Good evening all.

Uh this is the meeting of the Education Committee of the Indianapolis City Council convened on Tuesday, April 7th, 2026 at 5 30 p.m.

I would like to begin by asking my colleagues on the committee to briefly introduce themselves for the record, starting with Councillor Brown.

Good evening.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Jesse Brown, District 13, near North Near East Side.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, Jessica McCormick, District 16, West Side, including Speaker.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Councilor Dan Boots, District 3, Washington Lawrence Townships.

Thank you all.

I'm Dr.

Carlos Perkins, District 6.

I would like to begin this particular meeting tonight.

There are no proposals before this committee.

However, we have a special presentation on Marion County Youth Gun Violence and potential solutions.

Given the current challenges we face, this is a timely and necessary discussion.

We are appreciative of the work being carried out by the many entities across our city and county that are committed to reducing gun violence and creating safer communities for our young people.

We are honored to welcome three notable community leaders who will help to guide this conversation this evening.

Dr.

Virgil Gregory, associate professor in the School of Social Work at Indiana University, Indianapolis, Dr.

Joseph Tucker Edmonds, Associate Professor of Religious Studies in Africana Studies, and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University, Indianapolis.

And Mr.

Brandon Randall, founder of True Colors Consultant LSC in Indianapolis.

True Colors Consultant LSC is committed to empowering individuals and organizations to leadership development, conflict resolution, and community engagement strategies.

The organization works to equip communities with practical tools to address violence, build trust, and foster sustainable pathways towards safety and opportunity.

As counselors and community members, it is our hope that gatherings like this will equip us with research tools and best practices needed to effectively reduce gun violence in general and youth gun violence in particular.

This is not simply a policy issue.

It is a human issue that touches families, schools, neighborhoods, and futures.

No single institution, office, or organization can solve this challenge alone.

It will take collaboration across sectors, education, public safety, faith communities, nonprofits, and residents themselves, working together with shared purpose and sustained commitment.

Each of us has a role to play in building safer environments where our young people can thrive.

So let today's discussion be more than just a presentation.

It is a call to action for all of us.

The work before us is urgent.

It is also filled with possibilities.

If we remain committed, informed, and united, we can help shape a future where hope is stronger than arm and opportunity outweighs risk.

Together, we can do the hard and necessary work of creating a safer, more just community for the next generation.

And with that, I'm going to invite our presenters tonight.

My colleague Counselor Graves just walked in on allowing to introduce himself.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Keith Graves, Indianapolis City Council, District 9 on the Indianapolis East.

Thank you, Council Graves.

And I now turn it over to our presenters tonight to uh share with us uh what they have researched and found in recommendations.

Thank you.

Dr.

Virgil.

All right, thank you so much for having us.

Could we go to my uh thank you?

So before coming to the IU School of Social Work, I was a full-time addictions therapist.

I worked with adults and adolescents who had addiction and co-occurring mental health issues.

The majority of my clients were referred by DCS and Marion County probation.

Also have a lot of uh clinical experience in basically every area of addictions.

Uh I think I'd be remiss if I didn't say I was born and raised in Indianapolis, and uh yeah, I grew I spent a lot of time in IPS.

I graduated from Decatur, but I spent a lot of first 10 years of school in IPS.

Uh my research looks at the intersection of uh racial injustice and and mental health issues.

Um I focus specifically on cognitive behavioral therapy, which is the most research psychotherapy and its application to black Americans and also persons with addictions.

I do a lot of uh statistical things like developing scales and measures to measure um social and psychological phenomena, and I do a lot of statistical modeling as well.

And as you'll see today, and at the end of the presentation, I do qualitative research as well.

Good evening.

Uh it's great to spend this evening with you all to talk about this very important topic.

My name is Joseph Tucker Edmonds.

I'm a professor of religious studies in Africana Studies, and what I want to highlight is that I've had the opportunity to work alongside uh Dr.

Gregory uh as we've done a couple of studies throughout the city of Indianapolis, um, thinking about racial trauma, uh black men, and how that affects not only their current lives, but the trajectories of their lives.

And so part of what we are bringing to the conversation today is how do institutions impact or mitigate or interact with uh the behaviors, the decisions, um, and the life trajectories of the folks that we are very uh interested and concerned about.

Um, my research looks primarily at black religion and the body and what it means to be a theorist of the body this at this evening is to think holistically about what it means for our young folks in this city to be well.

And so, what we're gonna be what you'll see us talking about tonight is what it means for them to be well around the the logic and the metric of mental wellness, what it means for them to be well as they are engaged and pushed to be activists and leaders in their community, and what it means for them to be well as it relates to the communities and institutions of care that surround them.

As a scholar of religious studies, I'm looking at churches and non-traditional religious institutions.

How do they interact and what specific role do they play in making sure that not only are we dealing with these larger factors but that we are really attending to the black body of agency and wellness, and what does it mean to have a life that encompasses not only surviving but flourishing?

I'll hand it over to Mr.

Randall.

Um good evening, everybody.

My name is Brandon Randall, um, and I'm the founder of True Colors Consulting.

Um, but I'm a youth worker.

I've been a youth worker for 20 years, um, and I'm still doing direct service.

Um I work in schools and the community every single day.

Um so this topic is very uh personal for me.

This is my life, um, 24-7 uh 365, and I was already excited for tonight, um, but I'm even more excited because one of my amazing uh young people uh happened to join me tonight, and now he is joining the panel discussion.

Uh, you know, on the job training.

Um, so I'm gonna have uh Brandon Spivey introduce himself.

My name is Brandis Bivey.

Um I work in uh I work at three different schools.

I'm a uh assistant and that's what I'll start with the personal disclaimer that um today.

All of the things that me and Dr.

Tuck Redman state, uh they solely represent me and Dr.

Edmonds.

They do not represent any other individuals, entities, employers, organizations, or any other parties at all.

They only represent us.

In today's presentation, you're going to hear you got our introduction.

So you see that we're from different different areas, but we we have the core value of our care for the city and the youth that's in it.

