Whitehall leaders say that crime is declining thanks to a safety initiative implemented in 2017 that led to changes in how its police force responds to certain crimes and interacts with residents.
While delivering her 2022 State of the City address in March, Whitehall Mayor Kim Maggard was blunt in her assessment of the city’s challenges with violent crime.
Standing before an audience of a few hundred people on March 10 inside the Whitehall Community Park YMCA, Maggard reflected on how high levels of crime have burdened the city’s residents and police division, while creating perhaps an unfair perception among outsiders that Whitehall is unsafe.
“Historically, one of our problems has been crime,” Maggard said to the crowd. “I won’t shy away from saying that.”
It’s why when Maggard became Whitehall’s mayor, she said addressing safety concerns became a point of emphasis for her administration.
Since Maggard took office in 2012, police division funding has increased by 46%. And In the last few years, she and other city leaders say that crime is on the decline thanks to a safety initiative implemented in 2017 that led to major changes in how Whitehall police officers handle runs and interact with residents.
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By the time the three-year Safer Whitehall strategic plan ended in 2020, violent crime fell by 27%. And robberies and burglaries fell by 38% and 46% respectively, representing 20-year record lows in those categories, said Whitehall Police Chief Mike Crispen.
“They were given an opportunity to really go out and fight crime and get citizens involved,” Maggard said. “(Residents) felt, ‘We’re a part of this, too.’”
But Whitehall leaders say the work is far from complete.
Whitehall police are now in the second three-year phase of the Safer Whitehall strategy, which began in 2021 after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic delayed it a year. And May 3, Whitehall is asking residents to approve a 2.822-mill property tax levy that would allow the city to hire six additional police officers and overhaul the aging police station.
If approved by voters, the levy would impose an estimated average $8.23 monthly increase in property taxes for the owner of a $100,000 home, city officials say.
“In order to get our crime rate down and get more citizen involvement, we need to spend money on our police,” Maggard said. “We need those officers because we’re challenged by what goes on around us.”
Perhaps it was Whitehall’s proximity to Interstate-270 that made it easy for outside criminals to get into and out of the city without drawing attention. Perhaps it was the bygone prevalence of seedy motels and nuisance rental properties.
But residents and leaders alike say that some combination of forces combined to tarnish Whitehall’s reputation as a haven for crime.
Longtime residents such as Carolyn Ingold are well aware of the crime that has plagued Whitehall in recent decades. Ingold spent much of her childhood in and around Whitehall, and then moved back as an adult in 2004 to raise her two children.
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“It was really bad for awhile,” said Ingold, 51. “In the ’80s ’90s, Whitehall was a utopia in the center of Columbus, and it didn’t happen overnight, but it became a scary place.”
Ingold said she spent three years working at a retail store on Hamilton Avenue, where she said she was once robbed and at another time was pepper sprayed.
“I saw the worst of Whitehall working there,” said Ingold, who now works at another location of the same franchise in Franklinton.
When Chief Crispen took over the division in 2016, he worked with the command staff to craft the strategic plan and then hosted a town hall in his first year to introduce it to the community. Once hosted quarterly, those town halls became a defining feature of the Safer Whitehall strategy that, in part, emphasizes collaboration between officers and residents.
Another strategic fixture is the police division’s crackdown on theft offenses — the root cause, Crispen believes, of violent crime.
“If you make it harder to steal things, then you make it harder to buy their drugs,” Crispen said.
Though it’s referred to by police as a “zero tolerance” policy on theft, the descriptor is a bit of a misnomer, Crispen said. That’s because the priority is on arresting repeat offenders who steal for want — not need. First-time offenders or those stealing necessities like food are treated with leniency, and often are connected with social services, he said.
Police made 266 theft arrests in 2016, according to figures provided by the Whitehall Division of Police. During the three-year Safer Whitehall strategy, theft arrests spiked to an average of 382 per year and remained consistent in 2020 and 2021.
Other facets of the Safer Whitehall strategy have included increasing patrols and enforcement in high-crime areas, and seeking more partnerships with local, state and federal agencies for crime blitzes.
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Part of why the strategic plan has been so successful, city leaders say, is because it’s mission is not confined to the responsibility of the police division alone.
In 2018, the Whitehall Division of Fire received a three-year, $400,000 federal grant to establish a SAFE (stop addiction for everyone) station. Open 24 hours a day in the lobby of the Whitehall Division of Fire, the initiative provides a place for people who are experiencing an overdose to receive immediate treatment — typically a dose of naloxone that reverses the effects of an opiate overdose — and referrals for addiction-treatment centers.
Whitehall city leaders also have done what they can in recent years to shutter and redevelop problematic apartment complexes where crime was once concentrated.
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Chief among them: The former Commons at Royal Landing, located at the intersection of Hamilton Road and East Broad Street, was the location of a fatal shootout and once required a minimum three-car police response for any call for service, Crispen said. The Commons was demolished in 2017, and it’s now the site of a 25-acre mixed-use development named the Lofts at Norton Crossing.
