By Rick Rouan and Beth Burger, The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS – Columbus police are defending one safety initiative and ending another.
The controversial police summer safety initiative that protest groups want to change was successful this year, Columbus officials say.
At the same time, the division is reportedly planning to discontinue most sobriety checkpoints.
City officials have vowed to look at changes to the 12-year-old summer anti-crime effort, which focuses police officers on high-crime areas of the city. The program has been the subject of protests both outside and inside City Hall by groups demanding answers for the police shooting deaths of Henry Green and Tyre King.
READ MORE: In The Columbus Dispatch
“We are not discarding the program,” Mayor Andrew J. Ginther said Wednesday. “As with all programs, the community safety initiative will continue to evolve and will reflect the expectations of the community — the whole community.”
Councilman Mitch Brown said in a report about the initiative released Wednesday that it is among the city’s most-successful police enforcement strategies. Brown, who was the city’s safety director when the initiative started, declined a request for an interview through a spokeswoman.
On Monday, members of the Columbus City Council and the People’s Justice Project, one of the protest groups, said they would work together to develop changes to the program.
The group’s Tammy Fournier-Alsaada says she’s encouraged by a recommendation that suggests a policy in which plainclothes officers work in direct proximity to uniformed officers. She also says the program should include a focus on the wellbeing of families and not just arrests.
Police say Green was shot June 6, during the summer initiative, after he ignored the commands of two plainclothes officers to drop his gun and fired on them.
Columbus City Council president Zach Klein has said he’s committed to reevaluating the program.
Public Safety Director Ned Pettus said the city could turn the initiative into a yearlong program to reduce gang violence and use some of the money previously earmarked for it to recruit more minorities for the city’s police and fire divisions. But Ginther said any changes would have to go through him.
Ginther must introduce his budget proposal for next year by November 15.
Meanwhile, the Division of Police dismantled its task force responsible for sobriety checkpoints after the police chief declined to accept grant funds, multiple sources confirmed to The Dispatch Wednesday.
READ MORE: In The Columbus Dispatch
“It is with great disappointment that I report to you that Columbus Division of Police no longer has a formal OVI task force,” Traffic Bureau Sgt. Michael Smith told law enforcement partners in an internal email leaked to The Dispatch. “By order of Chief Jacobs, grant funding has been declined to fund future sobriety checkpoint operations.”
The email, which was sent out Tuesday, did not state why Columbus Police Chief Kimberley Jacobs decided to decline funding.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Jacobs was unavailable for comment and did not respond to an email with questions. A spokesperson said she is the only person who would be able to explain the decision.
In recent years, Columbus police have accepted nearly $225,000 in grant funds to conduct checkpoints each year.
Checkpoints typically take several hours and sometimes require 10 to 12 officers if volunteers are not used, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.
“[Columbus police] just feel it wasn’t an appropriate use of funds and manpower,” said Michael Brining, a law enforcement officer liaison for the Ohio Traffic Safety Office.