What's behind the rise in Cincinnati shootings?

This year has been one of the bloodiest in recent memory in Cincinnati.

By early this month more than 320 people had been shot this year within the city limits, with nearly 50 dying from those wounds. And while the city's homicide rate has remained steady compared with 2014, the overall shooting totals are 30 percent higher than at this point last year.

The victims range in age from 4-year-old Martaisha Thomas, who was shot in the head but survived in late July, to Edward Rose, 87, who died at the hands of his son, who then shot and killed himself.

The surge has riled politicians in City Hall and is said to have been a factor in the firing of the city's police chief earlier this month.

While the impact is plain to see, the recent gun violence surge has left police, elected officials and those on the street struggling for answers, especially as overall crime rates have only risen slightly as compared with the violence.

When asked for possible reasons for the violence, Mayor John Cranley simply says "I don't know."

"Conventional wisdom always held that crime would go up in a bad economy and down in a good economy. Well, this is the best economy we've had since the Great Recession and yet crime is up," Cranley says. "So it's more likely to be linked to social and cultural than economic reasons. And we do need to get a handle on this."

Over the last two months, The Enquirer has tried to define those reasons, interviewing local activists, victims' families, law enforcement and national crime experts.

No one can point to a specific answer, but a series of contributing and intertwining factors emerges, including:

■Easy access to guns – even top quality handguns, complete with bullets – can be purchased on the street for less than $100.

■A shortage of drug supply, causing new types of "turf" wars to erupt.

■An ongoing cycle of violence and retribution, aided by a culture of silence in many neighborhoods.

■The number of juveniles involved in gun crimes has risen steadily since 2010, and is on track this year follow that trend. Younger offenders, many in gangs, may have even quicker trigger fingers, prolonging that cycle of revenge.

■A reduction in anti-violence campaigns, which means fewer people on the street trying to calm potentially explosive situations.

National experts warn against trying to draw too many conclusions from just one summer, even though Cincinnati isn't alone in this current wave of shootings. Milwaukee, Louisville, St. Louis and Baltimore are experiencing big rises in shootings and gun-related homicides as well.

The human effect: 'This just crushes us'

"There certainly may be a confluence of several social factors such as poverty, low education, lack of employment and others driving this, but it wouldn't all hit in one year," says Jim Bueermann, president of the Washington-based Police Foundation, a nonprofit think tank.

Another noted criminologist says that crime rates have declined in Cincinnati and elsewhere since the 1990s, meaning sudden and unexpected outbursts of gun violence tend to shock people more, even though it's not statistically as bad as it has been.

"Cities such as Cincinnati are victims of their own success," says James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston. "Just because we have had a bounce up doesn't mean that the cops have forgotten how to fight crime."

But for those on the front lines, perception is reality, creating a very unwelcome existence.

"In my estimation, there are no more rules on the street, for a variety of reasons," says Ozie Davis III, executive director of the Avondale Community Development Corp., whose neighborhood has suffered the most gunshot victims this year. "It's a dark world right now."

Interactive map of shootings in Cincinnati

Through July of this year, Cincinnati police seized 511 guns that were either owned illegally, found or used in a crime. That compares with 1,069 for all of last year, the highest since 2011. That means the city is on pace to pull off nearly as many illegal guns off the street as last year, which saw the most guns seized in three years.

But local police and federal gun enforcement agents say that's not because there are more guns on the street. Instead, a more concerted effort to target the city's illegal gun trade sparked the higher numbers, police say.

"In fact, the total supply is about the same as it has ever been," says CPD Capt. Paul Neudigate, who two years ago doubled the number assigned to the regional federal gun task force to six officers.

Frank Ochhipinti, Cincinnati's resident agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, agrees. "I'd not necessarily say that there has been a influx of firearms into the state."

Even so, many community activists say that the local supply of guns is plentiful and cheap. The current going rate for a high-end Glock semi-automatic pistol is $90, including ammunition and an extra clip, some on the street say, including Rev. Peterson Mingo of Evanston's Christ Temple Church. That surprises both CPD and the ATF, who say they routinely purchase such high-end models for between $300-400 in undercover gun buys.

Mobile readers: Tap here to see interactive charts of gun confiscations

The guns are so numerous on the streets that there is often a "stash gun" or community gun, which is hidden in a place everyone in the neighborhood is aware of. Use it, replace the bullets, wipe it off, and you're done.

"It's incredibly easy to get a gun, and almost everyone out here has one," says anti-violence activist Peggy Harris-Bush, whose son John was killed eight years ago during a carjacking. She lives just a few blocks from where a major shootout erupted last month, saying she could hear the gunfire.

