Editor's Note: The following is a transcription of the Matter News podcast The Future of Policing in Columbus episode with Rena Shack, director of the Office of Violence Prevention, and City Council member Emmanuel Remy.
As we watch the news of gun violence, domestic violence, and youth violence increase, with expectations that it will escalate even more through the summer months, the question on everyone's mind is how to reverse this trend. In the 2023 budget for the city of Columbus, the first-ever Office of Violence Prevention was established within the mayor's office. Rena Shack was appointed its first director. City Council member Emmanuel Remy supported the restructuring as one of many strategies to combat the rising violence by addressing the root causes. In this episode, we'll hear from both Council Member Remy and Director Shak to hear how this strategy is being implemented to help make our city safer.
Interview with Emmanuel Remy
Prior to his position on the City Council, Emmanuel Remy served for six years as the president of the Northland Community Commission on City Council. He focuses on public safety, immigration, and the environment as a realtor and a dad of three children in Columbus City schools. He is grounded in this community and looks for a way to improve the quality of living for all residents.
Q Let me start by welcoming you today to the future of policing in Columbus, and we're really excited to have you here as the chairman of our Public Safety Committee at our Columbus City Council. What I'd like to do, you’ve only been a councilman for five years, but it's been a really intense five years. I have to acknowledge that. Very dynamic for our division of police and the city as a whole. I imagine it's sometimes frustrating, and I'd like you to start by giving us a sense of what drew you to this work and how you stayed motivated to look for solutions in these seemingly intractable problems.
A Well, thank you so much, Edie. And it's a real pleasure to be here today to talk a little bit more about public safety in the city of Columbus. You know, I started out as a neighborhood leader, and so that drew me towards this type of work. But most importantly, it's about my family, my children, my neighbors, and making sure that we have a safe city to live in. Everyone deserves the right to feeling safe in their own neighborhood. And so I'm excited to be in the role that I am currently as the chair of Public Safety because it allows me the opportunity to work very closely with new leadership at the Columbus Division of Police to make sure that our community is thriving. And so, you know, this is a good time to be in leadership in the city of Columbus. But as you mentioned, it's been an interesting five years, especially as it relates to public safety.
Q So this episode, we're digging into the issue of violence prevention, which of course speaks exactly to what you were just talking about in terms of families having a right to have safe neighborhoods. There's been a little bit of I would call it a Twitter debate over the data that tracks what we call safety in our city. And I'm wondering from where you sit in the position of leadership that you have, where do you get your data that you trust that looks at the crime rates in the city?
A Well, I'm fortunate to be a part of the National League of Cities, and most recently was on a panel in 21 and 22 that was a national panel serving with Mayor Scott from Baltimore and Mayor Holt from Oklahoma City as chairs and looking across this country what it means to, for instance, reimagine the safety. That gives us access to a lot of data along with our contract with the John Jay College In looking at, you know, statistics that are specifically tailored and driven from the city of Columbus. And so we work with our division to understand those numbers, but we also look at our outside consultants to look at what is going on specifically right here in the city of Columbus.
Q And do you or the council, do you have a public-facing place specifically designed to hold that data, or is that just something that's internal to your work?
A So some of the reporting that we've gotten back from the John Jay College, for instance. That is accessible online and through the Public Safety Department, but some of the stuff that we did is more real-time as we, you know, specific to briefings within the committee, nothing that is top secret. But certainly, you know, for instance, looking at the fact that domestic violence murders have risen to.. we've had 12 this year, which is significantly more than last year. That is critical. You know, it's really the reason that we should.. that that should drive public safety decisions. We could technologically do a better job of getting, disseminating that information out there. But again, I think that you've seen over the course of this new administration and this new leadership within the division that there is a rush to get information out to the public. That was something that council asked for as a result of 2020. And in many cases, when there's especially around officer-involved shootings, there have been, you know, within 24 hours, the release of body-worn camera footage, press conferences going over the details. And we believe that transparency is absolutely critical to the mission and making sure that our community feels, is trustful of the vision and what the work that's being done over there.
