Columbus OKs funding to fight domestic violence
Monday, the city council authorized $345,130 from the general fund to keep the Advocacy Crisis Team for Domestic Violence (ACT-DV), a partnership between Columbus police and Nationwide Children's Hospital's Center of Family Safety and Healing.
City leaders hope the money will help expand the program.
How ACT-DV works is when police respond to a domestic violence situation, they will call advocates with Nationwide Children's Hospital to the scene to focus on the victims.
'When surveyed officers shared their confidence in ACT-DV and saying the partnership provides a better response in producing results for victims than other programs,' Dr. Joanne Lunceford, deputy director of the Office of Violence Prevention, said at Monday's Columbus City Council meeting.
This allows the Office of Violence Prevention to enter a one-year contract with the center. The money will keep the partnership going between the police department and the hospital instead of having to outsource for advocates.
'Expanding ACT-DV services would provide the opportunity to continue building trust and safe options for some of our most vulnerable community members,' Lunceford said.
At Monday's meeting, Lunceford said the hope is to bring on more advocates, having one for each police zone.
ACT-DV started as a pilot program in 2023. Nationwide said it expanded in 2024 and is now fully available in two zones of the city, but can be available in all areas if called.
Once the scene is secured, advocates will arrive. This frees police to focus on the investigation while the advocate can focus on helping the victim.
'Our goal is to get out to make sure that person feels grounded at a very chaotic and confusing time, then we work alongside officers knowing we have a different role,' Amber Howell, a clinical supervisor for the Center for Family Safety and Healing, said.
City leaders declared domestic violence an emergency, saying the program has been extremely helpful but noting difficulties with staffing.
The ordinance will officially take effect once signed by Mayor Andrew Ginther.
The team responded to more than 220 calls in 2024.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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'The officer was concerned for the safety of himself and others,' the spokesperson wrote. 'I don't know what the concern was — because he was following me,' said Fonseca Tapia. 'If he thought I posed a threat, I don't think he would put himself in danger by following me.' Since President Trump's return to office, masked ICE agents carrying out immigration raids have become increasingly common. Across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies working with ICE, launch operations wearing disguises or plainclothes and sometimes arrive in unmarked vehicles and arrest people without warrants. Often ICE agents don masks, balaclavas, neck gaiters or other facial coverings to conceal their identities. Lawmakers, veteran law enforcement officials, activists, and citizens have criticized the donning of masks by law enforcement as anti-American and for sowing confusion, chaos, and fear, while reducing accountability and undermining public trust. 'The failure of ICE officers and agents to promptly and clearly identify who they are and the authority under which they are acting has led witnesses of immigration enforcement operations to justifiably question the law enforcement status, authority, and constitutionality of ICE officers and agents and their operations,' wrote U.S. Senators Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) in a May letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, the Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations, and top ICE officials. 'We remain deeply concerned that ICE's lack of transparency will lead the public to intercede in enforcement efforts, escalating an already tense interaction, and risking an entirely avoidable violent situation.' Fahy emphasized that she had a family member who served in law enforcement and that she saw the use of masks and disguises as a threat to law and order. 'It's undermining all of law enforcement because they come across as impersonators. There's no accountability and there's no transparency, so it erodes public trust and undermines decades of work and millions of dollars spent,' she told The Intercept. 'When they use disguises, these arrests – without presenting an arrest warrant, neither a judicial or even administrative warrant – come across as abductions or kidnapping. These are third-world tactics, and they should shock the collective conscience.' Read Our Complete Coverage The International Association of Chiefs of Police warns that 'members of the general public may be intimidated or fearful of officers wearing a face covering, which may heighten their defensive reactions.' An ICE spokesperson said the agency has no policy on masks, aside from pandemic safety requirements. The Department of Homeland Security has endorsed the agents' right to wear masks, citing attacks on agents or the doxing of law enforcement or their families. In an email, DHS specifically mentioned one Texas man's threat to shoot ICE agents as a reason to allow masks although it was unclear how a mask would protect an agent from a bullet. Nonetheless, DHS insisted that because of such fears, ICE would not discourage its agents from wearing masks during anti-immigrant raids. For almost two months, DHS has failed to respond to The Intercept's questions about escalating statistics quoted by government officials about supposed assaults of federal agents. In June, DHS told The Intercept that 'ICE law enforcement and their families are being targeted and are facing an over 400% increase in assaults.' ICE now claims that figure has jumped to 830 percent. ICE failed to answer The Intercept's questions about the use of disguises by ICE agents and if the agent who failed to identify himself in Brewster had been reprimanded. 'At no time did the officer attempt to make an arrest or detain anyone without being plainly marked as an ICE officer,' the spokesperson said. The New York City Bar Association has noted that secret police tactics are a gateway to further lawlessness. 'Allowing masked ICE agents to conduct detentions also makes it increasingly likely that third-party actors will impersonate federal agents and use their anonymity to subject vulnerable populations to harassment and violence under the apparent color of law,' the group said in a June statement. Bad actors have, indeed, masqueraded as ICE agents from coast to coast this year. Various people have reportedly impersonated ICE agents to commit or attempt robbery in Pennsylvania, kidnapping in Florida and South Carolina, scams in California, sexual assault in North Carolina, rape in New York, as well as acts of impersonation, intimidation and other offenses in California, Florida, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Washinton State. In Congress, Democrats have introduced several bills, including the No Secret Police Act, which would bar federal agents from concealing their faces with 'home-made, non-tactical masks' and require law enforcement officers and DHS agents engaged in border security and civil immigration enforcement to clearly display identification and insignia when detaining or arresting people 'If you uphold the peace of a democratic society, you should not be anonymous,' saidRep. Adriano Espaillat, D-NY, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. 'DHS and ICE agents wearing masks and hiding identification echoes the tactics of secret police authoritarian regimes – and deviates from the practices of local law enforcement, which contributes to confusion in communities.' An ICE spokesperson claimed the persons filming the agent in Brewster presented 'a safety concern for the officers, the community and even the agitators themselves' and that the 'ICE officer contacted the local police.' The Village of Brewster Police Department, however, told The Intercept that it did not take part in any such interaction. The Putnam County Sheriff's Office refused to entertain The Intercept's questions. 'We don't have somebody that would handle even communicating that to the press if it was even for the press's knowledge,' said a person who replied to a request for her name with 'No, thank you,' before hanging up. A message left for the department's civil affairs division was not returned. Fonseca Tapia said that personnel from both the Brewster Police Department and the Putnam County Sheriff's Office were called to the scene and spoke with him. 'This is a call to action for people to understand that this is wrong and this is not normal. Nobody is coming to save us. We are all we got,' Fonseca Tapia told The Intercept. 'Now is the time for action. People need to get involved because today it's immigrants' rights but who knows what group it's going to be tomorrow?'
