If Police Chief Joseph Daughtry wants people in Columbus to understand one thing, it’s this: The recent wave of shootings is not random.
“All of the shootings that we have, all of them, the victim knows the shooter,” Daughtry told the Columbus Exchange Club Thursday afternoon. “… We don’t have nobody running around the city just shooting. These are people who know each other.”
The problem Columbus Police Department investigators face is that people involved won’t talk, Daughtry said.
“One of the guys who got shot in the butt a couple days ago got shot at a week or so ago,” Daughtry said.
“When we asked him, he said he didn’t know who shot him. This time, he told us. We asked why he wouldn’t tell us before, and he said he thought (the issue) was over.”
Over the past weekend, CPD worked two shootings in which individuals were shot in the buttocks. No arrests have been made in either case.
People won’t talk because they don’t want to be seen as snitches, Daughtry said. It’s an argument he doesn’t have a lot of patience for.
“Snitching is when you are somebody who did a crime and you get caught and tell on people,” Daughtry said. “If somebody is shooting at you, or somebody is breaking into somebody’s house, calling the police is your civic duty. It’s their house today, but when it’s your house you’re going to be mad nobody said anything.”
Many shootings in town are committed by young people, Daughtry said. It’s not always clear where the guns come from, but at least some are from burglaries.
“People leave guns in their cars, even on the front seat, and leave their cars unlocked,” Daughtry said. “People used to break the window, but now they … pull on car doors to see if it opens. If it does, they go in it.”
Daughtry said all too often doors are unlocked.
“We want to do some education and go out and let people know they need to lock their vehicles,” Daughtry said. “Put away valuables. A lot of cities do something every night on social media at 9 p.m. to remind people to lock their cars.”
Education is a key part of the department’s plans for outreach, Daughtry said.
“A lot of community policing is education,” Daughtry said. “Crime is driven by opportunity. We’ll never be able to stop crime, but we can reduce it by educating the community on things they can do.”
Part of that education effort is resurrecting the old citizen police academy, Daughtry said, so citizens better understand how the department works.
“People come in from about 6-9 p.m. and learn different aspects of the police department,” Daughtry said. “911, the patrol division, you go to the range and shoot the various weapons that we have. In order to complete it you have to do a ride-along.”
The ride-along gives valuable insight about, for example, response times, he said.
“When you hear dispatch say go to 123 Mickey Mouse Lane, then the officer pulls up and there is no 123,” Daughtry said. “People make mistakes. When those things happen, we’ve got to correct it. But to the public, it’s the police’s fault.”
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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