Q So let's get into the actual details of, maybe not the whole five years. I know council took a pretty deep dive into working with police militarization. There have been other bills passed that would support the efforts of the police to curtail violence. Can you let us now what is actually happening or has happened that maybe folks didn't notice or is about to happen regarding legislation? Or other council activities around violence prevention?
A Well, we're excited to work with Rena Shack and her team as she builds that out for the Office of Violence Prevention. That was one of the stipulations and requests that we made of the administration that this be taken into account as its own department. We believe it warrants its own leadership. I'm very confident in her leadership as she works to build this out for the city of Columbus. I want to make sure that we make the important distinction of what our role is as council members. We are the legislative body and so, you know, our responsibility. The administration that is the ones are the ones that actually do the work. So we do we you know, we pass the laws that protect the community and we fund those programs where we see an area of need to help accomplish the goals. We certainly know that it's not any one thing that we can do to solve violence within this community. It's a multitude of things. And we need to make sure that we're hitting on all cylinders in a way that effectively works towards prevention.
Q So tell us a little bit more about your vision for that Office of Violence Prevention. And I understand a little bit about how it came about, but others may not.
A Well, I think that looking at that, that department in particular, you know, we're going to rely on them. Back to the data collection, the reporting, the research. We want them to be the subject matter experts in this area and be able to turn to them for that information, which would lead to, you know, getting the information out to the public as well. But really, the coordination that they provide or we expect them to provide between the safety divisions or non-city partners and nonprofit organizations that are maybe doing the work on the street level. That's where we see it going.
Q Since we met at the body-worn camera outreach dinner in January, they've had, you know, more of their rollout of the body-worn cameras. Have you, from your perspective, watching that program, seen any glitches you didn't anticipate? And if you could speak to how that program adds to the goal of violence prevention?
A I think that one of the things that's really struck me is the quality level of the footage that we're seeing and most recently the, you know, the coordination between multitude of cameras at any one single event has been nothing short of impressive. So there really hasn't been any glitches other than just a systematic rollout that you would expect to take place with 1800 and some officers. But we're very excited about where this is going and the technology that it be able to be provided. Sound quality is great. Just the opportunity for learning from the footage that we have.
Q So what's next for violence prevention? On the legislative side, you know where do you see the city or the division needing more support? And maybe we could talk at this point about the legislation that is now currently the gun violence or the gun restrictions that's being challenged in court. I mean, can you bring us up to speed on that or does that play into this at all?
A Certainly, you know, we're doing what we feel is important for our residents in the city, and taking to the limit what we think we can do within the limits of the law. And obviously, the state has a different idea about how we will have home rule. But I think common sense would dictate that if you leave a deadly weapon lying around unsecured in a home where a child can access it, that's a problem. And no reasonable human should have a problem with us legislating that banning large capacity magazines of 30 or more. That shouldn't be a problem either. And so, you know, you've seen the courts get involved in this legislation. And we're, you know, we're actually looking to see whether or not this only applies in Delaware County. There's some debate whether or not they can, a Delaware judge, Delaware County judge can dictate what happens over the entirety of the City of Columbus. But that's for the city attorney to figure out, not something that I have any expertise in. But certainly, we're trying to do what's right because there's a leadership vacuum once you leave the city as it relates to guns, I think we're seeing that.
Q And I've seen the responses by my other city leaders to this to this action. It really must feel as though, you know, it's one step forward, two steps back sort of policy making. What else is going on? Anything else that we should know about that we can see coming down the pike that maybe is just in an early stage and you're looking for community feedback? What can you tell us?
