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WCPO (Channel 9) News Story about Youth Gun Violence and Colostomies

Many of you have wondered what happened with the Cincinnati Police and the WCPO story concerning youth gun violence and resulting colostomies. Alison Rothbaum Banks (GCOA’s social media director) has been the contact liaison for us locally and the national UOAA in efforts to remedy this situation with WCPO and the Cincinnati Police.

The Cincinnati Police Department and Jay Warren of WCPO both apologized early on to individuals, including UOAA President David Rudzin. Through the concerted efforts of Alison Rothbaum Banks and Doug Yakich (UOAA board candidate from California), we were able to explain to Interim Chief Humphries how hurtful the comments were to thousands of people with ostomies in our country and around the world. We now have an official letter of the apology from Interim Chief Humphries on behalf of CPD and addressed to UOAA. A copy of the apology can be viewed from the link below. We will also have copies available at our next meeting on August 15th.

I personally want to thank Interim Chief Humphries for his compassion and thoughtfulness in helping us hopefully counteract any negative stigma this may have caused. On a local standpoint, in the near future, we hope we can work with him and the CPD to help us promote ostomy awareness. We would like to share the real facts about ostomies, help us with our mission to educate the entire community, as well as finding and helping others out there with ostomies.

Thank you for all of your support, plus the thousands of online comments and signatures you gave us, but PLEASE, PLEASE do not register any more complaints with CPD about the news story. They have been very cooperative with us so we want to let them get back to regular police business. If you have any other comments, please email us at PR@mygcoa.org, or comment online using one of the links below. Thank you!
Howard Rechel
President
Greater Cincinnati Ostomy Assn.