'I don't want to go back home': East Westwood council neighborhoods meeting focuses on violence reduction

Aurelia Persley heard gunshots again Sunday night near her home in the Village of Roll Hill, and she once again felt unsafe in her home for herself and her children.

The mother of two spoke to city council members at Monday's Cincinnati City Council special neighborhoods committee meeting about finding solutions to stop violence in East Westwood and that she can't sleep and hears regular gunshots.

"I feel like I don't want to go back home," Presley said through tears.

She said she can't even let her children, including her 8-year-old son and her baby, be outside to play.

"In the next three days, I could walk out my door and someone could be shooting next to me," Presley said. "I don't want that every time I step outside."

Presley said she finds refuge in Third Presbyterian Church, where she prefers to be instead of at home.

Residents of East Westwood have looked to City Hall for help in recent weeks after the shooting that seriously injured two children, ages 6 and 8. Residents have previously expressed frustration during a July safety town hall at conditions not improving, but getting worse.

"We've been in a movement with progress in East Westwood before all of this," said Rodney Christian, president of East Westwood Community Council.

Christen said there are parents out there doing a great job.

"But there's some things they need help in," he said. "They need to have a resource in-house, right there in their community, where they can walk to."

He said property owners need to make their places more presentable, give back to the community and be at all community meetings.

East Westwood has been working on creating a hope resource center prior to the shooting of the two children.

Christen said people have to change, and this isn't just an East Westwood problem.

"It's your problem, because of all that negative dividing talk about somebody that you never talked to and taking that information and you judging them, and they're not even in the room, that's a problem," Christian said. "Go talk to them."

And race could be part of the issue, he said.

"Because if the shooting happened somewhere else, all hell would have broke loose," Christian said.

He said in other communities people would have gotten on the phone and called the police to put a stop to it.

"We have to start that in our community," he said.

Neighborhoods Committee Chairperson Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney, council member Betsy Sundermann and council member Steve Goodin were at the meeting.

Kearney pledged to work to continue to find the $2.25 million in additional money needed to create a Boys and Girls Club in East Westwood.

Dan Johnston, commander of Cincinnati Police Department District 3, spoke to the audience about the department's ongoing work. He said officers use resources to focus on people known to repeatedly be where shootings and violence happen.

Westwood resident Carol Brown said she mentors 120 girls, ages 5-25 through Third Rec Center. 

"I'm telling you all, please stop the violence, just stop," she said. "Just stop. If you all are around somebody that's carrying guns, move on. Move on."