The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has required some to study for high school equivalency certificates. The Amish claim that violates their First Amendment rights.

Defense attorney Edward Bryan, who represented the leader of the group, says that he intends to write a letter of protest to prison officials.

He cited a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that found Amish children may not be forced to attend school past eighth grade.

In response, prison system spokesman Chris Burke cited prison rules calling high-school equivalency classes a first step toward returning to society.

Bryan says the Amish deserve a religious exemption.

36 year old Daniel Temple of Columbus pleaded guilty to one count threatening the president. The secret service brought the case after it discovered tweets from two different computer addresses in Central Ohio that indicated the sender intended to kill the president.

Testimony in an earlier court hearing indicated Temple experienced hallucinations and he was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment.

Temple now faces a sentence ranging from probation to five years in federal prison. He free on recognizance bond while the court conducts a pre-sentence investigation. Court spokesman Fred Alverson says that could take between 30 and 60 days.

Now some lawmakers say authorities ought to temporarily take away the abuser’s guns too.

Democratic Representative Bob Hagan says the point at which an abused person leaves an abuser can be highly emotional. So he’s proposing a bill that would separate an aggressor from their firearms for a while.

It would allow police to take the abuser’s gun at the point when they serve the protection order.

The goal of this legislation is to protect victims and potential victims of domestic violence and prevent intimate partner firearm deaths, not to infringe upon an individual’s second amendment rights. Thus when a protection order is lifted, any firearms held by local enforcement people will be promptly returned to the owner. In effect, this law would implement a cooling off period for those served a protection order.

Democratic State Representative Nickie Antonio says statistics prove this initial period of separation is when most women, in particular, are hurt most vulnerable.

“Intimate partner violence alone affects more than 12,000,000 Americans every year. And women are impacted disproportionately,” Antonio says.

“One in 4 women have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner. According to federal statistics, intimate partner homicides account for nearly half of the women killed every year and more than half of these women are killed with a firearm. That’s stunning.”

Nancy Neylon with the Ohio Domestic Violence Network supports this legislation. She says it would protect women at a critical time.

“One of the things that we know is that the most dangerous time for victims is when they are trying to get out of a domestic violence situation.

“And as that happens, as they are going forward with criminal charges or trying to get a civil protection order. As they are trying to leave that situation, that’s the time when the batterer is trying to increase their tactics of control. That’s the time that the threats occur, threats of ‘If you leave me, I will kill you.’ And that is an incredibly dangerous time.”

Jim Irvine with the Buckeye Firearms Association agrees that’s a dangerous time but he doesn’t agree with this bill and its cooling off period.

The gun really isn’t the issue. It’s the person who is committing the crime. Even if we could wipe all guns away, violent people are going to do violent things. They’ll stab, they’ll beat, they’ll club. Look at the FBI murder stats. We’ve got over twice as many people who are killed with hammers and clubs than rifles. So we need to focus on the people and the violence and maybe the mental health aspect of this.

Irvine says taking guns away from people when they are served a restraining order would open law enforcement up to new problems. He says take gun collectors for example: they might have very expensive guns in their possession, guns that need special care that police agencies are unlikely to provide.

“If we seize them and treat them like they do all other guns, they damage them. And they may do $10,000 worth of damage to a gun. And who’s going to pay for that? There’s nothing in there for that. So the idea that the state can take your property and damage it when you haven’t been convicted or had a day in court or even been charged with a crime, I think it’s a serious issue that needs to be dealt with.”

The bill is supported by Democrats in a Republican controlled legislature.

Police say 24-year-old Emanuel Gatewood and 21-year-old Kourtney Hahn were shot to death outside a North High Street fire station after bullets fired from their vehicle hit several police cars.

Police say Gatewood was wanted for questioning in an April homicide.

The shooting shut down traffic and turned one of the city’s busiest streets into a crime scene for much of the day.

WOSU visited a couple Columbus neighborhoods to see how residents there watch for unusual activity.

Parts of the Hilltop neighborhood can be rough. There have been at least 10 shootings this year on top of drug deals and burglaries. So neighbors keep their eyes open.

Near the intersection of South Burgess Avenue and Freemont Street, Terrance Shazier and a friend tinker under the hood of a car.

“I watch four houses this way and four houses that way,” Shazier said.

Shazier installed cameras on his house after his car was been broken into several times. But can he tell the difference between a neighbor just acting a little strange and “real” trouble.

