Shootings by juveniles began many months ago
Recent acts of violence among young people in Columbus, including the killing of four teenagers since June 1, generated enough alarm to cause Columbus police officials and Mayor Andrew J. Ginther to speak out.
But the apparent surge in fatal shootings involving juveniles is not confined to recent days.
In the 18-month period that began in January 2019, 16 juveniles in Franklin County have been charged with delinquency murder or reckless homicide and one with attempted murder. All but one of the deaths were caused by guns, and seven of those who died were juveniles, included four 14-year-olds.
County Prosecutor Ron O’brien said this is one of the worst stretches of fatal shootings involving juveniles in recent memory.
“It’s informed speculation, but I think it relates to the availability of handguns, along with gangs and drugs,” O’brien said. “Perhaps now, with juveniles having more time on their hands [because of the coronavirus pandemic], they have more opportunities to get in trouble.”
Juveniles are suspects in seven homicides so far this year in Columbus. With half of 2020 gone, that’s well ahead of last year’s pace, when juveniles were suspects in a total of 10 homicides, Columbus police Sgt. Eric Pilya said.
Juveniles represent 23% of the suspects in homicide cases so far in 2020, he said.
He agreed that deaths caused by young people with guns appear to be on the rise.
“Why do I think that is? I don’t really know,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be a clear pattern to it.”
By at least one measure of Franklin County Juvenile Court cases, guns increasingly are being found in the hands of teenagers, according to Judge Elizabeth Gill, the court’s lead juvenile judge.
In the first six months of this year, 133 youths were placed on what is known as an “automatic hold,” meaning confinement at the Juvenile Detention Center following an incident in which they possessed a gun. That compares to 95 such holds during the first six months of 2019, Gill said. “That, to me, is a big jump,” she said. Looking at data since 2016, Gill found that the number of juveniles placed on automatic holds because of gun-related crimes “hovers around 90” in a typical six-month period.
One man calling for a new approach to the problem of juvenile violence is Terry “Nunnie” Green, the founder of Think Make Live Youth, a nonprofit program that targets at-risk youth with opportunities so they can “think greatness, make changes and live fulfilled.”
“The system has failed us,” he said. “The traditional stuff doesn’t work. We know that.”
Green is an advocate for alternatives to incarceration for young people and seeking ways to actively intervene in the lives of highly traumatized teens.
“I always come back to the stress and the lack of support for many of these people,” said Green, who experienced homelessness as a child and incarceration as a young adult.
At 31, Green said his generation is the first to speak openly about mental health as an issue for inner-city youths.
“There hasn’t been that space before to help them heal from those wounds of abuse and neglect and other forms of trauma,” he said. “Some young people don’t even have someone to talk to. The value of a mentor, the value of a counselor, the value of having someone to talk to needs more attention. We need to erect intervention systems for these highly traumatized young people.”
Resources should be shifted, Green added, to address the mental-health problems of teens.
He recently organized a youth rally and march at Columbus City Hall as part of his effort to give young people a voice and a positive way to express their concerns.
Green thinks the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the shortage of resources and healthy outlets for juveniles.
“They’re not in school, there are no organized activities, there’s no department of recreation,” he said. “Atrisk youths are so disconnected from resources.”
Judge Gill said her years on the bench have convinced her that Green is on the right track in focusing on mental illness among the young.
“I’m a firm believer that the root of juvenile delinquency is directly related to trauma resulting in mental-health issues,” she said. “People are experiencing stuff at a young age that is unimaginable.”
She mentioned a recent case in which she terminated the parental rights for a mother and father after hearing disturbing evidence of how they treated their children.
“The testimony about what these children, ages 12, 11 and 9, have been through was mindboggling,” she said. “You almost can’t imagine them ending up OK.”
She also has been deeply troubled by the attitude toward guns that she hears from the teens who appear in her courtroom.
“The threat of being locked up does not dissuade young people from carrying guns,” Gill said. “I know it because I hear it from their mouths. The answer to why they had a gun almost always is, ’Because everyone has one.’” jfutty@dispatch.com @johnfutty