Garrett Ford is driving a spatula between half-frozen hamburger patties and tossing them on an old barrel grill.
鈥淥f course we give them a variety between pork and beef. So some people like pork, some people like beef so that鈥檚 why we cook both,鈥� Ford said.
He explained he鈥檚 trying out wood tonight instead of charcoal to cook up food for a Stop the Violence event at Mayme Moore Park.
鈥淩ight now it鈥檚 looking a lot better, so let鈥檚 see if it adds more taste to the food,鈥� he said with a grin, 鈥淏ecause I get it, it鈥檚 free. But you know we get quality free food, rather than just, 鈥榓h that鈥檚 free food鈥攃rappy food.鈥� Naw, we want to put some taste in ours.鈥�
The event is loosely organized, with a wide array of volunteer and service organizations teaming up to do community outreach together. That includes the Columbus Care Coalition, which has a small cart loaded down with free lockboxes for guns.
Columbus is grappling with another law enforcement killing, and at the same time, the city is seeing homicides stack up at record pace. With that kind of violence demanding attention, it could be easy to miss a rash of accidental shootings.
Already police have reported seven such shootings this year, five just since the beginning of March. Giving out free lockboxes is one way the city is trying to respond.
Rachel Fleming picked one up. She thinks the program says a lot about the current moment in communities like this one.
鈥淭hat there鈥檚 a significant need,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hat there鈥檚 definitely a significant need for these types of programs and things. And that the fact the people are trying to give them out for free says that we definitely need this in the community with all the acts of gun violence and harm being done in the city right now.鈥�
Marian Stuckey leads the Columbus Care Coalition. The program started out as a kind of trauma response team. After a shooting or homicide, coalition members visit the victim鈥檚 family and neighbors to connect them with counseling and other kinds of support.
She says many of the people they work with feel unsafe, and some respond to that by buying a gun. So, when a family member is injured or killed by a weapon meant to protect them, Stuckey said it can be particularly traumatic.
鈥淚 think there鈥檚 a certain kind of guilt when it comes to gun violence, and you can add to it when it was your own weapon of course,鈥� Stuckey explained. 鈥淏ut parents often, even if the weapon wasn鈥檛 theirs, the parents [are] feeling like a sense of where did I go wrong? Where could I have been a better parent? We hear that a lot.鈥�
The victims in all but one of the accidental shootings so far this year were kids, the youngest just four years old.
In an attempt to curb those incidents, Stuckey was able to secure funding from the city to purchase lock boxes.
鈥淪o you know if we have safe storage, we could hopefully prevent future losses of life or accidental shootings that result when guns are just not safely stored,鈥� she says.
Stuckey described the approach as getting on the front side of trauma.
Back at the park, event organizer Derrick Russell said there needs to be more of that as the city attempts to reduce violence.
鈥淪o it might be a whole two weeks where it might not be no shooting,鈥� Russell said. 鈥淭hat don鈥檛 mean that you stop giving the people the resources, the mental health, the job opportunities and all that. You鈥檝e got to stay out in front of it, and I hope the city would say out in front of it. Don鈥檛 sit back and wait.鈥�
While he fliped burgers and checks on hot dogs, Ford took a second to think about whether handing out lock boxes will really be effective at reducing accidental shootings, or perhaps even violence more broadly.
鈥淚t may not seem like it because you know we鈥檒l do this and they鈥檒l see the same thing happening right over again,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut you know, it鈥檚 better to try it and see if it does something, rather than do nothing and let it happen.鈥�
The lockbox program is still in its infancy. Stuckey said they only started handing them out in February. Already they鈥檝e given away more than 150.