“I mean you gotta get out here and know your neighbors…You know, we ask questions,” he said. “People ask questions, like, who was that? What are they doing? A lot of people do that. When the elderly ask you questions, that’s when you step your game up and try to find out what’s going on.”

When Shazier calls police, they come, but he said sometimes they are a little too slow.

“When you hear gun shots like that and it’s right around the corner, you’re like, wait a minute, what’s going on? And you see [police] driving slow through the neighborhood, like, way after the fact. People done walked through. People done ran,” Shazier said. “And then they get here, and it’s like, what happened if somebody got shot?…It’s the police; they need to step their game up.”

But not everyone thinks police react too slowly.

“The police respond pretty good up here,” Sharon Bland, who lives on South Terrace Avenue, said as she waited for a visit from her mom.

“The area is, it’s gone downhill.”

Like many others we talked to, Bland watches neighbor’s goings-on. But it was difficult for her to pinpoint exactly what kind of odd behavior would prompt her to call police.

“Anything abnormal,” she guessed.

Columbus Police Officer Kelly Kasser responds to a lot of the calls on the Hilltop. She knows the neighborhood; she’s patrolled it for nine years.

“I’ve seen quite a bit of stuff,” Kasser chuckled.

Kasser said every run is different. Good training, time on the streets and tips from neighbors help her to know when a situation could mean “real trouble.”

“With talking to a lot of people, a lot of their mannerisms,” Kasser said. “You can get a lot by talking to somebody and knowing something’s not right. And there’s a lot of things they can control about a situation and a lot of things they cannot. And those are cues you need to pick up on as an officer.”

Kasser also trusts her instincts when she arrives on a call.

“If my gut’s telling me something’s not right I follow it to a tee because I know I need to be doing something,” she said. “It might not be an instant fix at that time, but I make sure I know who that person is, maybe follow up with a detective to see if there’s anything that they have on this guy that I don’t know about. And maybe it’s just somebody we need to keep an eye on.”

As for complaints of slow response, Kasser noted the Hilltop is the city’s busiest precinct. But she said good, descriptive tips from the public can help speed response.

“Don’t assume we always know what’s going on because they’re our eyes and ears initially. They’re the ones there 24-7, we’re not.”

The South Side near Children’s Hospital is another rough neighborhood. The area as had as many as 20 shootings so far this year.

Dave Thomas lives on Heyl Avenue, east of Parsons. Thomas feels pretty confident he’d be able to recognize when something’s not quite right.

“I got good neighbors. I know what time they’re coming out every day, yeah. But a dysfunctional person? You hardly ever see [them].”

But like others, Thomas criticizes police response times. And he wonders if it’s because the neighborhood is largely African American and crime riddled.

“If I was staying in Hilliard, Bexley, I’m not prejudice because my son, he’s bi-racial, you know, I know that they’ll respond quicker when it comes to a Caucasian person, than when it comes to, this is just my opinion, maybe I’m wrong, to a black person,” Thomas said.

Brendan O’Keefe is fixing up his home on Oakwood Avenue just north of Livingston. O’Keefe said if he did see something suspicious he would call police until he got a response. But he’s uncertain what kind of response he’d get.

“I don’t know. Police respond to me pretty well usually. So, I don’t know. I really don’t,” he said. “All the police I’ve dealt with in this neighborhood have always been nice and helpful.”

Officer Joseph Valiski has patrolled the area south of Children’s Hospital for five years.

Like fellow Officer Kasser, Valiski uses various information sources – training, neighbors, previous calls – when assessing a situation that could be more serious, including gut instinct.

“Something that’s going on in your body, sometimes the hairs stick up on the back of your neck and you kind of got to go with that gut instinct,” Valiski said.

Neighbors promised to keep an eye out, to work with police, but they agreed that what happened in Cleveland could happen on their streets.

Before dawn Mary Ann Weiss woke to a lot of shooting coming from the fire station on High Street. Mary Ann Weiss lives directly behind the fire station where the chase and shooting ended.

“And I couldn’t figure out what it was. It was a very unusual sound. To me it sounded like corn popping. It was very rapid and it lasted for several minutes.” Says Weiss.

Two blocks away, Sherry Lehmann also heard the gunfire.

“The sound of it was somewhat like fireworks, a multiple exchnage of gunshots. And then sirens that seemed like they weren’t going to end at all, lots of sirens.” Lehmann says.

