COLUMBUS, Ohio - Combining the efforts of community groups with hard data is a key to combating a wave of violence that has claimed more than 60 lives in Columbus so fare this year.
City officials say they will rely heavily on crime statistics to map out "hot spots" where crime appears to be flaring up, then increase prevention efforts there.
"From that, we can say 'OK, this is a hot spot location, we have a lot of homicides and we have a lot of crime, etc., located in this particular three-block area.' Well this is a hot-spot location because this is where a lot of the crime is happening," Napoleon Bell, Executive Director of the Columbus Community Relations Commission said.
The NAACP, which hosted a town hall-style meeting on stopping the violence Thursday night, hopes the human element does not get lost amid the statistics.
"We need to engage certain communities as opposed to just rushing in and throwing the hammer down," said Noel Williams, president of the Columbus chapter of the civil rights group.
The NAACP has been hosting "safe communities" meetings since June of 2009, meetings which have been attended by police and other city officials.
Bell says the city is taking a "holistic" to reducing violent crime, which has claimed more than 60 lives in Columbus so far in 2010.
"We've got to look at how we can strategically pull people together to address the issue: the different non-profits, the different service providers, those people who are doing great things out there but nobody really knows about but one doesn't know about the other," Bell said.
One of the keys to the city's strategy is working with the Youth Violence Prevention Advisory Board at OSU, of which both Bell and Williams are members, to come up with a program similar to Chicago's "Operation Cease Fire," which was credited with reducing gun violence in that city by approaching the problem as a public health issue.
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