Ready to go.

Well, good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us for this hearing on juvenile safety.

This afternoon, we'll have a conversation that is comprehensive where we talk about uh safety enforcement and law enforcement side, but also about our continued investment in youth programming.

This is not an either or, but a both and when we talk about keeping our young people safe.

This conversation comes at an important moment.

Over the past several years, Columbus has made real progress in reducing overall crime, but there is one area we have not seen the same level of success, and that's when it comes to the safety and well-being of our young people.

Too often we treat this as something that we focus on in the summer months when school ends and young people are out and about more.

But this is not a seasonal challenge.

It is a year-round responsibility, and it deserves sustained and serious attention.

What I've seen and what many of you have seen have been some troubling trends.

We've seen large gatherings that have turned into fights and turned into shots fired.

We've seen incidents organized over social media like takeovers, young people that have uh been perpetrated by uh guns, perpetrating with guns and uh uh injured by guns and putting themselves at risk.

Over the past year, we spent time digging into this issue, not just as council, but as parents.

We've been talking to uh young people, to judges, to prosecutors, to police, to faith leaders, to community leaders and others.

We've been meeting with partners, reviewing data and asking hard questions.

We all know that we've made significant investment in youth programming to keep our young people occupied and out of trouble.

Those investments matter, and they have made real differences in our community.

But funding programs alone is not enough.

And as COVID dollars dry up, we'll be challenged to sustain that funding.

We have to be honest about the broader context.

Many of the challenges we are seeing are rooted in deeper systemic issues.

Poverty, segregation, systemic racism, and systems that have not always prioritized prevention and rehabilitation.

But none of those can be excuses for keeping us from intervening aggressively and early when a young person is going off track, and before they re-offend after the first time, and before they end up in jail or even worse, dead.

Initial contact with the justice system, even if it's a misdemeanor, and school truancies are early indicators that a young person is going off track.

And is relatively a small number of young people who are responsible for a disproportionate share of serious incidents.

I think that it is critical that we highlight that.

When we talk about youth violence, we're talking about a very small number of young people that represent a disproportionate amount of the issue.

But our systems always don't talk to each other to identify and interrupt those patterns.

So we need to be more focused, more strategic, and more intentional on how we intervene and support those most at risk.

I've also heard that collaboration has weakened in recent years at a time when we needed it most.

Connections between schools, law enforcement, families, and community organizations have frayed.

For example, until 2018, the city had a partnership with the YMCA where our police would engage with young people who were out during the day and who should be in school, picking them up and taking them somewhere safe.

Maybe we need to recreate that program.

Another example is school resource officers in Columbus City Schools.

That partnership lapsed in 2020.

And what I've heard repeatedly was that it was those officers that played a role in addressing incidents that no other people have stepped in to fill.

Maybe we need to take another look at that as well.

So today's hearing is about grounding this conversation in facts and solution.

We want to better understand the data.

We want to learn from best practices, and we want to take stock of the assets we already have in this community.

No option is off the table.

Maybe we need parental responsibility laws that holds families accountable for their kids and their actions.

Or maybe we need a curfew in effect this summer.

Or we need to the CPD to restart its juvenile unit to help us enforce truancy.

But just as important, this is about action.

Because at the end of the day, we're talking about our young people and their safety, and we can't afford to be afraid to have any part of this conversation.

So I am grateful for you being here today.

I'm so grateful that I get to join the chair of this committee, Councilmember Remy, the vice chair of this committee, Councilmember Ross, and my colleague, Councilmember Day Achauer.

And Councilman Deakauer is uh chair of the Recreation and Parks Committee who oversaw the youth summer programming for this uh this summer.

And so I'm going to turn the podium over to Councilmember Remy.

Chair Remy.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Good afternoon, and thank you for well, thank you to President Hart and thank you, Vice Chair Ross, and Councilmember Dayekauer for joy joining us today.

As chair of public safety and criminal justice committee, I'm grateful that we are bringing together partners from law enforcement, education, higher education, and the broader community for this conversation.

Juvenile safety is not something anyone institution can solve on its own.

It requires strong partnership, on honest uh collaboration, and a shared commitment to making sure young people are connected to the right resources before a crisis becomes worse.

Early this week, thanks to the coordination of my colleague, um, Councilmember Ross, Council President, and I had the opportunity to speak directly with youth from the boys and girls club and hear firsthand about the challenges they see and face as young adults.

It was enlightening.

What I took away from that conversation is at the end of the day, our city's young people want to be seen, heard, valued, and cared for.

Not simply because we want to prevent violence or truancy, but because they inherently deserve that from adults and institutions around them.