Mississippi Office of Homeland Security and Columbus Police create plan to reduce city’s violent crime

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – The Columbus Police Department sat down with members of the Mississippi Office of Homeland Security on Thursday to determine the best way to aid in the fight against violent crime.

“We have an overwhelming amount of crime within the city,” said Rick Jones, Captain of Investigations for the Columbus Police Department.

That’s the situation that led city leaders to bring in MOHS to help. 

“Crime is changing,” said Columbus Police Chief Fred Shelton. “The environment is changing. So again, we have to change with our environment.”

In less than three months, CPD reports that the city has had 101 violent crimes so far in 2021.

However, these are issues Homeland Security has encountered before.

“Several places like Jackson, Hattiesburg, Meridian, other people that have experienced crimes at this level like we have,” Chief Shelton said. “They have provided assistance to them to help them with their (crime rate) and so again, we’re here doing the same thing.”

Chief Shelton says his department and MOHS members came out of the meeting Thursday afternoon with the framework for a three-pronged plan to significantly reduce the city’s crime rate.

The first prong involves providing CPD’s 54 officers with up-to-date training.

“We’ll teach our officers de-escalation techniques,” Chief Shelton said. “We’ll teach our officers how to do a crisis response (and) active shooter training.”

The second prong involves applying for a grant Shelton says could be worth as much as $11 million.

“Homeland Security has money and there are ways that we can apply for grants for technical assistance,” he said. “Such as surveillance cameras that we can use to detect crime and to give us information to prosecute a case later.”

The final prong involves putting together a special multi-agency unit made up of city, county, state and federal agents to target Columbus’s high-crime areas.

“We’ll come in, run maybe a 12-hour operation in a high-crime area, everywhere we have a great deal of concern and gather that intel and then take that intel back and formulate a plan on how we can better target the area,” Chief Shelton said.

The plan also includes ways to increase community engagement and further the trust investigators say must exist between law enforcement and those they protect.

“How they can also help participate, not only with the police department but with our civil defense and with our emergency management system,” Cpt. Jones said.

Chief Shelton says the training process for CPD officers could take as long as 4 to 5 months and hopes to have that multi-agency special unit assembled by the summer of 2021.