A group of local leaders talked about something they’ve been working on for months.
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They said it’s addressing growing concerns from the community over safety and security in downtown Dayton.
On Monday, a bipartisan group of local, state, and federal elected leaders, plus people from the business community, talked about something they’ve been working on since August.
They’ve called it the Downtown Dayton Security Working Group.
“In downtown, we have had decades of revitalization and rebirth,” Rep. Mike Turner said.
Leaders mentioned things like professional baseball and the arts scene downtown, plus investments from local businesses there, the revitalization of the Dayton Arcade, several new hotels getting built, and the construction of new housing as just some of the examples of investments.
“We want to make sure that that investment continues. And we know it can be at risk if we don’t have a place where people feel secure,” Turner said.
Last year, a Dunbar High School student was shot and killed near the RTA hub downtown while he was on his way to school.
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News Center 7 has also covered the case against Mark Arden, who pleaded guilty to a downtown Dayton vandalism spree last summer.
Turner said the group thinks there’s a need for increased social services downtown, particularly for the homeless population, increased police presence, and increased enforcement from the courts after police deal with incidents downtown.
“The growth we have seen downtown is at a tipping point. The goal is simple: more people downtown more often and making sure that they are supported and safe,” State Sen. Willis Blackshear Jr. (D-Dayton) said.
The group said it has submitted its recommendations to Montgomery County and Dayton commissioners.
Turner said city commissioners have already put those recommendations into an agenda item for its first reading at the first commission meeting of the new year on Wednesday.
Last year, Dayton police data we pulled showed that calls for service in the area of the RTA hub downtown increased by almost one thousand since 2022.
In August of that year, Dayton Public Schools began using RTA to bus high school students to class.
The school district and state are still in a legal fight over a state law that would ban DPS from providing RTA bus passes to high school students for transportation.
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