Panelists from left to right: Rebecca Duran, Nadine Young, Sean Walton, Tamala Payne, Adrienne Hood. Hood (far-right) is wearing a sweatshirt with the names of victims of police violence. Credit: Reilly Ackermann | Lantern Reporter
At least 50 students and community members gathered inside Hale Hall for “Let’s Talk: A discussion about Ohio Police,” a dialogue on Ohio’s policing system, hosted by the Black Student Association and NAACP OSU Monday.
Featuring a panel of family members of victims of police violence in Columbus, along with a civil rights attorney, the discussion provided a space to spread awareness on police brutality in Columbus and ensure the support for victims doesn’t fade, according to Brayon Miller, a fourth-year in public affairs and city and regional planning and the president of Ohio State’s NAACP chapter.
“It’s in order for us as future leaders to gain more perspective from those who are direct victims of the same system that we’re trying to act against,” Miller said.
Miller led the panel discussion, with questions including what changes panelists would like to see in police institutions and how the loss of their loved ones has affected them and their perception of police.
Adrienne Hood, the mother of Henry Green V, a 23-year-old Black man who was fatally shot by white Columbus police officers Zachary Rosen and Jason Bare in June 2016, said the answer to how the loss of Green has affected her is “never-ending.”
Both Rosen and Bare were found not guilty of civil charges related to the killing in April 2022, according to WOSU.
“The holidays are coming up, so that’s always going to be a rough time for us. And then, to have to continue to witness the public lynching of our loved ones day-in and day-out across this country and across the world, also gives you a different affect,” Hood said.
Nadine Young, the grandmother of Ta’Kiya Young — a 21-year-old pregnant Black woman who was fatally shot by Columbus police outside of a supermarket in August 2023, losing her life as well as her unborn child — said their family’s loss is still fresh, and the murder of Ta’Kiya Young has greatly affected their family.
Nadine Young described Ta’Kiya Young as a high-spirited prankster and a popular, “fun-loving, feisty young lady,” who was just beginning to find her way in life, according to the Associated Press.
“[Ta’Kiya’s son] is doing super-double acting out, and I know it’s because he misses his mom. But it’s like, they don’t know how to grieve properly, and we don’t know how to show them how to grieve because we barely know how,” Nadine Young said.
Tamala Payne, the mother of Casey Goodson Jr., a 23-year-old Black man who was fatally shot five times in the back by white Franklin County police officer Jason Meade in December 2020, said there is “always going to be a piece of [her] that is missing.” Payne said the impact that the perception of the police has had on her is that it feels like “it comes down to us or them, they will always choose them first.”
Meade was charged with murder in December 2021, according to the Associated Press.
When asked what she would like to see change, Hood asked, “How do you change an institution whose history and origin is ‘hate?’”
Hood said she doesn’t think [systemic racism] will ever go away, because “hatred is taught and it starts at home.”
“We can train, we can change laws, we can do all those things. But when the fiber of the institution, origin, is hate, you have to tear it down completely,” Hood said. “Until we are ready to transform what exists, not reform, not reform, we are ready to transform this system.”
Rebecca Duran, the mother of Donovan Lewis, echoed this, and said policing the way it is structured right now “is never going to be okay.”
Lewis was a 20-year-old Black man shot in his bed by a white Columbus police officer, Ricky Anderson, in August 2022. His death led to calls on campus for Ohio State to acknowledge his death and end ties with the Columbus Police Department, according to previous Lantern reporting. Anderson was indicted on murder charges Aug. 4, according to the Associated Press.
Duran said police should not be the ones to evaluate situations and deliver punishments.
“That’s like telling a little kid, ‘You told me what you did wrong, you go pick your punishment.’ It doesn’t make sense,” Duran said.
Duran said she would like to see CPD change their hiring practices so they go off “ability, not seniority.”
“Currently, they’re promoted by seniority only. So you just got the one person who flew under the radar and made it the longest, you didn’t get the best,” Duran said. “I believe that those are very minor changes in the grand scheme of it all, but if we can start somewhere and start digging away, eventually it will crumble and we can transform it.”
Sean Walton, a panelist and civil rights attorney, said he has seen a consistent theme that police officers are “waging combat” in Columbus communities.
“They see our communities as combat zones for different reasons, that’s part of the training because they’re trained and they’re told that they’re going out to these very dangerous communities and they have to go home by ‘any means necessary’. And we know that’s not the case,” Walton said.
Walton said hiring officers who are not a part of the community they serve is a part of the problem, because they do not have any experience in the community, so they treat it “like something to fear as opposed to embrace.”
“More than anything, we need empathy and care in our communities as opposed to combat,” Walton said.
Miller said he hopes students who attended took away the importance of this issue and left with a passion to be active within their communities.
“We’re all hoping they leave out with a little bit of passion, a little bit of motivation to even want to progress and rise up in their own journey to be civically engaged, to be leaders, to be activists one day,” Miller said.
