C entral Ohio faith leaders and activists calling for the Division of Police's Tom Quinlan be fired delivered a letter with 300 signatures Monday to Mayor
Columbus clergy members want former police Chief Thomas Quinlan out of the department entirely, but Mayor Andrew Ginther isn t budging.
A small but outspoken group of faith leaders delivered a petition to Ginther s office at City Hall on Monday morning with more than 300 signatures on it.
The petition calls for Quinlan not just to be demoted from chief to deputy chief, as he was Thursday, but to be removed from the department as a whole. For him to step down to deputy chief is an egregious insult to our integrity, said the Bishop Donald Washington, senior pastor at Mount Hermon Missionary Baptist Church on the Northeast Side, during a press conference before faith leaders delivered the petition. He needs to go. He needs to go now because a leopard never changes its spots.
I m a visual guy, someone who does better with faces than names, who devises oddball mental images to sort out the world around me.
For a while now, I ve associated Mayor Andrew J. Ginther with wind. I couldn t put my finger on why.
One of the more-obvious explanations that the mayor might be full of hot air did not seem entirely on the mark. During the protests and violence that roiled Columbus last year, Ginther did not develop a habit of talking too much. He sometimes went days without making remarks, and when he did, they were often in the form of carefully crafted written statements that noted interviews would not be given.
The blood of Casey Goodson and Andre Hill still stain the city of Columbus, Ohio. Both Black men were killed by law enforcement personnel in two separate high-profile encounters that occurred within weeks of each other in December.
And on Thursday, Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther moved to replace Police Chief Thomas Quinlan, saying he’d lost trust in the top cop’s ability to reform the police agency. Ginther announced that Quinlan, 54, stepped down at his request and said a nationwide search will soon be underway to find his successor. Deputy Chief Mike Woods will serve in an interim role while the city looks for its next permanent police chief.
Faith leaders have been pushing for police reform
The group of outspoken faith leaders have been pushing for police reform and more racial equity in the Columbus Division of Police for more than two years. Several faith leaders, including Ahrens, called for Quinlan s removal in a Dec. 23 letter sent to Ginther, who, they say, did not respond. That prompted the plan to deliver Ginther the petition.
Ginther announced in a statement on Thursday afternoon that Quinlan agreed to leave the office after Ginther asked him to step down. Quinlan, who was appointed chief in February 2020, was on a one-year probationary period that was set to expire on Feb. 7.