Um, but you're gonna see some different perspectives, some on the same topic, but they're all to the benefit of the city and while we're here.

For today's agenda, we're gonna start off with framing youth violence in the context of mental health.

I'm going to describe eight criminal risk variables.

I'm going to describe a continuum of antisocial traits that are found in youth and adults, and then there'll be some key takeaway points, and Mr.

Randall is also going to be discussing some of these things as well.

Then we're going to talk about potential solutions, which include clinical things like evidence-based interventions like cognitive behavioral therapy and some family-based interventions, as well as a brief discussion of hospital-based based violence interventions.

Once the violence has already occurred, as well as community initiatives, as all three of us are actively involved in the community in Indianapolis addressing issues directly pertaining to youth violence.

We will end with some unique stories.

So mine is going to come from the qualitative study that I'm working on and specific things the youth had to say from the 462 and a zip code had to say about youth violence, and Mr.

Randall and Dr.

Tucker Admins and the gentleman here, who uh he's also going to be sharing some things as well.

So all right, so the frame is in mental health, and we're going to start off with first.

I'm going to start off with eight criminal risk variables.

The first is antisocial traits, which you hear a lot about uh anti-social things in popular media and culture.

Um so I have a whole couple slides on that, so I'll come back to it.

But these are factors that can affect youth violence, and they transfer over to adult as well.

Um this is in the presentation, but I think is worth stating right now.

These are all things that are amenable.

These are to psychosocial intervention interventions.

These are things that you can actually change.

So first is personality, like adventurous risk taking, um, impulsivity, certain thoughts and beliefs, like sometimes youth can have thoughts and beliefs like education is not important.

Um associates having peers that are actively involved in gangs or other non-prosocial things.

Families uh are a huge important part.

Um, as I talk about this, um, you're also going to hear about the strengths of families in correcting youth violence.

We're going to talk about um school and work or activities, um, leisure, and then substance use.

So youth violence and gun violence, it can diagnostically, it can be viewed along a continuum of externalized disorders.

Externalized disorders are under control disorders.

For example, if I want to hit somebody, or if I if my if I'm upset, then I will do it, I'll hit somebody, I'll destroy something, and those are behaviors that are under control.

These are things that I shouldn't be doing, but I'm going to go ahead and do them.

What you see in oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and antisocial personality disorder.

The extent of under controlled uh behaviors just kind of increases, it graduates.

Um, and they're more severe as we move through the different diagnostic categories.

So the first one is oppositional defiant disorder.

This is diagnosed in childhood.

It's a pattern of angry, irritable, argumentative, vindictive behavior.

Um, there are certain specifiers that depend on the number of settings in which these symptoms manifest themselves.

Um, and one thing that I'll comment on that I think you'll you'll see throughout, as you read through some of these, you can say, oh, well, I have a nephew or niece who who's like this.

Um but one of the things that's important is that you have to look at the consequences of it.

So if a child goes off one time because you tell them go to bed, that wouldn't constitute usually one of these disorders.

Um but here I'm just giving you an overview.

I'm not giving you all the diagnostic criteria.

What would make a diagnosis is the frequency of these symptoms and the duration of them as well as other things, like if they can be explained by other reasonable factors.

Um the list is conduct disorder.

So this is a pattern or behavior of violating the rights of others or violating age appropriate norms.

This could be aggression to people or animals, bullying, initiating fights, using a weapon that causes serious harm to other people, destruction of properties, deception.

This is important, curfew violations, running away from home.

As we see young people that have these issues, these are definitely red flags.

It doesn't mean that they have a disorder, but if they are taking to, if you bring them to treatment, then that whole thing is assessed.

So you also want to look at the consequences, as I said, too.

Finally, is antisocial personality disorder.

This is diagnosed in adulthood, a pattern of disregarding and violating the rights of others.

In order to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, you must have already met the criteria for a conduct disorder.

I want to bring that up because I'm hoping that it shows that these things occur along a continuum.

When I was practicing, if I see that somebody has an antisocial personality disorder, of course I would ask, but I could usually be pretty accurate about believing that they probably met the criteria for conduct disorder.

And if the people were honest quite often, that was what it was.

So again, this is important just so you know that there is a continuum, and each point along the continuum is an option is an opportunity for intervention.

All right.

So I know Brandon, I think we're going to go to you at this point.

Yeah.

So I I want to make sure that we also understand the interpersonal aspect of root causes of gun violence.

I know we have a lot of the research around behavior, but I think that it's really important in this conversation to go below that surface and what is causing some of these behaviors.

Um I want to point out two things.

So the first one is absent caring and consistent relationships.

Um we know through many studies that one of the most predictive things in uh violence, but specifically youth gun violence, is the absence or the presence of a caring and consistent adult, whether that's a family member, a mentor, um, whoever that may be, um that is a critical factor.

And then the other one is the absence or the presence of hope.

Um so tonight um I know that I'll be talking about uh critical help theory and where that comes from and looking at some of the research.

Um I I think it's important that while we're looking at some of these uh research-based um methods, we also have to balance that with the interpersonal approaches as well, um, because a lot of times that gets lost in translation in order to have this conversation.

I think that that has to be a balanced priority.

All right.

I'm going to just provide a few takeaways as far as the diagnoses.

Um again, each diagnosis should be viewed as a point of intervention.

All of these diagnoses, oppositional defined disorder, conduct disorder, antisocial personality, these are all treatable disorders.

Considerations should be made as far as the environment, um, what may be considered a conduct disorder in one setting, when you look at the context, um, it may not necessarily be that when you bring into the the contextual factors.

Um these diagnoses, they do carry a lot of stigma, but the purpose of the diagnosis is not to stigmatize anyone.

The purpose of a diagnosis is to specify unique cause, course, and treatment.

So when somebody sees, for example, conduct disorder, they should have like a manualized intervention to address that.

Um I just want to say this real quick, too.

Um there is a movement in psychopathology where what if you get a client that has all these disorders or things like that.

The emphasis is kind of moving towards the core cause in in treating that core cause, because a lot of these issues, these under control behaviors, that's true for substance use too, right?

