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Students and other adults are increasingly worried about their safety with crime seeming to rise around the Ohio State, Linden, and Easton areas. 

Specifically, armed robberies are becoming the norm around the near off-campus area and other violent crimes in further Columbus zones.  

To measure one's safety from a potential attack, Professor Kenneth Pence at Vanderbilt University designed several assessments on www.rateyourrisk.org. It is for the average person to measure how their lifestyle puts them at risk for potential crimes against them. 

The evaluations measure the risk of serious assault, murder, and burglary. 

Pence is a retired caption from the Metro Nashville Police Department, where he served 31 years and has traveled around the world to teach police and military confrontation management skills. 

The inspiration for creating the threat assessments was to evaluate the risks connected to your everyday activities.

Although 2021 is now behind us, there are many issues that will linger for a while, or much longer, and will certainly dominate much of the news in 2022, as well. These are but a few of the issues.

NATO-Russian Brinkmanship 

Exasperated with NATO expansion and growing ambitions in the Black Sea region, Moscow has decided to challenge the US-led Western alliance in an area of crucial geopolitical importance to Russia. 

Tuesday, January 11, 2022, 7:00 -8:3- PM

Six months in, the Civilian Police Review Board has not yet begun their work.

Over twenty years after citizens of Columbus began asking for a civilian board to monitor the actions of the Columbus Division of Police, they overwhelmingly voted in favor of creating this body in November 2020. The first 11-member board was appointed by Mayor Andrew Ginther and approved by Columbus City Council in July of 2021. 

The Civilian Police Review Board or CPRB has two jobs: to hire and supervise an Inspector General (IG), and to serve as a standing administrative jury hearing cases investigated by the Inspector General.

Neither has happened yet.

At the first meeting of the CPRB in August 2021, Chair Janet Jackson expressed a hope that they would hire the IG by December. But during this month’s meeting (January 4, 2022) the topic was not on the agenda. Jackson, who was appointed Chair by Mayor Ginther, brought it up at the very end of the three-hour meeting, seemingly as an afterthought.

An old political axiom is: "You can't beat somebody with nobody."

An Ohio political axiom is: "It is hard to win the first time around for statewide office. Ohioans vote for the familiar."

Considering the two axioms together, one can only conclude that Ohio Democrats are on the doomsday bus to hell in 2022.

Among the current Democratic lineup, only Jennifer Brunner of Columbus, who won for secretary of state in 2006 and Ohio Supreme Court justice in 2020, has run statewide. Brunner is vying for chief justice.

In a major change, candidates for the high court will carry a party designation next to their name on the general election ballot. The Republican-run Ohio legislature eliminated the non-partisan designation because Democrats have captured three of the seven judgeships in our otherwise GOP-dominated state. The GOP cannot redistrict statewide races like they are trying to do with congressional and state legislative districts, unless, of all places, the Ohio Supreme Court rules to the contrary.