Gang rage
Rash of shootings, 4 recent deaths - police say it's getting out of control
Sunday, May 25, 2008 3:39 AM
By Theodore Decker and John Futty

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Panicked South Linden residents flooded 911 with phone calls when the bullets started flying on May 18 near E. 18th and Cleveland avenues.

"There was multiple people with guns," one man told an operator as a woman screamed in the background. "They were running while they were shooting at each other."

"They're running through my yard, and I have a baby!" another woman said.

Police swarmed to the neighborhood and took stock of the damage.

Several houses had been hit by gunfire. Residents said that as many as two dozen shots had been fired, and detectives collected spent rounds from several guns. They found an AK-47 rifle behind a tree.

And they found Devon Rheubottom, 18, dead in an alley.

The gunbattle was the latest flash in what Columbus police say is a surge in gang violence.

"We do know that there were numerous participants, and they were all gang members," said Sgt. Eric Pilya of the homicide squad. "There was more than one gun in play out there."

Since April 7, Columbus police have investigated four homicides and several nonfatal shootings that appear to have at least some gang connections. Police say they are seeing more retaliatory violence among rival gangs.

In the first of the homicides, detectives think stray bullets from a drive-by shooting involving gang members killed 18-year-old Tiana Goins, an innocent bystander at Cleveland and Cordell avenues.

"It's getting out of control," said Cmdr. Jeffrey Blackwell of the Strategic Response Bureau.

The unrest continued Friday afternoon at Rheubottom's funeral. When a fight broke out inside the funeral home during visitation, police cleared the J. Martin Smith Mortuary on Cleveland Avenue. The funeral director canceled the services, moving them to the graveside.

"This scenario is very typical of a gang funeral," Blackwell said as officers closed Cleveland Avenue and dispersed a sea of tense mourners, many in gang colors.

Police use plainclothes officers and other surveillance methods to monitor gang funerals and intervene when problems occur, he said.

"We have committed dozens of officers to keeping these funerals from escalating into all-out melees."

Other than tracking homicides, the division's nine-member gang unit doesn't keep statistics on gang-related crime. But the unit receives alerts from officers whenever they encounter incidents that involve known or suspected gang members, and it maintains a database of all active gangs and gang members.

The database, which officers can access through computers in their cruisers, includes about 600 gang members in about 60 gangs.

But there are probably more than twice as many other young people in gangs in the city, said gang-unit Sgt. Chantay Boxill.

"We just know we're busy," Boxill said of the increasing violence. "Recently, there's been a lot of gunfire. Even if you start with a fistfight, it ends in gunfire."

Police say the problem is citywide, but there are several hot spots. They include the Cleveland Avenue corridor in South Linden; around 4th Street and 8th Avenue in Weinland Park; the South Side neighborhood bounded by Livingston Avenue, Fairwood Avenue, Whittier Street and Parsons Avenue; and the Milo-Grogan neighborhood surrounding the I-71 and 5th Avenue interchange.

"They need to just shut Cleveland Avenue down," said Tiana Goins' mother. "To take someone else's life for just nothing? Just to be doing it?"

She didn't want her name used for fear of becoming known to gang members.

Sgt. Pilya said police aren't certain what led to that shooting, but he said some of the suspects have gang ties. Police think Goins, who was enrolled at Columbus State Community College and hoped to become a nurse, was probably an innocent bystander, not the target.

"You're involving people who don't even know it's coming," said Wilena Garrett, Goins' grandmother.

There have been no arrests in the recent shootings, which Blackwell said is a reflection of the "no-snitching" mentality that exists in many of the most violence-plagued neighborhoods. Many of the stop signs in the neighborhood around 4th Street and 8th Avenue have been spray-painted to read "STOP snitching."

Police can't explain the surge in gang activity, but Blackwell is convinced that neighbors who don't trust police, and young people who encourage and intimidate others not to provide tips to police, have created a breeding ground for gangs.

"The criminals act recklessly and with impunity because they know no one will turn them in."

The chairman of the South Linden Area Commission doesn't see that as a problem in his neighborhood. George Walker Jr. said South Linden residents work closely with police. He expects problems to decline in the coming months when the Police Division's summer strike force takes on troubled neighborhoods and the city begins aggressively enforcing its curfew law.

Beginning June 5, youths ages 13 to 17 found outside after midnight on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday will be taken to the Downtown YMCA, 40 W. Long St., until their parents can pick them up. Younger children are supposed to be home by an hour after sundown.

"This isn't a South Linden problem, and it's not a Columbus problem. It's a national problem," Walker said. "We're in an unfortunate time. We need to give the mayor and the police time to work things out."

Blackwell agreed the strike force and citywide curfew are keys to addressing the gang problem. But he said citizens must work as partners with police.

"It's going to take courage from the people in the neighborhoods."

tdecker@dispatch.com

jfutty@dispatch.com

"We're in an unfortunate time. We need to give the mayor and the police time to work things out."

of the South Linden Area Commission

George Walker Jr.

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