So if you use a substance, you shouldn't use that much, but you can't control it.

Impulsivity is what underlies a lot of these under controlled behaviors.

So where psychopath psychotherapy is moving is treating the core causes.

This is important because when a person sees a youth that has, for example, oppositional defiant disorder, they need to be aware that this youth could also be at risk depending on their friends, of also using substances and things of that nature, and depending on their family as well.

Dr.

Gregory, and I know it's a typical practice that we allow our guests to complete the presentation before we engage in conversation, but I don't want to miss this moment.

Can you explore that a little bit uh for me?

Sure.

Uh and I'm gonna use uh a personal example.

So I grew up in Indianapolis.

Um I grew up in Sutton Place, which if you have been here, then you do or don't know what sudden place is, but that's where I grew up.

So sometimes you may be put in certain situations where your responses they may appear uh disproportionate and maybe in that situation it is.

But in certain and there's an infinite number of possibilities, but depending on the neighborhood, the context, what's going on, it may not necessarily be conduct disorder.

It may be um not deviating from the norms of that neighborhood or things like that.

Um so if if that if that has some context.

It does think in a Cr.

Joseph, go ahead.

I was just gonna ask um Dr.

Gregory if you could talk about what in this case might be understood as a reasonable response to the systemic conditions under which certain of our youth who may engage in uh behavior or activity that we would find problematic, but given their context, right, it it it could be understood as reasonable as a result of responding to trauma, to fear, to continued acts of either neglect or abuse, right, by you know, police, city officials, things of that nature.

I mean, can you explain this?

Because I mean, so because someone might say uh a person responding uh very erratically to a police officer stopping them might might emblematically be understood as having conduct disorder, but under that context where everyone in their neighborhood is stopped over and over again and therefore is experiencing that kind of trauma, then this then it might be inaccurate or maybe incomplete to call that conduct disorder.

But what would you name that if we were going to name that something else?

Okay, absolutely.

So that that is a good example.

Um also let's say uh a youth is 13, gets jumped by three people.

This youth fights um, I don't want to say good, but they know how to fight.

So the three people that jumped this youth, they are they look worse than the youth.

But sometimes a person may look at the youth and say, wow, you did this to these three people.

In this situation where a person is being attacked by by three individuals, they may have fear for their lives.

They may have grown up in a family where their parents were being abused or things of that nature.

Um, these would be the contextual factors that you want to consider before you make that diagnosis.

Thank you for that, and I do invite my colleagues if you have any questions to to ask.

Um I was interested, I was reflecting what when you stated that I was reflecting on my experience both as a principal here in Indianapolis uh in one of our school districts, and attending football games for that particular school district, but also attending football games for my daughter's school district who attends a majority cultured high school.

And the expectation for behaviors and rules that were set up in very two very different school settings were rather interesting for me.

In the school setting where I worked, there were things that were considered to be conduct disorder and needed monitoring, and it was a majority minority school district, versus my daughter's school, where there were things that this that were acceptable behavior from the students that would be considered maladaptive behavior in a majority minority school district system.

So I'm interested in when when you make that statement that this resonated for me of how uh what it looks like, at least for our young people experiencing it.

There are things that you can get away with in a majority school district that you can't get get away with in a minority school district.

So I would love Brandon to talk a little bit about that because one of the things that we're seeing, because I think the takeaway points here are that obviously we have a um a diagnosis toolkit to help us identify certain kinds of behaviors and to intervene early and to apply practices and solutions that we're gonna get to in the next part of this uh presentation.

But there's also, I think, as Brandon was mentioning earlier, and you know, Dr.

Perkins, Councilman Perkins, you're uh alluding to is that there is this kind of overcriminalization, this uh this this uh this model of um hyper surveillance which would lead to uh maybe an incorrect assignation of a disorder or a particular intervention around that disorder that then disadvantages that young person to to to persist in school to return the next week, you know, things of that nature.

So I mean I want I want us to talk about that those are the systemic issues that are not taking seriously these diagnoses as on a spectrum, as something that can be solved and addressed, as something that should be understood as normative, because what you're suggesting is in your daughter's district, it was understood on a spectrum and it was normative, and we had tools and uh and resources to address them, whether they were happening at a football game or bullying or in and more risk uh risk um aligned um uh uh circumstances, but when we're moving over to these other instances, we don't have those resources, or we fail to use those resources, so then all of those activities, you know, are criminalized or designated too early or too often as being on the far end of that diagnosis scale.

So I mean I want I want Brandon to jump in, and then we will move into ways in which I think there are responses to this, though, that that we're that that we're trying to uh push forward today for the council of people to to consider.

Um yeah, I mean uh you know, we see that in in schools, we see this in programs.

You know, you'll have young people who they are demonstrating some of these behaviors and uh it it's not it's not tolerated or it's not um there's no collaboration to kind of address the challenge, right?

Um and we see young people who are being labeled um as problematic, as antisocial, as delinquent, um, and what happens is that label follows them, and then they are treated a certain way um by educators and community members and you know a lot of adults.

And the challenge is with that, what we are doing is we are applying the totality of these young people's lived experience based upon one mistake, right?

And even if it's not just once, you know, I work with some young people who uh they they cut up pretty quick uh frequently.

But the reality is if we continue to apply some of these um these diagnoses without an interpersonal intervention, right?

We have to be able to look at why some of these kids are acting the way they do.

And I'll give you an example.

Um I had a student um about a a week ago who um we were in the middle of one of our leadership sessions, and he got mad at what I was trying to explain to him, and he uh cussed me out and walked out the door.

Now if I would have responded with, you know, not let's explore, not let's have Brandon or Duran go kind of talk to him, um, but really just leave it on the surface of he cussed me out, that's unacceptable, I'm done, then there would have been uh a disconnect in that relationship.

And there would have been no future opportunity for grace or understanding or redemption.

And I think when we're talking about what Dr.

Virgil and Dr.

Joseph are, you know, uh bringing into this conversation, we are leaving out the opportunity for grace and for understanding and for redemption.