Neudigate says there's another sign that guns have proliferated despite CPD's best efforts: more shootouts this year involving multiple shots fired. For example nearly 30 shots were fired in a recent firefight in Madisonville, with seven wounded and two killed. Just this week, police reported another shootout involving at least 25 shots fired in Millvale, although no victim or shooters were found. Another man was shot Wednesday in College Hill, forcing a lockdown at a nearby school.

"We used to have just a few incidents where more than two people were involved ... now we have numerous ones where there's three, four and even five people at a time," he says.

There may be another supply of illegal guns. Neudigate says there has been a rash of weapon thefts in the city this year. That matches another such spike in gun thefts in 2013, the last time there was a spike in violence.

"Everyone is packing now," Mingo says.

As recently as 15 years ago, the local illegal drug trade ran on a geographic basis. Dealers would carve out their "turf" or street corners, where customers would show up for their fix. Thanks to the cell phone, dealers now text their clientele list and say where they can meet for a sale.

That doesn't automatically translate into more violence associated with drugs, but it alters its predictability.

Now add in the recent shortage of supply of cocaine, crack and heroin, and street-level dealers are increasingly fighting among themselves for the right to whatever is available.

As the supply tightens, the violence increases.

Community leaders in diverse but hard-hit neighborhoods all report the same shortage, the same violence and the same frustration with curbing the shootings.

And not all "turf battles" are a thing of the past. Dealers do tend to fight over a "hot" street corner where traffic may be higher.

"There used to be a lot of gunfire up in Winton Terrace because that's where people went to buy drugs," says Rashid Abdullah, a street advocate for the city's Human Relations Commission. "But once they put up cameras, that traffic went away and they went looking for other places to sell and the violence went with them."

Police can't say specifically how much of the violence is directly tied to the drug trade or gangs dealing with drugs, but they estimate that at least half of the shootings are associated with some kind of other illegal activity.

"Some have to do with drug-trafficking territory and some come down to 'you ripped off my boys so we're gonna get you back,'" says CPD Capt. Russ Neville, who heads up the city's recently created gang squad. "Then it goes back and forth."

National experts say that this is true everywhere.

"Unlike the corporate model, in the drug world you can battle for your position by taking out the competition with a Glock," says Bueermann. "And I'm hearing from narcotics investigators and others on the street that they are fighting for that supply."

What of the current atmosphere for police? Might that be a part of the increased violence?

Local police and national experts don't think so. They say that the so-called "Ferguson effect" – the theory that police are less apt to intervene in violent situations for fear of retribution – has not been shown to be a factor either in Cincinnati or elsewhere. (The theory gets its name from the ongoing civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, where an officer killed a suspect setting off a series of riots there.)

"Certainly police officers get beat up in the public eye all over the country when stuff like this happens, but for the most part they want to do this work and came into it wanting to help," says Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Police Chiefs Association. "And if anything, we're seeing an increase in activity in several cities from arrests to interventions to gun seizures."

And Cranley dismisses any perceived impact from the ongoing turmoil surrounding former Chief Jeffrey Blackwell, who was fired earlier this month.

"Our (shooting and violent crime) numbers, while unacceptable, are still lagging the other cities seeing this problem," Cranley says. "That's a testament to the professional force we have here in Cincinnati."

In late April, Gregory Darnell Douglas was shot in the back just after 8 a.m. on a bright sunny day near Over-the-Rhine's restaurant district on Vine Street, apparently over trouble with a girlfriend.

"I was shocked as anything that it happened to him ... the only time's he's ever been in trouble, like fights, is over girls," says Douglas' father, Gregory.

Darnell Higgins, who has been arrested and indicted for the murder, has not given police a reason for the shooting. (Police previously reported the shooting occurred after an argument between the two, with Higgins chasing Douglas into the street.)

Douglas was HIV-positive, according to the coroner's report reviewed by The Enquirer.

Douglas' father says he was told about the possibility that this was a retribution killing but doesn't know the exact reason.

When asked about that one killing, Mingo, Occhipinti and Sen. Cecil Thomas, D-North Avondale, all agreed the Douglas shooting set off a cycle of connected retributive shootings throughout the city, even though the initial incident wasn't directly connected to any drug or gang activity.

Thomas has seen the violence first hand, even cradling a victim of a shooting that occurred near a peace march the senator was attending in June.

"This is the kind of thing that leads to this downward spiral," says Thomas.

Nuedigate says that even the thinnest of slights – the kind that used to turn into fistfights – are leading to gunfights instead.

"It's silly things like what someone said about the other on Facebook," Neudigate says.

Compounding the problem is the fact that many possible witnesses to shootings are frightened because they fear becoming victims themselves of repercussion. Neudigate knows of several shooting scenes where both the perpetrator and the victim have vanished due to worries over reprisals.

