Lowndes County prepares to bring back the Crime Prevention Task Force

Lowndes County prepares to bring back the Crime Prevention Task Force

COLUMBUS, MS – A special meeting was held today at the conference room of the Lowndes County EMS office to discuss the return of the Crime Prevention Task Force.

The group ran operation for a short period of time in 2021 but ultimately fell through following the completion of a summer report that same year. One of the members of today’s meeting included Lowndes County Sheriff Eddie Hawkins.

“Once we came together and had all these ideas about what we can do in our community, make it safe and make it better, nothing got implemented,” said Hawkins. “Well, that’s what we’re doing today is trying to bring everybody back to the table so that we can start looking at the program and implementing some of these things in our community to make it safer for everybody.”

Some of the things being implemented include making potential targets harder to access with deadbolts, locks and security bars, restricting entry to places with gates, keycards and security personnel, and surveillance systems and security cameras and motion lights.

Lowndes County District Supervisor LeRoy Brooks stated that the force fell through initially due to political errors, however this time the task force will be operated with volunteers within the community. Brooks spoke on some of the major goals with the reboot of the force.

“Major goal is to help minimize and deter crimes in our neighborhoods,” said Brooks. “And so, the specific objective is to bring a group of people together from the community, along with the stakeholders that we’ve had today, and break them up into working groups that they can begin to look at specific issues that we want to address.”

There will be another meeting in a few weeks to discuss further guidance for the task force and approaches to recruiting.