As adults, we want that extended to us, but for some reason we do not mutually extend that to young people who have been labeled or who are currently systems involved.

And I think that you know all of that has uh a part of this conversation.

And before we we go back to Dr.

Virgil, I kind of want to ask Brandon, you know, have you seen that?

Like, have you seen the labels follow other young people, your peers, maybe yourself, and what does that do to a young person's mind?

Like what are your thoughts on that?

My thoughts is that uh I agree, they do they do follow you wherever you go.

Um I feel like people should like be more out there to listen and not just judge off of the situation that they see the first time and actually like put in put in work to like get closer to them to see like what's the what's the biggest what's the big issue over the whole situation?

Yeah.

And why?

Why do they need to do that?

Because you would never understand a young person if you don't get into their shoes.

Yeah.

Council Brown.

So just a quick um interjection, and I agree with you very much, uh, both Brandons actually, uh, and what everyone is saying.

I worked in a high school for about three and a half years, and some of my peers would kind of push back against some of this framing because you know, from their perspective, you know, maybe it's true that our system is racist, for example, that it you know judges people wrongly, that it will treat you know young black males, especially as potential criminals and therefore react that way.

But that's how society is, and so does school have some obligation to prepare young people for this unfair world that they're gonna be entering into.

And so some of them were like very big advocates of tough love, and just like you do need to be very strict because you know, if it's a police officer, it's not just gonna be an expulsion, it'll be worse.

Um I disagreed with them then, but I wonder if you would have an answer to that kind of thinking.

Yeah, I feel like you know that kind of goes back to this whole concept of hope, right?

Um, you know, when we look at what are enemies of hope.

Um, so there's an educator, his name is Dr.

Jeffrey Duncan Andre, and he wrote a brief around critical hope theory, and he explains that hope deferred is when we have this really irrational sense of a future utopia that we're all aspiring to, but not addressing the here and now.

Um I think that uh to combat that is having what he calls audacious hope.

And that is when we walk alongside young people in their victories, um, but also in their challenges.

And I think that schools, community members, elected officials, we all have a role in understanding this very interpersonal landscape.

Um a part of Audacious Hope says that um we don't treat other people's children as others, but they are our children.

Their pain is our pain.

And so when I'm working with my students, when I'm working with Brandon, I've been working with Brennan for four years.

Um it's a very much a mutual relationship.

Um I pour into him, but he also pouring into me.

He holds me accountable, he's showing me love.

And I think that that is where we're missing the mark.

Um, and that is how we're seeing these incidents of gun violence.

The the community in general is so disconnected.

You could go on any media outlet and look in the comment section, and you're gonna see blame parents, blame y'all, and blame the prosecutor, blame everybody.

But we want to talk about the village, but nobody wants to be part of the village.

And so we have to really understand that we all have a part to play, including institutions like schools.

But most importantly, we as a collective, we are letting young people down.

And we don't want to admit that, we don't want to say it on camera, but the reality is we have let them down because we think it is somebody else's business or responsibility when it is all of our responsibility.

And I want to add to that, Brandon, and I'll hand it back to Virgil, because I think that part of what when we say when when Brandon says something about hope and grace, I think that we can think of that as you know, overly um, you know, demis like mystified, or we don't, you know, it's it's not as it's abstract.

But when we're talking, when we tonight are talking about hope and grace, we are talking about providing adequate and equitable resources to every child.

That's what it looks like.

So when we talk about these, the this next slide that we're gonna talk about talk about solutions, that means health care to every child.

That means medical care to all the children, coaching to every child that we see, opening up our um uh community centers later for all of our children, because that means that's what offering grace and hope is.

This is not a pie in the sky saying that we're gonna you know wash over and not address their issues.

That's not what I'm telling any teacher who is dealing with some students who have gone through things in their lives and might be struggling with one of the disorders that Dr.

Gregory just outlined.

But we want to provide them, or we've seen in the research when you provide them grace and hope in the form of real live solutions like therapy, like access to coaching, like leadership development, like institutions that stay open and are available in their neighborhoods, that those are the kinds of tools that address these uh disorders along the spectrum, right?

We often think of them as reified, right?

And that just means that once we see this disorder, there's nothing else to do with this disorder other than to get rid of this person and their problem and remove them from the situation.

These are not reified disorders.

As Dr.

Gregory has said, and we're gonna say over and over again, there is room for intervention, they can be solved, they can be reversed.

We you know, and and there are ways in which they can be a part of anybody and really everybody's practice of engaging in uh democratic uh and full citizenship in our society.

And so when we're that's what we mean by grace and hope is that we're really calling for some of these solutions that we're gonna talk about right now.

I saw a hand.

So we really want to hear the solutions.

Yes.

Um counselor Graves.

Yeah, thanks, Mr.

Chairman.

Um I think um Mr.

Chairman alluded to two different settings uh at the schools in his example.

How how close are we to being at an easy fix if we just simply change the environment?

I think you guys are kind of getting around that, talking about um considerations being made for environmental context.

Um if we just lift up a child and put them in a different environment, would we reveal that they've been doing some of those things as uh ODD conduct disorder, antisocial personality because of the environment, like Decatur and like sudden place.

Um I know I had to act out when I lived in Brightwood.

Um I didn't want to do the things I did, but in order to fit in, so the minute I was able to move with my grandmother on a whole different side of town, new new environment, things changed.

Is it that easy, or is it really some of this is truly rooted where mental health therapists and clinicians have to come in and be involved?

What do you think, Dr.

Gregory?

That that's a really good question.

Um I think it uh is kind of individualized.

I think it depends on the person and the environment.

Um sometimes people have like really good families.

Um they got siblings that are protective, they look out for them.

If the sibling has uh if the st child has a problem at school and the mother can't make it, then the sibling is coming to advocate on on that child's behalf.

Um so in my opinion, that child would probably do well.

Um they're gonna have some struggles depending on the different struggles depending on what environment they're in.

But for the most part, they're probably gonna make it.

They got people that love them, they care about them, they have some of the uh things that Mr.

Randall uh Brendan was talking about.

