A Columbus police unit dedicated to combating gangs and other criminal groups confiscated cocaine, marijuana, oxycodone and fentanyl and arrested more than 70 people who were identified as gang members since it was created in October.
Columbus Division of Police Assistant Chief LaShanna Potts said the department began considering a specialized unit in 2021, after hearing from the public during town hall meetings that gang violence was hurting their community. "Their singularly-focused mission is to dismantle the group and gang nexus here in Columbus," Potts said.
Potts said the unit cannot be compared to the one in Memphis, Tennessee, which was disbanded after the beating death of Tyre Nichols. “So there is no comparison. And I want to make that distinctly clear. This unit (has been) in operation since October. And so this is not something that we did on a whim. We are ensuring that these officers are highly trained. We're ensuring that they don't have this nexus of abuse of power. And we're doing that by selecting them through a process.”
Potts said the unit’s members operate with oversight, in uniform with police body cameras and marked vehicles to ensure they operate with accountability.
In addition to the 74 gang members arrested, the unit has made more than 100 felony arrests and confiscated more than 80 weapons.
The officers were already working on similar cases before they were structured into a unit, according to Potts.
The department is going to re-establish an audit of all of the gangs involved in criminal activity in the city and create a database.
A problem analysis report on gang violence in Columbus conducted by the National Network for Safe Communities at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice found that 17 gangs with nearly 500 members operated in the city when the report was published in April 2021. That report found that gangs were involved in 36% of the 107 homicides in the city between January 2020 and September 2020, and are suspected to be involved in another 10% of those homicides. The report could not determine if gang involvement was part of 22% of the cases.
Potts said there is a "substantial amount" of "groups" operating in the city now and not as many gangs.
"What we're finding is that as we get smarter at identifying the gangs, they're transitioning into transient groups, those same people, but now they're branching out," Potts said. "So, where they used to only be on the south side, they're now moving to the north side, and they're kind of intermingling and intertwining with each other."
Potts said a related unit is focused on gathering intelligence, "evidence-based surveillance," to funnel information to the gang enforcement unit.
The benefit of being in a structured unit is "more training, more resources, more organization, more oversight. All of the things that the citizens are demanding is the reason why it is under my umbrella," Potts said.
"Their singularly focused mission is to dismantle the group and gang nexus here in Columbus," Potts said.
Potts said the unit will work better than others have in the past, because "there are several layers of accountability."
