Here’s how the crime prevention office makes funding decisions

As Columbus struggles with a spate of violent crimes, the city’s Office of Crime Prevention is back in the spotlight.

This time, Crime Prevention Director Seth Brown is under fire from the NAACP and other grassroots organizations for comments he made about a “redneck bomb” on Facebook.

But the controversy is only the latest in an ongoing debate about how crime prevention dollars should be spent.

As the Office of Crime Prevention prepares to recommend another round of funding to Columbus Council on Tuesday, some in the community are already complaining that the process is too political, preventing grassroots organizations that really need the money from receiving it.

In 2015, the Ledger-Enquirer reviewed the $3 million spent on crime prevention between 2010 and 2015 and found that the largest chunk of the money had gone to the Columbus Police Department’s DARE to be GREAT Program, which received 12 percent of the funds. The next most funded programs were the Literacy Alliance and FAST (Family and Schools Together), which each received 10 percent.

Columbus Technical College and Columbus State University received 8 percent and 5 percent respectively.

Waleisah Wilson, of NewLife Second Chance, an organization that helps ex-prisoners transition back into the community, said she recently applied for a grant and was denied, despite an 80 percent success rate with her clients.

“People don’t want to admit that community leaders that we have, they’re in cliques, and if you’re not in their cliques, you don’t get anything,” she said. “Giving stuff to organizations because you sit on their board, or because you do some volunteer work with them, or you have a church member that goes to these programs, that’s not distributing the funds equally.

“Why not give it to the organizations that are out there working?” she asked. “We’re the ones walking around in Wilson apartments trying to talk to this woman whose child got shot in the face last week. We’re the ones out there talking to these kids about putting these guns down. We’re the ones out there saying, ‘You know what? You’re flunking in school, you’re having a hard time reading.’ I bring them to my house every day to help with reading. Why not give it to the organizations that are really doing something?”

Brown said the Office of Crime Prevention has funded many effective programs over the years. He said funding selections are made by a seven-member board, which makes recommendations to Columbus Council. He said applications were due March 31, and the board met weekly for about two months reviewing them.

This year, his office received 31 applications, and the board chose 23 programs for a total of $700,000. Brown is scheduled to present the recommendations to Council on Tuesday for approval.

Mayor Teresa Tomlinson said the names of the recommended organizations wouldn’t be released before Tuesday’s meeting.

“The Office of Crime Prevention does not choose the grant; all we do is implement the money,” Brown said. “The seven-member board chooses who to fund and who not to fund. That board is extremely diverse. It’s picked by Council — the mayor and council members. So, I have nothing to do with where the money goes and who the board members are on that committee.

“In reference to if it’s funding the right kind of programs, I would say that all you have to do is look at where the money is going,” he said. “The GED program inside the jail, we reduced recidivism by 30 percent among inmates that participate in the program. We had a Columbus Tech program that was a job placement program, which had an 80 percent effective rate with people coming out of prison that had committed felonies. You can look at the juvenile drug-court program, where we funded ankle bracelets that kept juveniles from being placed in incarceration in the (Youth Detention Center), because we knew that would make it a higher risk situation.”

Brown said his biggest problem is lack of funding. The office had $700,000 to spend this year, but $2 million in funding requests, he said.

“We’re never going to please everybody,” he said. “I think the board and myself need to focus on, ‘OK, the programs that we’re funding, are they doing what they said they were going to do? And are they having an impact? And I would say that the programs we have funded have had a great impact.”

This story was originally published July 5, 2016 at 6:40 PM with the headline "Here’s how the crime prevention office makes funding decisions."