Um so I think it kind of depends on on the person.

Um, yeah, so and I want to add to that real quick.

I don't know, I'm glad that you brought up the the the importance of relationships.

Um I think that that again that is what we're seeing as kind of a uh a foundation of this conversation is the presence of healthy and consistent relationships because you're right, somebody could have an amazing uh family, even in some of these um, you know, some of the neighborhoods that experience some challenges, right?

But they still have caring and consistent family members.

I think that that's where uh the gap is is that we're not um we're not having that discussion on if there is a gap in somebody having a healthy um relationship or a role model, how do we understand that that is one of these potential solutions?

How do we connect that young person to mentoring or not just a program but a program with a person who cares?

Because as all y'all know, uh just because you call yourself a mentor does not mean that you are an effective one.

Um you have to be consistent and present and not just around when it's convenient, right?

And so I think that we have to really understand that and understand that the heart is the core part of this whole conversation and not just you know some of these simpler things.

So I appreciate you tying that in Council McCormick.

Can we get to a couple of the solutions from Dr.

Gregory and then we'll come back to you?

Right.

Okay.

Okay.

I'll I'll be I'll be pretty quick.

Um so these are just a few solutions, they're not exhaustive at all.

I'm going to talk about cognitive bearable therapy, which I've been researching for quite some time, and then family interventions, and then I'm gonna make a brief comment about um community initiatives.

I'm just gonna use some of the community organizations that I've worked with in the past.

Um so all of these things, the the eight criminal risk variables, again, they're all amenable to therapy.

Um one of the most research therapies is cognitive behavioral therapy.

It's actually the most researched therapy on earth, and its underlying assumption is that how a person thinks determines how they feel and behave.

So if a person is has negative thinking, then they're gonna be depressed.

If a person is always perceiving threat, they're gonna be anxious.

If a person thinks that, oh, somebody's trying to like verbally assault me, that person will be angry and they will respond in such a manner.

Uh cognitive behavioral therapy, it helps clients to learn to identify how their thoughts impact their emotions and behaviors, and it teaches them ways to challenge those thoughts.

And it helps when not everything is an issue of thinking, sometimes there are real world problems in cognitive bearable therapy, also uses problem solving as well.

I want to go over uh some of the research behind it.

So a meta-analysis is a study where it combines multiple independent studies to give you an overall effect.

So you might find one study that says this thing, one study that says another, but what a meta-analysis does is systematically reviews the available literature and then mathematically combines these these different studies so that you get an overall effect.

And these are some of the things that I am sharing with you.

So there is one meta-analysis that looked at cognitive variable therapy for severe aggression, and it found large effect sizes.

That is, there's a big difference between people who got cognitive behavioral therapy and people who did not.

We can go to the importance of families.

Okay.

So families are super important.

They have the ability to influence youth in a positive way.

I believe they have the ability to deter gun violence.

And similar to addictions, like when basically all my work has been in addictions.

And when a person has an addiction and they have a family, what should be done is not that you just treat that individual, but you want to treat the whole family because that's the system where the person comes from.

We need mom here, we need the brothers here.

So that's the perspective that I'm uh advocating for is one that includes the family and not necessarily as a negative, but also as a as a potential solution to the issues that that the young uh individuals are facing as well.

Um there's one promising uh family intervention called parent management training.

It uses positive parent strategies and it focuses on positive things rather than being coercive.

Problem solving is a really important one.

Positive reinforcement, um, giving praise for for positive things.

Um parental supervision is a part of this as well.

That that is an important component.

Um the research shows that you have large effects using this intervention.

One meta-analysis showed that there was a moderate effect in reducing parent-rated disruptive behavior, and then there was a large effect in improving parental skills and a moderate effect in child social skills so these interventions do have some evidence behind them.

Um I just have one slide on hospital-based violence.

But when somebody gets shot, they're going to a hospital.

Uh, hospital-based violence interventions are methods of using the hospital itself as a point of intervention.

Um, it has a multidisciplinary team, it's got ER doctors, it's got social workers, it has nurses.

Um, they can address the the youth in in a more comprehensive kind of wraparound way to address to address youth violence.

Um, and we're going to go to uh Mr.

Brandon.

Yes.

So I'm gonna briefly talk about uh the importance of youth-led leadership, and then I know that Dr.

Joseph has some important information he's going to give as well.

Um I'm going to yield the majority of this time, however, to Brandon.

Um we have been able to participate and witness a lot of youth-led leadership programs, whether that's true dialogue, NDP's leaders, which is a partnership through the Peace Learning Center.

Um, we've also um done some elevation grant work um and some other work.

But um Brandon, and I'm about to slow key embarrass him because I'm gonna gas him up real quick.

I met Brandon when he was a freshman when I was working at a local community organization.

He completed the leadership program back then.

He was one of three who uh graduated when we had 12 or 13 who started out.

When Brandon was a junior, he completed the NDP leader.

Out of 15 students, he was the only one with perfect attendance.

The next year we have three cohorts, so we have 50 students, he was the only one with perfect attendance.

He then participated as a youth coordinator in the elevation grant program.

He has been in True Dialogue two times.

He is currently the inaugural program assistant along with Duran Bell, Marel Lacey, and Jose Gomez at Warren Central.

But he is setting the standard of what we can do to counter youth gun violence.

And that looks like putting young people with lived experience in positions of leadership, guiding the direction of the programming of policy and practice and paying them.

And so I want to turn it over to Brandon to share just a little bit about his story, and then we'll trans uh transfer back back over to Dr.

Joseph.

So my story goes like so when I was younger, my mama, she she was like, she was on drugs and stuff.

My dad, he wasn't really around.

And I just like kind of fell to the streets when I got a little older.

I just went straight to whatever I can do to get wherever I need it or to get to where I needed to go.

Um until I found a couple mentors, a couple different people that can help me, that helped me that understood that a lot of things that's in my life that it don't like I don't put out on people, but I want them to know like what I've been through.

So I try to like help everybody understand like what I've been through and how how I changed and how the people around me helped me change.

And what does that look like for you?

