half rated community support for CPD at “moderate” or “not at all.”
Gaskin said he wants to revisit that survey and try to get more officer responses to gather more data. However, he acknowledged the CPD force is young and has experienced high turnover in recent years.
The police department also needs better tools, including digital radios, better vehicles and other technology upgrades, because it is “simply not in the 21st century.”
“Keeping morale up in the police department in times like this is difficult, not just in Columbus, but everywhere,” Gaskin said. “There’s room for improvement, obviously.”
Police Chief Fred Shelton said he believes low officer pay and lack of adequate equipment are driving low morale at CPD. He is trying to create a better working environment through officer promotions and adding two police chaplains that give devotionals and ride along occasionally with officers.
CPD offers more training now for new officers, Shelton said, but he wants to provide more leadership training for his young staff — something Brooks offered Tuesday to lead.
“I want to talk to Supervisor Brooks more about that,” Shelton told The Dispatch. “With a lot of young officers, you have a lot of young leaders who have not had a lot of formal leadership training.”
Overall, Shelton called the task force report “a good assessment” but urged community patience in effectively implementing strategies from it.
“It didn’t get broke overnight, and it won’t get fixed overnight,” he said.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 35 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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