Two criminal justice students from Sinclair Community College are advocating for a statewide database to track police-involved shootings.
This proposal comes after high profile shootings over the last year both locally and nationally.
The idea started out as a class assignment for Tasha Mills and Kelly Wood. Then the two decided to take it a step further by creating a petition asking Attorney General Mike DeWine to require police to document any incidents and make that information public.
Wood says their organization, which is called Over the Blue Wall, has been steadily gaining support from the Dayton police and city commissioners as well as activist groups like Black Lives Matter.
“We’re just trying to get facts. So that’s, really, the important part,” Wood said.
Tasha Mills says there’s no database like this at the state, or even national, level.
“There’s no real way to garner any kind of support in favor of better laws because we don’t exactly what’s going on,” Mills said. “We can’t compare spikes or trends, or even see if there are spikes and trends.”
The two hope to meet with Attorney General DeWine soon, though DeWine’s office hasn’t confirmed an appointment yet.