And how are you giving back?

So I'm giving back by I'm in the community doing what a lot of people need to do as a young age.

Um I just turned 20 uh this past Friday.

Thank you.

But um, yeah, so I work, I work in three different schools.

I work in Belgium, Longfellow, and Tech.

And I basically like a uh a big mentor.

So I just talk to them, like ask them what they're going through, ask them how can I help them.

Um see like if they want to go do something, how can I, you know, get to that to get to doing what I need to do.

What was the other question?

How does it make you feel?

Oh, it makes me feel wonderful.

It makes me feel great because I just I don't really see a lot of young people doing what I'm doing.

Yeah.

Well, I thank you so much, Brandon, for sharing that.

Um, I really appreciate that.

And one of the things that I wanted to end with before we kind of move to questions, and I want to move, I just want to kind of summarize really quickly that and as we're thinking about these solutions.

I think there's three things that we're trying to highlight.

Dr.

Gregory is talking about these cognitive, these cognitive behavioral therapy interventions at the hospital at the therapists at the school level.

We have these leadership development programs that are happening in community centers that need to be financed and resourced and supported.

And then I'm also talking about what I want to talk a little bit about was that these other traditional anchor institutions that have to reimagine themselves.

And the most one of the most traditional ones, the Dr.

Perkins counselor, councilman person would understand, would be the black church, right?

Is that we though these institutions are spaces and places that young black men traditionally or historically went to but are no longer attending at the same level.

How do we transform or reimagine some of those spaces so that folks can turn to them?

So that young folks can turn to them and receive these resources in those places that are already embedded in our neighborhoods, right?

So where are they gonna go, right?

They can go to schools, but those close at a particular time and have you know resources.

They can you know go to some of the community centers, but those also have limited.

But we also have these community embedded centers that we can use and really reimagine or refit, if you will, to serve these purposes that we're talking about.

I talk about this idea that black men live in empathy deserts, and I want us to think about what that means.

That there's no there's empathic isolation, that no one is really believing that they are experiencing the kind of trauma and damage and hurt that they are suggesting, and that they're that that that medically that we're outlining, that personal narratives that they're sharing, and that this is not just the case for you know racist institutions that don't see or don't, but these are this is also the case for uh black middle class and the black elite that we are erasing and denying that they have something to offer to this conversation.

And so as a result of that, I think that we are seeing the growth of religious disaffiliation among some of our black populations that is a result of this empathic isolation that we're not caring or that we're not showing concern for their growth and for their treatment, that they are disaffiliating from some of these anchor institutions.

And and and in your slides, you can see the data suggests that you know black folks in general are disaffiliating from the black church and some of these uh these institutions, but black men are leaving at higher at higher rates, right?

If we look at this, you know, it says that um, and then if you look at younger populations, the grade is higher, right?

This is the long tail of religious disaffiliation, right?

And I think that this is not only black churches, but we can also talk about this about the YMCA or other places like that, these traditional spaces where we have not figured out how to refit them or reframe them for these folks, right?

And across the board, I want you to think about it says what is the result of religious affiliate disaffiliation.

It says it is often correlated with a drop in community involvement and engagement.

That the moment you become disaffiliated from anchor institutions, right?

Whether they are churches or YMCAs or other things that have traditionally brought people together and provided spaces for all this to happen, you also then become disaffiliated.

So what we are asking today, and what we're hoping that we can kind of be in a conversation about is thinking about what does it mean to reimagine churches to be able to hold some of these spaces and to some of these practices and resources that uh Dr.

Gregory and Mr.

and Mr.

Brandle talked about.

What does it mean for them to take up this challenge to think more critically about co-creating programs with young folks, right?

So I know we're we're running out of time, but one of some of the things that we really wanted to highlight were these projects that are happening where young black and brown folks in the city are working together with anchor institution leaders like pastors, like the leaders of the MLK Center, like the leaders of the Y MCA, and saying we want to create a project that addresses these particular ish issues.

We want to fight against empathic isolation.

We want to talk openly and honestly about this.

And this again, you can see through our list, these are examples of that.

I was working with a young brother here at Cari Lewis and the leader of the MLK Center.

They they created a documentary called The Talking Gun Projects.

If you click on the link where I can share with you, there is a viewer guide that can be used at churches or communities, you know, again, to take to to refit or reimagine these spaces to bring uh these type of voices in.

We need the you know, I'm not calling the Mr.

Brandon older, but we need the young brand of the world to come in and help us co-create solutions.

So what so what we're saying is if we're gonna do this well, it's not just medical interventions, though those are necessary, that's part of the hope.

It's not just leadership development, that's necessary, it's not just anchor institutions reimagining themselves, but we've got to invite young folks in to co-create alongside us.

I know I'm out of time.

I want to hand it back to our admonds.

Um thank you for for playing in.

I think uh my colleagues have a couple of questions.

Uh Councilor McCormick, and then we'll go to Councillor Graves.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh, thanks for the presentation.

This was very interesting.

Uh I learned some things too, which is great.

I just wanted to go back to what we were talking about, like the inherent nature of folks and whether it's right, and like I was going nature nurture in my head.

Um, and like background, I have a STEM background in my education.

I'm a neurospicy individual, so right, like that neurodivergent.

Um, and I grew up in a home where my mom was a family social worker, right?

So, like my context I know is very different when it comes in some of those things, but I always think like neurospicy folks, we're not all alike.

There's usually a combination of some sort of things, right?

We have and we have the environment that we live in too, and it's like we take all of these variables and put them together, whether it's nature nurture and underneath that, and build a unique Venn diagram for each of us.

So talking about is it going to be one answer for everybody?

Like there never is, right?

Because things are layered over each other so much.

So I see this like moving Venn diagram that goes together.

So, like, I don't know how you guys think about it, but that's where my brain goes when I think about like trying to solve these problems and finding root causes, because there's not a one and all fix, right?

And when it comes to like what our charges with like our dollars and our and what we can do in ordinances and stuff, like right, like how do we solve that rate?

And it's so hard because we can't always see that longitudinal stuff.

