Homicides are occurring in Toledo at a troubling pace so far in 2018. With six killings in the first three weeks, Toledo Police Chief George Kral is trying to simultaneously press city officials for more resources while calming understandable fear in the community.
Toledo has not tallied this many killings so early in the year in more than a decade. On average, during the last 10 years, it has taken 84 days — or until late March — for Toledo to record its sixth homicide.
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That TPD needs more officers is no secret. The chief has been calling for more staff for years as the department contends with a large retirement bubble in its ranks. The department has about 625 officers, but needs more than 700, the chief has said.
The city’s police academy is set to graduate a class of 38 new officers next month. They will join an academy class that graduated last summer.
Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz pledged during his campaign last fall to hire 40 new officers each year, but the city has yet to schedule another academy class for 2018.
The TPD needs more officers. And Chief Kral needs to deploy officers and detectives to functions that best address our problems, like the gang task force, vice, T-CIRV, and S.T.O.P.
More cops and more police visibility will help greatly. But as Mr. Kral and other law enforcement officials have also said, no amount of policing can prevent all crime, particularly all homicides.
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To reduce the kind of violence that has driven up Toledo’s homicide rate, the city must also address the elephant in the room: the drug trade. It fuels the gangs.
The chief is frank to say that most of the murders last year, and most so far this year, are gang related and that many are drug deals gone wrong.
This means Toledo must find help to manage the crippling opioid addiction crisis that creates demand for street drugs.
The city must also deal with demand. The entire state of Ohio must. Demand is not decreasing.
We must give the police department the men and women it needs to make Toledo as safe as it can be made by police officers. But we must also deal with with the flood of opioids, especially cheap heroin. And we must deal, more comprehensively than we have, with addiction and its cause, and with addicts and their families. If we jail the dealers and demand for drugs remains high, violent crime, including homicide, will continue.
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First Published January 29, 2018, 5:00 a.m.
