Columbus police took over 3,700 ‘shots fired’ calls in 2022. Why were so many unsolved?
Chelle Leary was cuddling with her two cats, Salem Sirius and Burnt Toast, watching The Vampire Diaries in her living room.
Halloween is a year-round affair for Leary, so despite her apartment’s spooky decor, she was celebrating New Year’s Eve by watching her favorite show in her pajamas.
It was during the afternoon hours of the holiday when Leary heard the gunshot outside. She knew it wasn’t likely to be fireworks yet. Then she heard what sounded like a rock being thrown at the window.
Salem Sirius jumped off of her lap, and Leary sat still listening.
She walked into her kitchen where the sound originated. Leary looked around inspecting, but didn’t see anything out of place.
If she had only looked up, she would have seen the bullet hole in her ceiling about 14 feet from where she’d been sitting.
Leary’s experience is not unique in Columbus where there were nearly 4,000 shots-fired calls in the city in 2022, which mostly went unsolved because of the difficulty investigating the incidents.
‘I don’t think the normal citizen understands’
Command Sergeant Patrick Knight with the Columbus Police Department runs the North Precinct in the city.
The department received 3,772 calls for shots fired between Jan. 1, 2022 and Dec. 31, 2022, said the 26-year veteran.
While the calls are spread out over the year, two big days stand out as extra busy. There are numerous calls for gunshots on New Year’s Eve and on the Fourth of July, Knight said. On New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, there were 74 shots fired calls in the 48-hour period alone.
Many of the calls might be chalked up to people hearing fireworks, Knight said, but because of the nature of the call, there’s no data on how many calls are actually fireworks or someone being reckless with a gun.
However, the problem of shots fired calls in Columbus have been a problem and getting worse, he said.
Knight was shot in the line of duty in 2007, he said, and the experience gave him an appreciation for the dangers of being reckless with a firearm. People celebrating by firing rounds are not being clear-headed.
“I don’t think the normal citizen understands that,” Knight said. “Especially the ones that are getting a little bit of liquid courage inside them, go get their granddaddy’s shotgun and want to celebrate the New Year by just popping off rounds.”
A couple days after New Year’s Eve, severe storms approached Columbus. Leary, and her girlfriend Velvet Smiley, still had not realized they had a bullet hole in their ceiling. Smiley had been feeling sick, and the two became preoccupied with her positive COVID-19 test.
However, the day the storm arrived, Leary found some debris in the kitchen. Looking up, she finally saw the hole in the ceiling leading to the discovery of a bullet sitting on top of their refrigerator.
After calling her leasing office, a courtesy officer informed her that she needed to call 911 to put in a police report. The responding officer retrieved the bullet and told Leary that someone might have been driving up and down her road shooting from their car.
“(The officer) told me this was his fifth or sixth report (that week) of bullets coming in from people’s ceilings from New Year’s festivities,” Leary said.
Not unique to Columbus
This problem is not unique to Columbus, with cities across the country also experiencing similar issues during holidays.
Last year, police in Richmond, VA, urged residents to not ring in 2022 with celebratory gunfire. The police department reportedly received 70 calls about random gunfire during the 2020 New Year’s Eve holiday. While the number of calls was down from the previous year, a 28-year-old woman was killed in her home after a group of people celebrated the holiday with gunfire.
In 2010, just after midnight on Jan. 1, a four-year-old boy was killed by an AK-47 bullet in Decatur while he was in church with his mother, according to Police Chief Magazine. Police speculated the round could have come from as far as three miles away, and was likely a result of what police call “celebratory” gunfire.
A falling bullet won’t be fatal most of the time, but there are cases where it can kill.
What’s dangerous about shooting indiscriminately is that the bullet’s trajectory must land somewhere, said Nathan Banks, the public information officer for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Atlanta Field Division.
“But where is it going to hit?,” Banks said. “Is it going to hit in the woods, or is it going to hit in a person’s residential house?”