So and then going back to the thing you said earlier in the conversation is STEM background.

I'm a quantitative girl, right?

Like, would give me the data, the numbers, and excel, I'm a happy person.

But there's that qualitative side that I'm an educator, so I know that that is like such a big component because they're not right issues, aren't all the same, and I love the work that you're doing like deep deep dive into this and figure out what those solutions are and how we can make our communities better.

And thank you, Brandon, for your work.

Because I like it it's I work in higher education, but like when I say something, I can talk to them blue in the face, but one of my older students says it to a younger student, and they're like, white bulb, and I'm like, you know, that's when I pound my face, but yeah, so Council Graves.

And I'm like, you know, that's when I pound my face, but yeah, so Council Graves.

Thanks, Mr.

Chairman.

Um I'm just really curious about the religious disaffiliation.

Um and want to know if that's um, you know, like the last 10 years or last 50 years, or how how long has this happened?

Because I I of course in my day you you kind of had to go to church, but today uh you don't, and you're right.

So I'm curious to know if if the institution itself is just not marketing to men.

Um I mean, because you you preach to your audience, you know, literally.

Um, or or is it that we found new things to do?

Uh what what's what's going on there?

Because you're right, that one at one point was important.

In fact, it's the only reason why I'm here today.

A guy by the name of Reverend Dr.

Andrew J.

Brown, who has a street named after him, baptized me at 16.

And I've been uh following his footsteps, trying to be a member of our community that gives back in a meaningful way.

In fact, Brandon, you he's one of my guys too.

Brandon Duran, uh, James, they're those the three amigos, those are some of the guys who I had a chance to spend some time with, considering mentees.

Um I'm really happy to see you here, man.

And you talk a lot more than you have today.

That's why I'm like, what's going on here?

But yeah, if you if you don't mind diving in too.

Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, I'll answer that really quickly.

I mean, this is a trend that we've been seeing for about the last 25 years, really, that that uh and this is across, I mean, the receives across the board.

This is across, you know, Protestant like everyone, we've seen disaffiliation happening, that people are looking for other means to attend to uh social, physical, and emotional well-being, right?

And so, our spiritual well-being.

So they've left these more traditional uh religious spaces.

However, um, you know, black and brown folks have actually there, they have left at a at a s at a at a l at a less steep decline, right?

So other folks are leaving much at much more rapid pace from these religious institutions.

Black and brown folks in general are leaving at uh uh you know at a slower pace.

Nonetheless, though, one of the things that folks come up with is that these churches have not kept up with some of the critical issues and concerns that these audiences are addressing, right?

So this might be anything from you know, you know, gender or sexuality, but also things as easily as like you know, thinking about new ways of thinking about life and death and the afterlife theologically that folks are looking for other solutions, you know, uh socially and culturally folks have other concerns.

And so part of what I think we're seeing is that as people disaffiliate, though, the they are there's still the question of where will they find places and spaces to go, because what the data suggests is that they are the the they're they still have questions.

They're still interested in community, they still believe believe in the higher power.

So there's something there's something that there's a that's about the institution, the way that it's currently structured that's the problem.

It's not the larger questions.

I think that's the same thing about schools.

When we really ask young folks what like that the about what like what they want to do and what they want to be and the question that they have, they have deep questions about science and math and and history.

The the the format of the school is what is what pushing them out, right?

How it is presented, like how many times I have it, our focus on testing, right?

Things of that nature.

It's not that they're uninterested in God or uninterested in knowledge or um and so we've got we've got to think about disaffiliation as a real kind of institutional issue that we've not moved forward in answering questions in the format that would be reasonable and amenable to the population that we want to see in the seats.

Maybe uh Mr.

Chairman can chime in a little bit on that too.

Yeah, this is this is uh a little bit up my alley.

Yes, as it relate relates to to disaffiliation um and especially with anchor institution within the black and brown communities, um, absolutely resonate with with what um Dr.

Edmonds just shared around the black and brown communities disaffiliated at a lower rate.

Uh but I also don't want us to to confuse this disaffiliation with a desire for community um and a space to be.

Yeah.

Yes.

Disaffiliation does not always mean I don't believe God.

Exactly.

It means I don't believe God in the context in which you're presenting it.

Um I think the challenge for us as anchor institutions, as faith institutions, is how do we reinvest in communities in a way that is transformative that many of us grew up experiencing.

Um we just came through Resurrection Weekend, right?

Many of us, I remember as a child growing up practicing my little Easter speech.

No, I get to do my little Easter speech every Sunday, right?

Uh that's a part of the space where we are formed.

Um, and if we have a generation that's missing that opportunity, where else are we presenting for them to be formed?

Right.

Um so that's that's all I'll say on that.

I do want to invite any other conversation.

Um I I resonate a bit with this in the space of education, having served as a principal of alternative schools.

I made a decision early in my career to work in an alternative setting and serve as an alternative principal for more than 18 years.

And one of the things that I would share with my staff every year during professional development is around if a child does not know how to read, what do you do?

You teach them.

If a child does not know how to do math, we teach them.

But if a child does not know how to behave, we punish them.

And so it's easier when it comes on to behavior to resort to punishment instead of teaching.

And so what I'm hearing tonight is as a council, as community members, what are ways in which we can engage in community to help our young people to learn behaviors that are more adaptive to our communities.

Um I made a state uh uh note here to highlight the impact of social media on all of this.

We haven't really talked about that, right?

How social media has helped to kind of speed up these maladaptive behaviors because of what we see often.

Um we alluded to earlier around, you know, some of our young people experiencing traumas in their life, traumatic experiences and traumatic episodes, but we have a generation that lives in a cycle of trauma.

So as a kid growing up, I don't remember a child dying when I was a kid.

Like I don't remember my first 18 years of life ever going to a homegrown celebration for a person younger than 20.

And for many of our young people, that is a cycle in which they live.

So death has been normative.

And violent death from gun violence, from crime.

And so, how do you address, how do we address some of the root causes that will end up with some of our young people doing things that might cause them to get caught up in the system?

So this will be my final comment.