A I think that you know, last year we spent over $10 million on youth funding. We're going to announce in the next couple of weeks, even more, this year, funding those programs that worked, funding new programs that, you know, have come to us to provide that opportunity for youth, especially just to have activities that they can be involved with and that can, you know, prevent the opportunity for them to get involved with a different direction, with potential criminal activity, etc. So we're excited to continue to do that funding. We are broadening that out so that it is beyond just the summertime activity and we want to make sure that we're providing these types of types of opportunities throughout the year. We will be having community conversations. We'll have a press conference in relation to this. We're doing our neighborhood meetings, like our next one’s on the 24th of May at the Whetstone Parke of Roses, the shelter house, where people can come out and have conversations. We had one last night on the West Side. So, you know, council takes the show on the road. We don't just rely on sitting here and asking people to come down to council. We actually like to get out in the community and allow the opportunity for people to understand better what we're doing. And I can assure you, based on personal experience, public safety is one of the top discussion topics at each and every one of these meetings. There is one other thing, if you want to point out. I mean, we are, my office is doing the very first ever Public Safety Week where the intention is, is that you see police and fire working together within the community, allowing the community to, you know, have the opportunity to interact with their first responders. And so this will be June 25th through the July 1st in the Milo Grogan community this year. It's a week of service and so will be hosting many community conversations, a block party on Thursday, the 29th from 4 to 7 at the Milo Grogan Recreation Center. And then we'll also be working on several houses in that community of people in need that need beautification and repair on their homes. You'll see firefighters and police working side by side doing that work. But this is the very first one, and we hope that we're able to do a couple each year. But we are excited to get this off the ground and look forward to, you know, our first responders getting out in the community and working very closely side by side.
Q Well, thank you so much for your time today. And I hope we can circle back and see how some of these programs are going over the next year or two. And wish you well with all the initiatives you've got in the pipeline and any more to come.
A Thank you so much.
Just as I was finishing up with the councilmember, the weekly announcement from city council arrived with the legislative initiatives for the week. And just as he predicted, there is a $1.7 million appropriation that will fund a partnership between the Recreation and Parks Department and two community agencies, the Urban League and the community for new direction. This is part of the implementation of the 2023 Neighborhood Violence Intervention Program.
When we come back after the break, Rena Shack will join me and explain how programs like this and others fit into the council's and the mayor's vision for an Office of Violence Prevention.
Interview with Rena Shack
After serving 10 years as a Franklin County public defender, working on the full spectrum of criminal charges last summer, Rina Schack was hired by Mayor Andrew Ginther as an in-house counsel and assistant policy director. She has worked to strengthen our gun laws and worked on a host of public safety issues impacting juvenile crime, juvenile justice, substance abuse, addiction treatment, and mental health care.
Q Welcome, Rena Shack, thank you so much for being with me today. We're really excited that this new office is in the works and that you've been selected to run it. I'd love to start by just asking you a very big question, which is why does Columbus need an Office of Violence Prevention?
A Well, thank you so much for having me. And to answer your question, you know, there's there's multiple reasons for why this is really important for Columbus. I can give you a little bit of history of how this came about, and that might answer your question in a more thorough way. Is that it in the beginning of 2022, Mayor Ginter proclaimed gun violence to be a public health issue, and he tasked our Columbus Public Health Department with taking a deep dive into that. And so what they did was they conducted months of hearings, They conducted months of research. They contacted other cities who had done the same thing. And they wrote a report for the mayor. And what that report recommended and its number one recommendation was to create the Office of Violence Prevention, because in all of their research and in all of their public hearings, what our public health department found was that Columbus is already home to some of the best anti-violence programming that they had seen throughout their research. And we also employ some of the, most of the best practices that are suggested in anti-violence programming. But what we could improve upon was to have one office in the mayor's office that would serve as the coordinator of those efforts. So they found that in all of the great programming that we have, we do have some areas where we might be duplicative with resources or there might be areas where we're missing resource allotment. And so that's what this is really going to be tasked to do. First and foremost is to take an inventory of exactly what we have going on in the city, particularly with our city departments and our programming that we offer. And then hopefully conducting partnerships with our community-based organizations, nonprofits, and just our community members in general who are running programming to really see if we're doing things the right way or if we're missing opportunities that could otherwise be addressed with some anti-violence programming.
