YOUNGSTOWN Forum organizer: Raise sensitivity aid, for victims' families

Crime victims often get a runaround among helping agencies, an advocate says.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The Rev. Crystal Williams says there's a need for more sensitivity and better coordination among agencies that help crime victims and their families.
The Rev. Ms. Williams, whose son, William Kitchen, 19, was shot to death in the city in 1992, is a crime victims' advocate and president of Voices Over Inner City Crime Exchanging Solutions.
Ms. Williams helped organize a forum for crime victims Thursday at New Beginnings Outreach Ministries on Wick Avenue at which police, prosecutors and a host of health care and social service agencies representatives described the functions of their organizations. Several dozen people attended.
"The purpose of this program is to bridge the gap with knowledge and understanding between the different agencies," she said, adding that crime victims often get a runaround while being sent from one agency to the next.
Relatives of a homicide victim may have questions about promptness of police response to the scene, a delay in covering a body with a sheet at the scene, why they are denied access at the hospital and why criminal charges are plea bargained, she said.
Offering explanations
Dr. David Kennedy, Mahoning County coroner, explained that it may be necessary to restrict access to a victim to preserve evidence concerning a case that may be ruled a homicide.
The county prosecutor's office operates its own victim-witness assistance program and works closely with police, rape counselors, the county Children Services Board and other agencies that investigate crimes or assist victims, said Paul Gains, county prosecutor.
"We observed sort of a disconnect between a number of the entities that assist victims of domestic violence," said Atty. Christine Blair-Legow, a representative of the county domestic violence task force, explaining the reason the task force was formed about three years ago.
"The police officers didn't know what the social workers were doing and vice versa," she said.
"The task force has been working to assist officers in understanding what social workers can do, how they can assist victims," she said, adding that the task force has developed wallet cards bearing emergency numbers and describing available services, which police can hand to victims.
Blair-Legow is also associate director of Northeast Ohio Legal Services, which operates a volunteer advocacy legal unit program, which helps domestic violence victims obtain civil protective orders.
Silence abounds
"There are too many people in our community who are remaining silent when they see things going down and people in certain situations, and they won't speak up," lamented the Rev. Alfred Coward of the Mayor's Task Force on Crime and Violence Prevention.
"We come together to become solution-oriented," he said, adding that the task force meets at 9 a.m. the first Friday of each month in city council chambers.
The mayor's task force is providing free cellular phones with battery chargers to senior citizens to enable them to call 911 in an emergency under its SOS (Save Our Seniors) program, he announced.