Community holds meeting to address concerns about juvenile crime
On Monday, members of the community met at Greensboro Center to discuss the issues in Starkville surrounding juvenile crime.
Recently there has been an uptick in all types of crime committed by individuals under 18, and it ranges from petty theft to more serious felonies. Because there is no place to hold minors after they are arrested, they can only be released to a guardian but they end up back where they were. It is a vicious cycle, and this group of community members want better for the youth who are sure to be the future of this city.
This group of people has members of the community from all walks of life who want to see youth succeed, and they have broken themselves into three subcommittees who all focus on how to help juveniles who are falling behind instead of punishing them.
The three action committees are school-based, family-based, and youth legal and resource services.
The school-based committee is a mentorship program where ideally each person would have one or two students to focus on and help succeed in the classroom and other extra curricular activities.
“We are looking for people with integrity, and people who are going to be fully committed and not get in there and be fired up at first and have three or four visits with the student then fall off because that will be worse than not starting it at all,” Chief Shoemaker said. “So we want people who have integrity, who are committed, and we may ask them to commit to two students depending on how many people we can get to help. We need to have a resource guide for mentors because we need to have them operate safely. If there is something going on with the child they need to talk about, then they can refer the child to the help they
because the violence is not going to stop if we don’t step forward.”
With all of the issues SPD has faced over the past year, Ballard mentioned his department have plans on how to handle those issues moving forward. One of those plans include a new contract between the city and Select Utility Inc. which will provide the department with 60 bornworn cameras and 40 vehicle cameras. The department’s new equipment will be more innovative in the sense that the cameras will come along with sensors that would automatically activate the cameras in certain situations without the officers having to do it themselves.
For instance, the camera’s sensors will automatically activate when it detects that the vehicle is engaging in a pursuit, when an officer’s gun is unholstered or if an officer is down. The cameras will also capture two minutes of “pre-event” recording that can be reviewed for evidence.
“We’re very excited about this program and what it is capable of doing. It is an evolution of camera systems that is going to change our game a little bit and how we’re doing it,” said Ballard. “Officers don’t have to think, they hit a zone. Every school will be circled, every high-risk area will be circled to where when an officer has to do their job, they don’t
have to activate a camera system, it’s rolling and it’s tracking where and what they’re doing.”
For next week’s Starkville Rotary Club meeting, Tim Moore, executive director of the Philadelphia-neshoba County Chamber of Commerce, will introduce the Rotarians to Marty Stuart’s Congress of Country Music comprising a museum, classrooms, a community hall, and meeting and event space in Philadelphia.