Q That makes sense. I think the mayor said in his statement that this office will align strategies and drive collaboration, so that kind of summarizes the main focus. Some of the initial response that I've seen. When I first heard about this, it was because of the budget that this department or what do you call yourself? An office? A department?
A It will be an office of the mayor.
Q An office of the mayor. And it was included in the mayor's budget, which bumped up the mayor's office budget a little bit. And people are asking why it's not in the division of police. The main question I'm hearing is, isn't this their job? Can can you speak to that a little bit?
A Of course I can. And I think this draws upon my previous professional career as well in the criminal justice system, is that the police have, they wear many hats. Right? And they do a great job. But first and foremost, their jobs are to be first responders. And so that's where we really want them to be focusing, is to protecting and serve the public. And so the reason that this is in the office of the mayor is because this is not going to be a reactionary office. This is more of a preventative office and intervention office. And so since we are coordinating not only all city departments but also hopefully community organizations and community programming, it's recommended that it come out of the mayor's office because we have that reach and we're able to have that coordination effort. The police have everything that they have to be worrying about and coordinating community-based organizations isn’t necessarily one of those things. Although they do operate anti-violence programming within public safety, this is going to be its own separate office to kind of operate upstream so that we can hopefully be lessening the events that the first responders have to respond to in the first place.
Q Sure, that makes sense. So thinking from this point forward, you know, you talked about a little bit we have a sort of a crystal ball or looking into the future. So the police's role in violence prevention right now versus what it might be as your office gets up and running and starts coordinating what they're doing with other agencies, how do you see that changing?
A Well, you know, I don't know that that's for me to say. That's certainly going to be for public safety to answer. And I think that that's going to be a collaborative approach in the future. I'm not a I'm not a future seer, unfortunately. So I can't tell you exactly what that looks like. But I can tell you that we are excited to work side by side with the police department, in particular with resource and data sharing. And so we're going to be asking public safety as well as the majority of our other departments who operate programs for the data on those programs that they do operate so that we can really take a wide lens approach to looking at violence and violence prevention in Columbus. So we're absolutely excited to be working parallel with public safety on this effort. There are, you know, I'm sure no shortage of avenues that provide opportunities with which we can work with public safety. But we will not be, will not be dictating exactly what police are going to be doing.
Q So you brought up data, and that's a really big topic for journalists and lots of folks that watch this from the outside. Are you going to be in your office making the data that you collect public? Are you going to be, you know, public-facing it on a website? I mean, what is, how do you see this as, how do you see data as part of the solution? Like, will the public be able to see how we're doing, I guess is the question.
A You know, I don't have a concrete answer for that right now since this is so new. But I will tell you what I personally envision is to involve the public in the data that we are collecting and maybe not all of the data. I don't think it needs to be put on a website, you know, exactly what a certain program’s budget is and what they spent that budget on line item by line item. But certainly, I would like to see eventually on this office's website like a dashboard of sorts where the public can go in and kind of see where things stand. And then from that point they can also hopefully go in and see what programming is available and where they can find that programming, how they can access that programming more so than just on a website. I do anticipate this office to have a very community-focused feel. So we will be hosting Town Hall is probably the best type of event that I can describe it, but just gatherings in the different areas of our community so that the public is involved and is really getting an understanding for where we stand on things.
Q So will your office have a, you know, sort of an intake or any other sort of direct involvement with the public beyond the town halls? Meaning, will there be a reason people would call your office?
A I mean, people can call our office whenever they want. We’ll certainly field those calls. It will not be like the Inspector General's office where we have a procedure for intake of any sort. This is more focused on assessing and inventorying our city department programming. As it stands now. That can always change in the future once we are able to spend the time to really deep diving into that inventory. What you know, what we find and where it goes from there, I can't I can't tell you. But for right now, that is where our immediate attention is going to be.
Q So I've been reading about a movement called CVI, Community Violence Intervention and violence interrupters. And there's a lot of things going on in other areas and maybe also in Columbus. Is this part of your world? Is this or is this a… tell us how you interact with that concept.
