Authorities Address Juvenile Crime In Baltimore

RadioOnFire.com - Mixed in with Baltimore's current average of a homicide a day this month, police are also seeing more juvenile crime. Children doing the dirty work for the adults, who recruit them. So, police made a call to action for parents this week.

Baltimore police Commissioner Kevin Davis mentioned two cases of multiple juveniles stealing and carjacking cars during a Wednesday's press conference about the spike in Baltimore violence.

Police recovered two stolen cars Wednesday morning in the same area, and said kids ages 12 to 17 were involved, and two adults were with them. Police said on Wednesday 14- to 16-year-olds were involved in a carjacking and a 19-year-old was with them.

It's part of the recent trend of adults recruiting younger teens to carry out their crimes, police said.

"I'm a 25-year-old. I'm not going to steal that car, but if I can get my hands on a 13-year-old or 12-year-old, who will go up and commit that strong-armed carjacking, I know that the criminal justice system is barely going to touch that kid, barely," Davis said.

Authorities acknowledged neighborhood challenges.

"These kids are growing up in situations that most of us don't," Patrol Chief Osborne Robinson said.

Police leadership pleaded with parents and adults to keep better watch over the young teenagers.

But Ericka Alston, who run Kids Safe Zone in west Baltimore, said it runs deeper than that. Kids Safe Zone is a place where the mundane to many people matters more.

In a kid's yoga class, a teacher tells them to think of something positive that happened today.

"It is trauma. It is fear. It is abandonment. Imagine being a kid in a community where 80 percent of the homes around you are vacant. What does that do to your psyche? What does that do to your soul?" Alston said.

Here's something positive: Alston said she just got funding for a program called U-Turns, which uses peer mentors, targeting 14- to 25-year-olds.

"If those peer navigators can get four kids in here for 30 minutes a day, that's 30 minutes that they lived. That's the reality. That's not an exaggeration," Alston said.

Alston said the job requirements for the mentor are experience with incarceration or substance abuse. She wants people who survived the streets to pass on what they learned to the younger generation.

Source WBAL