Baltimore’s police commissioner says he is paying close attention to juvenile violence, as a new study says the number of black teenagers killed in shootings is rising nationally at an alarming rate.
In 2008, 27 juveniles have been killed in Baltimore, compared with 26 last year. City police have investigated 84 shootings of juveniles this year, compared with 97 last year.
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Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld says the police department closely monitors this year’s juvenile crime trends — which represent about an average year for the agency — but thinks the violence can be reduced the same way overall crime has gone down.
“It is an area that stays on our consciousness,” Bealefeld said Monday. “While we’ve done a good job on the adult side, we have room to improve on the juvenile side.”
» 2008: 27
» 2007: 26
» 2006: 28
» 2005: 12
» 2004: 31
» 2003: 30
» 2002: 38
» 2001: 31
Bealefeld said the agency can improve in several areas, including clearing more juvenile homicides and shootings; working more closely with juvenile probation officers; removing some of the secrecy around juvenile crimes; improving monitoring of the most at-risk juveniles; and working more on gang-intervention strategies.
Ten juveniles have been charged in murders this year, compared with 23 last year. Police have arrested and charged 46 juveniles with nonfatal shootings in 2008, compared with 60 in 2007.
“Our homicide clearance rate is down” by about 10 percent, Bealefeld said. “When you look at that number of juvenile suspects and victims, here’s what we know: Juveniles tend to commit their crimes against other juveniles. When you have a low juvenile clearance rate, it creates problems for you. We can do a lot better there.” On Monday criminologists at Northeastern University in Boston released a study showing the number of young black men and teenagers who either killed or were killed in shootings has risen at an alarming rate since 2000.
Last year, for example, 426 black males between the ages of 14 and 17 were killed in gun crimes, the study shows. That marked a 40 percent increase from 2000.
Similarly, an estimated 964 in the same age group committed fatal shootings in 2007 — a 38 percent increase from seven years earlier. The number of offenders is estimated because not all crimes are reported, said Northeastern criminologist James Alan Fox, who co-authored the study.
“Although the overall rate of homicide in the United States remains relatively low, the landscape is quite different for countless Americans living, and some dying, in violence-infested neighborhoods,” Fox said.
The number of young white men who committed gun-related homicides also rose over the same period, the Northeastern study showed, but not as dramatically. In 2007, an estimated 384 white males aged 14 to 17 shot someone to death, up from 368 in 2000.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