Although falling bullets are slower because of air resistance, there are two factors that can make them fatal, according to reporting by Forbes:
- Bullets are fired at an angle rather than straight up
- If it has enough speed to break the skin
It’s common to hear about celebratory gunfire in Georgia, Banks said, and because of the danger ATF strongly encourages people to refrain from this practice.
“People get excited,” Banks said. “There’s alcohol involved, they’re excited for a new year and they go reaching for the firearm. Alcohol and firearms do not mix.”
Why investigating shots fired is complicated
When someone calls the police to report gunshots at a location, police have to treat the situation as if there is someone shooting even if there are a lot of fireworks going off at the time, Knight said.
Officers will go to the location where the call came from and canvass the entire area.
“They won’t go to that one intersection,” Knight said. “They’ll surround it to make sure that maybe what (the caller) heard wasn’t right in that vicinity.”
The responding officers are looking for blood on the ground, casings or other evidence of a gun being fired. Many of these investigations lead to nothing being found.
“That doesn’t mean that something didn’t happen,” he said. “It just means that when they went out there, they couldn’t find anything that resembled gunshots being fired.”
These cases are hard to prosecute even though they can cause physical injury to individuals, said District Attorney Stacey Jackson. If a person has damage to their car from a falling bullet, Jackson said, they could call the police who can probably recover the bullet.
But it is unlikely that investigators will be able to find the gun where the bullet was fired from and a witness to the event.
“It would be hard to prove that the bullet came from the gun or the person fired in the air,” Jackson said. “It’s troubling. It would be very hard to prosecute a case where you have just a random bullet.”
People who are arrested for being reckless with their guns can face a number of charges depending on the situation, Knight said. Some of the charges include:
A city ordinance charge of discharging a firearm within city limits
Discharging a gun on a public highway or street
Discharging firearms on another person’s property
Reckless conduct
There are a couple of options if someone fires a gun and there is damage to someone’s house while no one was inside, Knight said. If the damage is over $500, then a suspect might be charged with criminal property damage in the second degree. They might be charged with vandalism if the damage is less than $500.
When a bullet comes into someone’s home while they’re inside — even if no one got shot — a suspect could be charged with aggravated assault, Knight said, which is a felony.
“If a person perishes by a stray bullet, the individual could be charged with involuntary manslaughter based on them being reckless,” Jackson said.
When local law enforcement recovers a bullet, Banks said, they can send it to ATF who is then able to match the bullet with the gun. If the person who possesses the firearm should not have it legally, he said, then the individual may also face federal charges.
Ultimately, the decision of what individuals are charged with is made on a case-by-case basis, Jackson said, and there is some cover if the gun is accidentally discharged.
Understanding the danger
When officers respond to a shots fired call, no matter what the situation, there is an added level of anxiety, Knight said.
Officers are extremely cautious when they enter these situations because they don’t know if there is a shooter or whether they are still in the vicinity.
“The dangerous part is when, over time, you get the same calls to the same address and nothing pans out,” Knight said.
Complacency becomes a problem when the same officers go to the same areas. Knight reiterates to the officers he’s in command of the importance of staying alert and reminding them of situations in other cities, such as Pittsburgh, where a call has led officers into an ambush.
Although there is a risk of complacency among officers, Knight encourages everyone who believes they’ve heard a gunshot to call 911 whether they are sure or not, he said, because they might save a life by doing so.
Not only are these situations dangerous for responding officers, Knight said, they are also dangerous for those shooting their weapons and the people around them.
“If you have to pull out your service weapon and discharge it, you better be prepared to destroy whatever you’re aiming at,” Knight said.
Despite the rainwater from the storm flooding her apartment because of the bullet hole, Leary was relieved the bullet missed her, Burnt Toast and Salem Sirius.
“Having grown up in Atlanta, I am not a stranger to gunshot sounds and gunshots in general,” she said. “But one has never entered my home.”