Before dawn, patrol officers, working on a tip, tried to stop a murder suspect’s car. The suspect was wanted for an April murder in northeast Columbus. Police Sergeant Rich Weiner says police lay down stop-sticks on High Street just south of North Broadway.

“That’s when the suspects began firing at the officers.”

The two officers were injured by flying glass when bullets smashed their cruisers’ windows. Other officers pursued the car several blocks north on High. The shootout continued in front of the Columbus fire station.

“I mean we’re talking a lot of gunfire here. We have two weapons recovered from the suspect vehicle. One is a handgun. The other one, the only way I can describe it is that it holds high capacity rounds.” Weiner says.

Sergeant Weiner says seven officers fired their weapons. Eleven officers and five firefighters witnessed the shooting.

“This is a fine example of hours of boredom followed by seconds of terror. That’s exactly how you can sum it up.” Adds Weiner.

Gunfire erupted shortly after 5 a.m. just north of the intersection of East North Broadway and North High Street in Clintonville.

Police say patrol officers received a tip in an April 5th homicide investigation tried to stop a suspect vehicle. Sergeant Rich Weiner says gunfire shattered the police cruiser’s windows. Two officers were injured by flying glass. A pursuit of the subjects along North High Street ended in an exchange of gunfire between police and the two suspects, a man and a woman.

Traffic along a six block section of North High Street and on North Broadway at High was detoured. North High is expected to be blocked in the area for much of the remainder of the day.

Police say Anthony Saunders III turned himself in last night and remains in the Franklin County Jail on a charge of felonious assault.

Police have not said what led up to the shooting.

His arrest comes after 39-year-old Amy Develvis was struck in the head by a stray bullet while riding a city bus near downtown April 16. She is recovering at home.

Last week, a 22-year-old man was charged with tampering with evidence in the case.

Saunders will be arraigned Wednesday. Court records did not indicate if he had an attorney.

The drastic difference comes after a federal appeals vacated Michael Peppel’s first prison term in February, saying it was unreasonably short for the seriousness of his crimes.

Judge Sandra Beckwith will re-sentence Peppel this week in federal court in Cincinnati.

Beckwith is the same judge who handed down Peppel’s one-week sentence in October 2011, saying he was “a remarkably good man.”

Prosecutors are asking that he get 10 years in prison.

The 44-year-old Peppel pleaded guilty in 2010 to money laundering in what prosecutors say was a deliberate scheme to defraud millions of dollars from investors in the now-defunct MCSi Inc.

But it’s starting to get some pushback.

What’s being called the Violent Career Criminals Act would more than double the required sentence for using a gun during a crime if the offender has two or more violent felony convictions. Supporters say data from 1974 to 2010 shows that people in that group with two or more felonies on their records is less than 1% of the population, but people in that group committed 57% of violent crimes in Ohio during that period.

Sponsoring Republican Sen. Jim Hughes of Columbus says in his experience in the Columbus and Franklin County prosecutors’ offices says deterrence through mandatory sentencing requirements works.

“It’s amazing how the thugs and those type people who commit these offenses against our citizens, how they understand the system, sometimes better the rank and file, because in fact they know ‘well, if I do this, how long am I going to be in for?’ And they learn that really quickly,” Hughes says.

But the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio says it’s doubtful. Nick Worner says research shows mandatory minimum sentencing laws don’t accomplish what’s intended.

“I think the biggest thing to ask is, is it results based?” Worner says. “Will it work? And if you don’t think it will work, as we don’t, then there really isn’t a way to justify it.”

Prison officials say the proposed law could force the reopening of sections of the Toledo Correctional Institution and the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, which would also need to be reconfigured, and over the next 20 years would result in more than a thousand new beds and cost more than $880 million dollars.

But Hughes says those estimates don’t take into account the inmates who would be moved out of the system through reforms in sentencing for lower-level crimes, and that the cost to communities would be lowered if the same people aren’t constantly cycling through the system.

“In addition, we ought to think about we as a society. Do you want these people that murder, rape, robbery and burglarize people – what is government supposed to do? We’re supposed to protect our people, I mean the citizens, from these types of people. And what I think we need to do is redefine some money to make sure we go here because these are the worst of the worst. They’re committing the crime,” Hughes says.

In a statement, the prisons department confirms those figures, but a spokesperson says the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction will work with the bill’s sponsors during the process.