Columbus Ohio Cease Fire

The Boston Herald reports

Gun violence in Ohio is costing scores of lives and millions of dollars annually across the state, though much of it happens in the largest cities, according to a newspaper analysis published Sunday.

The Columbus Dispatch analyzed state records and data from 2009, which offer the most recent statewide statistics available. It found guns were present in more than 12,500 incidents investigated by authorities, an average of 34 per day. Four-fifths of those happened in seven of Ohio’s largest cities: Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown.

The numbers illustrate the scope of gun violence, but it’s an incomplete picture because the crime data was submitted voluntarily by agencies that cover only about 70 percent of Ohio’s population.

Now that's an interesting idea. The crime data is incomplete. That means it's worse than they say.

Such crimes have prompted Deanna Wilkinson, an Ohio State University associate professor who studies youth violence, to seek a federal grant to start a Columbus version of the CeaseFire gun violence reduction program, which uses former offenders to help keep conflicts from escalating into violence.

"This exposure (to gun violence), whether you’re involved or not involved, it’s having a negative impact on the quality of life for the whole entire city," Wilkinson said.

Columbus public safety director Mitchell Brown said he supports the proposal.

"We’ve got to try something different," Brown said. "We can’t have police officers on every corner. We all know that. It’s a societal issue."

Good for Deanna Wilkinson. God knows someone's got to help Ohio to not go the route of its flanking neighbors.

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