We have to engage, prioritize, and invite the young people that nobody wants to talk to.

A lot of times programs and uh structures that reflect leadership want the safe kids.

They want the kids with minimal exposure to violence or um chronic trauma or poverty, all these things, we are not intentionally prioritizing the young people that have the most levels of wisdom on these topics.

But if if I'm talking about gun violence prevention, I don't want to talk to a kid who hasn't held a gun, shot a gun, or robbed somebody.

I need you to have an ankle monitor, I need you to have a probation officer, and I need you to have a uh a curfew, or you're gonna end up in juvenile, right?

Because you have the most relevant experiences to provide solutions.

And a lot of times we do not invite them to the table.

And so I'm pleading with all of our community members, our media outlets, we have to be able to stop this negative um application of one and done stereotypes and not offer grace and redemption.

Because I have worked with more young people that had countless felonies that I would trust with my life over some of our elected officials who swore no.

Exactly.

And I think I want to just add to what Brandon said and what Dr.

Perkins, Councilman Kirkman said.

You said, you know, math can be taught.

You said that you know, reading can be taught.

We also believe here that hope can be taught, hope can be facilitated.

And if we invest in these interventions, what we're doing is teaching that, like teaching that you are not defined by one activity, teaching that there are tools and resources in our community to help you reimagine who you want to be and who and who you and your family and your community can be.

We believe that our institutions have capacity and that we're gonna use that capacity to speak to the most pressing needs and not those needs that uh that can be resolved or addressed um with with other tools and other resources.

And so we're we're believing that you can teach hope and that that's what and we want to invest money in that because that is again, like I said, not an abstract idea, not something that we can just talk about and leave tonight, but that we can actually invest in and actually um incentivize our anchor institutions.

And that's why I say I wasn't just picking on the black churches, Councilman Perkins.

I'm I'm picking on all of our anchor institutions, you know, the the YMCA who want who don't want people there, you know, actually our museums that are supported by state and you know, funding, like we've got to we've got to incentivize them to be purveyors of hope, to open up their doors, to make space for those who have not often been allowed to be inside, and to be a part of reimagining a city where all of us can live uh and and flourish.

Chairman Booth.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um appreciate um each one of you, uh Dr.

Gregory and Dr.

Tucker Edmonds and Mr.

Randall and Mr.

Spivey appreciate this very informative information.

Um I believe everything I've heard tonight.

Um my concern has always been how do we take this information and turn it into something concrete that we as a council who have limited options and limited funds to invest primarily into kind of the nuts and bolts of running a city versus more of these uh softer cognitive science, if you will, of how to manage the people in the city and how do we control the behavior of the people when we're geared toward making sure the street you're driving on is solid, the trash is picked up, your snow is plowed.

So I I would I would encourage you to really try to see how the various programs that you are working on or that you hope to work on or that you think are positive, how they would kind of mesh and fit into our current structure of you know, we have um just mentioning a few of the things that and I'm sure this is not an exhaustive list by any means, but you know, we're expanding our crisis intervention teams through their behavioral health programs.

You know, I think that's a big plus.

Uh and it's going to 24-7 coverage, and we're not yet countywide, but that's our goal, and hopefully we're on track to do that.

Um, you know, we have the peacekeepers, and you talked about hospital violence.

You know, that's exactly where the peacekeepers are.

They're at the hospital bed asking the gunshot victim, what can you tell us?

Don't send your brother out after the person that you know who shot you, things like that.

Um and I think that's where we can add some grease to the pump uh and help.

Um I don't know if we have the wherewithal, the tools to do a lot of of heavy lifting in the cognitive therapy area, for example.

Um, because we have uh, for example, one limit that I've experienced with these crisis intervention MCAT is getting sufficient professionals to be available Saturday morning at three o'clock on a countywide basis.

Um that's what kept MCAT nine to five Monday through Friday, and it was a running joke.

If you're gonna have a crisis, whatever it be, make sure you have it during company time.

Otherwise, there's no one there to help you.

Um, you know, that's it sounds ridiculous, and it is ridiculous.

We need to stop, we need to cure that.

And my challenge is how do we take all your valuable work and valuable know-how and translate that into something that we can help support and and particularly fund.

Um because I'm you know, I'll show my age here because I may well be the oldest one in this entire room.

But no, I got you, buddy.

Um it's a thousand points of light.

George Bush Sr.

He admitted early on as a government, we cannot solve our problems.

We can help address them.

It takes a and back to Hillary Clinton, it does take a village.

There's got to be a thousand points of light out there.

The the churches, the organizations, the mentors, the leaders, the schools, uh uh police that form the village and form the fabric that supports the village and supports our youth.

Because without it, as you said, it and and also addressing the most critical, the weakest links in the chain.

If we don't address those, the chain breaks.

It does.

And the fabric breaks, and and the support structure for society breaks.

So we need to focus on those and how do we take our limited resources and address those greatest needs.

I know this is very esoterical, but you know, that's a challenge we have as a governing body is how do we take what we know are big problems and try to see what we can do about it.

So but I appreciate all this work because I think it's very valuable.

And uh please keep it up.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

All right, thank you.

Any comments from the audience?

Um thank you for for presenting to us tonight.

Uh thank you for allowing us to wrestle a bit with this.

Um Chairman Boots, what we don't have in options, what we don't have in funds, I do think we have an influence.

All right.

And so um my charge for uh for my colleagues is I know we can't solve all the problems, I know we don't have all the money as as a uh a city, uh, but we do have influence across the city and across with individuals.

Um our young people are important to us.

Community is important.

Um thank you, young Brandon, for being here.

For uh young uh for being here.

Because you allow us to put a name and a face to what can be sometimes a very cognitive conversation.

Right?

Uh so thank you for being here.

I recognize the work that we have done as a city and we continue to do in pouring into addressing root causes.

Your presentation to me tonight says that there's so much more for us to do.

And so thank you for charging us.

Thank you for challenging us, thank you for being present.

Thank you for our colleagues for being here tonight.

Um, if there's and nothing else, we get to close.

Thank you.