Over the past year, we also continued to work hard on the problem of juvenile crime in our city, and I am pleased to report some progress in this area as well. After surging to 24 in 2004, the number of juvenile homicide victims declined last year to 12, which has been about the average number in recent years. While the number of juveniles arrested by police remained about the same for two years in a row, the number of young people picked up on curfew violations rose by more than 150 percent last year to 3,271, reflecting the priority we place on getting young people off the streets and out of harm’s way during the critical late night hours.

 

As you know, the MPD assumed management responsibility for school safety this school year. We have staffed and trained our full complement of School Resource Officers and supervisors, and we have implemented new standards and procedures for the hiring, training and supervision of contract security personnel in the schools. Our Office of Security Services monitors, on a daily basis, both our efforts in the schools themselves and our efforts in combating the nexus between crime in our neighborhoods and crime in our schools. I am generally pleased with our school safety efforts to date, but recognize that we must remain ever-vigilant in protecting our schools and our school children.

 

Over the past year, our Department continued to carry out a number of other youth development and crime prevention initiatives, including youth advisory councils, conflict resolution teams, 40 Days of Increased Peace, a Fashion Idol program for girls, and other initiatives in each police district.  Through our OPAT program – Operation Prevent Auto Theft – the MPD has worked with more than 100 juvenile offenders whose principal charge is Unauthorized Use of a Vehicle, to try to get them back on the right track.  OPAT targets young, first-time offenders and their families for intensive counseling and intervention activities. It is my firm belief that these and other prevention programs are a critical component of long-term solutions to the problem of juvenile crime and violence.

 

But while we have made some progress on juvenile crime, I am very concerned about certain trends.  I mentioned earlier that overall arrests of juveniles remained about the same in 2005.  However, arrests of juveniles for robbery and weapons offenses are both up sharply – 37 percent and 30 percent, respectively.  Last year, nearly one out of every three suspects arrested for robbery was a juvenile, and more and more of them seem to be armed. And tragically, the three juvenile homicides already recorded in 2006 underscore how far we still need to go.  Our Department continues to refine existing strategies and explore new approaches to combat these problems. But to be effective, we will need the support of this committee and the Council in further reforming some of our juvenile justice laws, including reforms to provide our Department with more information about juveniles who have been released to the community.