That culture confounds those such as Harris-Bush and Hope Dudley, whose children were killed and who still wait for someone to be arrested for the crime.

"I bet you I've even talked to the person who shot my son but no one will admit it or testify to it," Harris-Bush says.

Dudley, whose son Chaz was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2007, founded UCanSpeakForMe, a nonprofit that pushes for information on the city's unsolved murders.

"Pretty much everyone in the car with my son probably saw who shot at them driving by, but they won't say anything," says Dudley. "It becomes a bargaining chip for them. So if they get locked up, they can say. 'Let me go and I can give you a murderer.'"

The size of Cincinnati's teenage population stabilized over this decade, even shrinking slightly in 2013 to 7.2 percent of the total population, according to the most recent Census estimates.

Yet those working on violence in the city say that one of the most notable trends of the current surge – and of crime in general in Cincinnati – is that offenders are increasingly younger, possibly fueled by the city's juvenile poverty rate of 44.3 percent, one of the highest in the U.S.

Local CPD statistics show that the number of juveniles arrested for gun crime (including assault, murder and aggravated or armed robbery) steadily rose from 56 in 2010 to 132 last year. That number is at 77 through August of this year, meaning the city is on track in 2015 to continue the relatively higher numbers of juvenile gun crime.

"We're all shaking heads right now ... Everyone has a gun, including young kids who don't have enough sense and will not think far enough about the consequences," says local criminal defense lawyer MJ Donovan.

Older criminals hiring kids to carry out tasks that might carry less penalties for juvenile offenders is nothing new. But those on the street say something has changed: the kids are the ones not only taking, but giving the orders now.

Younger non-gang members who are armed, say those who track such things, are also more apt to pull a gun than throw a punch in a streetside dust-up.

"The kids we are seeing are a little bit more violent, and they are getting more violent even earlier," says CPD's Neville. "And when I say more violent, they are more likely at the age of 13 or 14 to be armed and actually use a gun than ever before. Nobody debates that for a second."

Says Abdullah: "There are a lot of angry youth out there. Lord, are they angry. They see their mothers or grandmothers scrambling just to get by and they can't do anything about it and that frustration just builds."

Through August, 27 of the city's shooting victims were juveniles. That's 8.4 percent of the total shot.

At a recent community meeting earlier this month, one former juvenile delinquent cut straight to the point to Mayor Cranley.

"When I went in, everybody was older than me, and when I left everybody was 13. They're getting younger," said 17-year-old James Smith, who was released from a treatment facility in July.

As violent crime decreased over the last decade, so too have the scope and activity of several anti-violence campaigns in the city. As violence decreased, budgets shrank and volunteers faded away.

The city's Community Problem Oriented Policing initiative, or CPOP, started shortly after the 2001 riots as way to get local neighborhoods involved in policing and create more communication between police and residents. But that program has been almost dormant since at least 2012 as funding has been steadily cut as crime has receded and city revenues have dwindled.

Then there is the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence. Created after the city suffered through a record-high 89 homicides in 2007, the program is now in flux, and is not as active as it once was.

CIRV was designed to keep tabs on crime stats, put workers on the street and track potentially violent criminals and let them know police were watching. Social services like job placement and housing assistance were offered to people who wanted to leave the street life.

Part of the program involves "call-in" sessions in which known offenders are brought in for face-to-face warnings. Program statistics show an 18.5 percent reduction in shootings the month after a call-in session and that gang members attending call-in sessions were arrested less often than people in comparison groups.

Local advocates say that in its heyday, the program would hold such "call-ins" several times a week, but now they say that number is down to just once a week, if that.

In addition, several officials who help run the program are leaving the city to help restructure the University of Cincinnati police force. And the number of CIRV street workers has dwindled from 15 to just seven over the last few years due to budget cuts.

That has led some in City Hall to recommend dramatic overhauls to the program, while even one of CIRV's founding members has said the program doesn't work anymore.

Dr. Victor Garcia, a pediatric surgeon and founding director of trauma services at Cincinnati Children's Hospital and Medical Center, now says the only way to bring down violence is to target longer term issues such as poverty and low education standards.

But Cranley says the city is "trying to get the band together" with both CIRV and CPOP, pulling in more resources and community activists to recharge both programs. The city recently allocated another $125,000 beginning this month with the Community Policing Partnering Center in Avondale to expand such services. And new interim Chief Eliot Isaac has strongly expressed support for reviving community oriented policing.

But when it comes to a quick fix to the violence, the mayor says that "we understand that it will take time and won't be like flicking a light switch to end all this."

In the meantime, the violence continues almost unabated. At least seven more were shot in the city in the last two weeks.