Columbus says judge slow to address gun violence; the city should know | Theodore Decker
It does seem a little odd that Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Stephen. L. McIntosh has yet to issue a decision in a lawsuit filed by the city three years ago that challenges the constitutionality of a 2019 state law. That law prevented cities including Columbus from passing local regulations on guns.
The city argues that the Ohio General Assembly violated the state constitution by infringing on home-rule authority when it passed Ohio House Bill 228. Then-Gov. John Kasich vetoed the bill, but the legislature overrode him.
In the new lawsuit, filed Monday with the Ohio Supreme Court, Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein's office alleges that a status conference was held in the case more than two years ago, but that McIntosh has not ruled on any pending legal issues.
"Justice delayed is justice denied, and the Court has remained silent on this case for more than three years as gun violence continues to devastate our communities," Klein said.
Assistant City Attorney Richard N. Coglianese begins his memorandum of support in the lawsuit with that exact phrase.
McIntosh declined through his bailiff to comment to The Dispatch. Whether or not the judge is at fault in this matter, though, he'd be justified if he raised his eyebrows and chuckled to himself upon reading the second sentence of Coglianese's memo.
"The City of Columbus has been at the forefront of trying to address issues of gun violence," the lawsuit states.
Come again?
Columbus calling out a judge for a sluggish response to matters of gun violence is like a snail calling out a tortoise for poking along.
To recap, the city maintains McIntosh has yet to rule in a case three years old. Let's look at the other side of this foot race:
December 2017: Mayor Andrew J. Ginther, in an emailed statement, goes on the record about gun violence.
"We cannot forget that the people who have died by gun violence are not statistics," he said. "They were fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, people who shopped beside us in grocery stores and sat next to us at churches and mosques."
The year ended with 143 people slain in the city. It was, at the time, the most killings in a single year in Columbus on record.
March 2018: In a letter to then-Gov. Kasich, Ginther, Klein and Council President Shannon G. Hardin write that they would "lead boldly and without reservation to reduce gun violence. We urge you to join us."
The city ended the year with 103 homicides.
March 2019: Columbus files the suit that McIntosh has not ruled on.
The city ended the year with 104 homicides.
October 2020: Homicidal violence has surged all year.
"Solving this crisis is not easy," Ginther said. "If there was a simple solution, we would have done it already."
In one positive development, he announced that David Kennedy, a criminologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York will spearhead a six-month analysis to pinpoint who is causing the violence in Columbus and then work with the city to stop it by reducing street-level beefs among groups of people. The approach, known as Group Violence Intervention or GVI, will be beset by leadership problems.
December 2020: At the Franklin County Coroner's office, Dr. Anahi Ortiz broadcast her frustration over what she perceived as a lack of action by the city to stem the violence.
"We have had 9 homicides this week alone," she said via Twitter. "Where are the city leaders? Why is the solution to always hire a consulting firm? While the leadership of this city continues to drag their feet people continue to die."
The year ended with another record, 175 killings.
February 2021: Ortiz again: "And the violence continues. Virtual town halls, speeches by the mayor, none of these address how to deal with the problem right now! Violence erupts in Columbus overnight with 7 separate shootings."
March 2021: "Let me be clear, this is just the start," Ginther said, talking about various anti-violence efforts.
May 2021: "Put the guns down," Ginther urged at a news conference outside City Hall, less than a mile from Bicentennial Park, where a 16-year-old girl was killed and five other teens wounded.
The year ended in another record, with 204 homicide victims.
More:Here's where homicides have occurred in Columbus
January 2022: "We’re of course frustrated because we’re still like, 'What is going on? How come we’re not moving forward on this initiative?'" said James Wynn, co-president of the interfaith social justice group BREAD (Building Responsibility, Equality And Dignity.) The group was instrumental in pushing the city to work with Kennedy and start a GVI-type initiative.
February 2022: Ginther and other city leaders announced that they are taking the step of declaring gun violence a public health crisis and will treat it as one, an idea that had been advocated by local experts for more than a decade.
May 2022: Mary Counter, of BREAD, said her group remains frustrated. In her words, the city is moving "at a snail's pace."
As of Sunday, the city's homicide count for the year stood at 117.
Theodore Decker is the Dispatch metro columnist.
tdecker@dispatch.com
@Theodore_Decker
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Snail's-pace Columbus blasts judge for moving too slowly on gun issue
