Messer: OTR's image isn't what matters

Ryan Messer is president of the Over-the-Rhine Community Council.

Much of the media coverage of Wednesday's fatal shooting in Over-the-Rhine has been concerned with how it might hurt the neighborhood's image, and whether Vine Street's shoppers and diners might be inconvenienced or driven away by violence in their midst.

With all due respect, my neighbors and I strenuously disagree with this emphasis. We are above all concerned with the fact that a man, Gregory Davis, lost his life on our streets. We want to know how he and the alleged shooter came to the point where violence was the preferred method for resolving their dispute. Most of all, we want to know how to prevent young people, in Over-the-Rhine and elsewhere, from following in their footsteps.

Over-the-Rhine is a diverse neighborhood with many residents still living in poverty. We cherish our diversity, and we want to make life better for everyone who lives here, not just those buying rehabbed townhouses or meeting friends for brunch. That's why many of us have become involved in programs like Future Leaders OTR, which works to give opportunities and leadership skills to young residents of the neighborhood.

After the shooting on Wednesday, in an incident that didn't garner any media attention, a young man stole a cell phone from a visitor in Over-the-Rhine. Bystanders stopped the thief, and the victim caught up with him and asked him why he'd stolen his phone. "What else do you want me to do?" the thief answered. This is the problem we must address: creating conditions that give young people opportunities and expectations beyond street crime and violence.

I spend much of my professional life trying to create business processes with uniformly excellent outcomes. When this fails, we go to the source and try to figure out what the problem is and how to fix it. Resorting to violence, whether as victim or perpetrator, is a failure – not just for those involved and their families, but for all of us. We must create the expectation that everyone is entitled to a healthy, productive life, and we must create the processes to ensure that outcome.

It's true that Over-the-Rhine exists under a microscope. Sometimes this is a good thing, as every new business or housing development warrants more coverage than events in other parts of Cincinnati. But the downside is that our neighborhood's problems receive outsized attention as well. For instance, there was a shooting Thursday in Price Hill that received hardly any media attention. I can't remember a recent shooting in another neighborhood that landed on the front page like Wednesday's shooting in Over-the-Rhine did.

I don't feel any more or less safe as a result of Gregory Davis's death, and I'm assured by our police partners that crime in Over-the-Rhine continues to decline. For me, the shooting brings to mind the television show "Seven Days," in which a CIA agent travels back in time to prevent present-day catastrophes. If we went back in time to understand how Davis and the alleged shooter ended up at Vine and Mercer streets Wednesday morning, what would we find? Could anyone have changed the trajectory of their lives so they didn't end up this way? And what lessons could we take from that to apply to the lives of other young people in our neighborhoods?

Those are the questions we need our media to help us answer – not what time the restaurants will reopen after the crime-scene tape comes down.