The nearby Woodcliff Condominiums posed similar concerns before the city purchased it in 2019 after years of filing property-code-violation complaints in Franklin County Municipal Court dating as far back as 2007. The city plans to demolish the 317-unit condomimium complex to make way for a $250 million, mixed-use development at a property that has sat unused for three years.
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Under the initial three-year Safer Whitehall strategy, violent crime reports fell from 198 in 2016 to an average of 145 per year between 2017 and 2020, according to Whitehall police.
In those three years, reports of rape, robbery and burglary also all fell below initial 2016 figures. Burglaries and robberies together accounted for 409 reports in 2016. By 2019, those crimes dropped to a total 190 incidents combined, including 48 robberies that year.
Chenelle Jones a criminal justice professor at Franklin University in Columbus whose areas of expertise includes policing, praised the Safer Whitehall strategy for its data-driven approach that included specific strategies for accomplishing its goals.
“This is what needs to be done with a lot of law enforcement agencies across the country,” Jones said. “There’s an opportunity to learn from Whitehall.”
But as the pandemic eroded job security for many and exasperated social inequities, crime spiked in cities across the United States, including Whitehall.
The Franklin County Chiefs Association, of which Crispen is the president, reported that in 2020 and 2021, crime increases significantly across the county. The Association compiled data from 22 police agencies that showed violent crime rose by 22% in those two years in Franklin County, including an 85% increase in aggravated assaults.
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Violent crime in Whitehall jumped to 395 reports in 2020, though it fell again in 2021 to 222 incidents, police said.
Aggravated assaults increased by 203%, from 78 to 237 incidents between 2019 and 2020. And robberies increased by 168% from 48 reports to 129 in the same timeframe.
For Crispen, those increases underscore the importance of pressing on with the safety strategy.
“The first one was so successful we can’t take our foot off the gas, but what else should we be doing?” Crispen said.
Now in its second three-year phase ending in 2024, the Safer Whitehall plan has been refined but largely has the same objectives, Crispen said.
The current strategic plan outlines several police division goals between 2021 and 2024, including a targeted 30% reduction in both violent crime and nuisance crimes, and a 20% reduction in theft-related crimes.
To accomplish that, Crispen said the strategic plan includes a stronger mentoring, succession, and accountability program internally, as well as the creation of a new position for one sergeant to serve as a community liaison.
Crispen, Mayor Maggard and other Whitehall leaders are also hoping that on May 3, voters approve the police levy, Issue 10.
The levy would raise an estimated $790,000 in annual revenue for a police division that has already seen its annual city funding increase from $5.7 million in 2012 to $8.2 million this year — 23% of Whitehall’s general fund.
But city leaders insist the levy — when combined with other sources of funding — is necessary to bring Whitehall’s police force to 60 sworn officers, while also making it possible to renovate and expand the police division’s South Yearling Road station, which Crispen said is one of the oldest in the county.
Plans for the $7 million station, which includes a 9,000 square-foot renovation and a 13,000 square-foot expansion, would include improved records management, a state-of-the-art dispatch center and a training facility, Crispen said. The main entrance and lobby would be named in honor of Terry McDowell, a Whitehall officer who was killed in the line of duty in August 2001.
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But when people took to the streets across the country in the summer of 2020 to protest racial injustice and police brutality, part of the national movement advocated for defunding police departments. Jones, the Columbus criminologist, said that introducing a police levy amid such an outcry may pose challenges.
Which is why, she said, Whitehall leaders will have to be clear about what those dollars will fund and why the levy is in the interest of the community.
“A lot of people are very skeptical right now in terms of funding law enforcement agencies,” Jones said. “This is where an open dialogue and transparency needs to take place.”
Whitehall residents, however, may be divided on the police levy’s necessity.
Ingold praised the progress Whitehall police have made to improve safety in the city, and said she would vote in favor the levy.
“Things have come a long way,” Ingold said. “You’re gonna have issues no matter where you live.”
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But Jeff Thoburn, 67, is among those who, while supportive of the police division, is wary of the financial burden such a levy would put on taxpayers at a time when many are tightening their belts. Thoburn, who has lived in Whitehall for 12 years, referenced the financial uncertainty Whitehall faces as income-tax revenue falls due to many employees working from home during the pandemic.
“The best approach would be to redirect existing city funds into hiring the police officers that are deemed necessary … and then to tackle the police building project in stages,” Thoburn said. “To ask your core of middle-income, at best, and fixed-income citizens to vote a property-tax increase upon themselves, and in perpetuity for this project, is not the smart approach.”
Whitehall is hosting townhall meetings to discuss the levy before the May 3 election. One is a virtual meeting at noon today The final townhall is April 21 at 6 p.m. at New Life Church, 441 S. Yearling Road.
Regardless of how residents vote, Crispen said he is confident he has their support.
“The community already had a great deal of faith in this agency,” Crispen said, “and have for a long time.”
This story is part of the Dispatch’s Mobile Newsroom initiative. Visit our reporters at the Columbus Metropolitan Library’s Whitehall branch library and read their work at dispatch.com/mobilenewsroom, where you also can sign up for The Mobile Newsroom newsletter.
Eric Lagatta is a reporter at the Columbus Dispatch covering public safety, breaking news and social justice issues. Reach him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @EricLagatta