A So I have done research on that myself, especially the Cure Violence global model, which I believe is where that kind of stems from. I've also been in conversations with multiple offices of violence prevention across the country, speaking with their directors, trying to get ideas of what they believe best practices are, what has worked for them, what has not.
And I can tell you that multiple of those offices do employ some type of program like that. They operate under different models, whether it's the Cure Violence Global model or whether it's a Ceasefire Model. I think what's going to be important here is first and foremost to do that inventory and move on from there. I don't think I can commit to any type of programming like that before we know exactly what landscape we are working in. But that is something that I wouldn't necessarily completely rule out. I just can't tell you that that is also, you know, I can't tell you for sure right now that that's a program we will be operating out of the office.
Q Of course, just one. Yes. So that's just sort of one leg of a larger set of tools that you might draw on or you might see you see go into action.
A Absolutely. If we do the inventory and we decide, you know, that we're missing that component and we think that that would be helpful for Columbus, then we will go down that avenue to explore. Obviously, this is going to be very tailored towards our city and what the needs of our city are. And so we'll take those lessons from other offices of violence prevention and see what will work here.
Q Which other cities have you found sort of line up closely to the challenges that we have here and that you respect the tools that they're using?
A Well, I think that they all are very tailored to their own cities. And so that's a difficult that's a difficult question to answer. There are things that I have found that are interesting to me from a host of different cities that I have spoken with and or researched. They all seem to be aligned in the coordination piece and that they serve as a coordinating hub of sorts for anti-violence programming, some of them house programming in their actual offices. Others are just coordinating city programming outside of their offices like we will be. And so it's everybody obviously has unique challenges to their own city, different population sizes. But we have been able to take some different approaches from different cities that we will hopefully be implementing over time if they're right for Columbus.
Q And my last question is maybe hard to answer as well. You've handled all the previous hard ones really well, though. So I'll try this one. We have them. How do you define success? Meaning, is this the type of job that if you work yourself out of a job that is success, or do you see this as something that continues indefinitely as sort of maintaining, you know, a low level of violence in the city? I mean, how does how do these offices, you know, define their role in that?
A And it is difficult, right, because a lot of what we're trying to do here at first seems nebulous, I guess is a good way to put it. And so it is hard because there are no concrete measurables at this point. What I would personally define as success, obviously, in an ideal world, is that I work myself out of a job. And I've always said that since I began being involved in the criminal justice system well over a decade ago. But as history has shown, unfortunately, that's probably not going to be the case no matter how hard everybody tries. And that crime is, you know, as old as time itself. So but our goal is to make the biggest impact that we can. I think success is going to be measured incrementally with this office, especially within the first year or two, meaning that success in the first six months might be that we are able to hire a full staff and we're able to really start gathering the data that we need to analyze. And then six months after that might be a different measure of success. But I will tell you that my motto personally as an attorney working in the criminal justice system has been that if I can assist one person, then I will consider that a success. So if we can help one person not to turn towards a life of crime, or if we can help one juvenile access employment, training, and education, whatever that looks like, then I will consider this a success.
Q That's lovely. Well, thank you for joining me today. And my personal goal is that we keep in touch so that I can see how those benchmarks are coming for you and see what you've been able to accomplish. So good luck to you and all those staff that you need.
A Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
I hope this episode has laid some groundwork for you to watch the future reporting of crime in the city with a different lens. We should all be asking what might have prevented that from happening instead of just wondering who will be locked up for it. Because the data tells us that locking up more people may reduce the threat in the short term, It doesn't make us safer in the long run. We need more solutions that are not just reactive as we have defined and trained our police force to be. If listening to Ms. Shak and Council Member Remy has spawned some ideas that might help, don't be shy about writing or calling them with your insight. Thank you for joining me for this important episode.
I would also like to hear from you with your feedback or ideas for future episodes. You can write me at edie@matternew.org.
