BALTIMORE, MD — A spate of violence on the streets of Baltimore City has been traced to juveniles. And in many cases, police said it is not the first time for kids committing crimes.

"We know who they are ... and the reason why we know who they are is because we lock them up again and again and again," Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said at a press conference Thursday about youth violence.

"We need to all look ourselves in the mirror as a community, parents, grandparents, guardians in particular and get a hold of these violent kids who are wreaking havoc in our city right now," Davis said.

The kids have used wooden bats and in the most recent case a vehicle to debilitate their victims in ambushes that have taken place at all hours.

"This morning outside of a synagogue in northwest Baltimore, a man dropped his child off at school, was walking back toward his vehicle and he was pinned by a suspect vehicle against his car," Davis said.

"They chased him, beat him up and took his car keys," Davis said. "He was carjacked."

Baltimore County officers came across one of the vehicles involved in the carjacking during a canvass.

"There were four people in that car, four juveniles, one as young as 10 years old," Davis said, noting they were all being questioned by Baltimore County detectives and had not yet been charged.

A silver-gray Honda Accord and a red four-door vehicle were involved in the incident outside the synagogue, according to Baltimore Police Chief of Media Relations T.J. Smith.

One of the suspect vehicles had been taken in a "bump and rob" carjacking in Baltimore County. In those types of crimes, suspects fake crashes to lure victims in before stealing their vehicles.

"It's the same young people, and they're disproportionately responsible for...violent crime," Smith said.

The northwest district leads the city in carjackings, according to police, who reported that 68 percent of those arrested in closed cases so far this year have been juveniles.

Councilman Isaac Schleifer said that he got the crime reports and saw the same names appear.

"It's a small group of people," Schleifer said. "It's the same people over and over that get arrested, and they're back out on the streets."

Said Schleifer: "These are people who are holding people up at knifepoint, at gunpoint, beating up innocent people, stealing their cars. They need to be held accountable."

Schleifer continued: "How did they get to the point that they're running around with ankle bracelets on [due to home detention], many of them, and still committing these offenses?"

The police commissioner said that he understood there were social problems.

"Poverty, unemployment, family dysfunctions, drug addictions — all those things are very, very real in our city. But they do not excuse violent behavior by anyone, particularly juveniles," Davis said.

"It's a shame that I should even be able to say the word 'juvenile' and 'repeat offender' in the same breath," Davis said.

"The first finger that I point in the morning is at myself, and I ask myself if we're doing all that we can," Davis said. Of the police officers, he stated: "They are doing their job."

After the arrests, the criminal justice system was releasing the youths, according to Davis.

"We have to interrupt their violent behavior, and that's not happening, and that is absolutely unacceptable," Davis said. "It's absolutely unacceptable that I have to stand up here and talk about 13 and 14-year-olds that we have to arrest again and again because our criminal justice system and our society isn't doing what we need to be doing with these kids."

The police commissioner has been meeting with the leaders of city agencies daily at 8 a.m. in a new initiative he called the "morning huddle" that was started by the mayor.

"Violence in the city is out of control," Mayor Catherine Pugh said at press conference an hour after the commissioner briefed the media on juvenile crime.

Daily, Pugh said she has been convening agency leaders for updates on violence. They share data and send out resources accordingly.

For example, the Baltimore City Schools CEO Dr. Sonja Santelises stepped forward and said that the school's police force was working in collaboration with the city police.

During school hours, some officers were being deployed in areas like Federal Hill, she said, to "monitor student activity during school hours," in addition to working on things like conflict resolution for those students at school. Officers were also at hubs where students were transitioning between school and non-school activities, such as transportation centers at Mondawmin.

In addition to morning meetings to discuss violence from the past 24 hours and create a strategy for the next 24 hours, leaders follow up with a call at 4 p.m. daily to review how things have gone.

Representatives from employment and housing departments also came forward at the press conference to discuss programs that were being expanded into communities, such as job assistance outreach.

Pugh spotlighted one program in particular that she hopes can help make the city streets safer.

The Safe Streets initiative, she said, has been proven to work in the four communities where it has been deployed: McElderry Park, Cherry Hill, Park Heights and Mondawmin.

Through the Baltimore City Health Department, the Safe Streets program provides on-the-ground case workers in communities where violence is occurring, who come from similar backgrounds and can help identify and intervene on behalf of youths involved in violent situations. They can connect people to mental health and other community resources.

With a $10 million investment that the mayor hopes will come from public-private partnerships, she said the program could expand in additional areas where data shows that violence is occurring.

Here are some of the reports of youth-involved violence that have been in the media recently:

  • A woman who just moved to Charles Village while pursuing her doctorate degree at UMBC said she was carjacked by young men on Guilford Avenue on Monday, Nov. 6, according to WJZ.
  • A Federal Hill woman was beaten with wood on Halloween, breaking her eye socket, per WBAL. Police Chief of Media Relations TJ Smith said in an update on Thursday that two 15-year-old girls and two 15-year-old boys were arrested in that case.
  • Digital Harbor students were attacked with bats by a group of young people on Halloween, according to WJZ.
  • A New Jersey family of 10 was attacked at the Inner Harbor on Oct. 21, the day of the Baltimore Running Festival, according to WJZ.

"The majority of cases [from Halloween night] have been closed through arrests," Smith noted, "and every single one of them involved juveniles."

Since they are juveniles, "I can't tell you who they are," Smith said, but he added that they were "all walking the street today because they're probably not in school."

Youths who engage in a pattern of violent criminal behavior end up on a deadly trajectory, he said.

"Parents must also look in the mirror," Smith said, and help curb the violence before it is too late. "When we talk about adult violence ... the average victim of a homicide has 11, 12 arrests."

The commissioner said he was working with attorneys to see if there was a legal way to share the identities of violent young offenders with the school system so that school officials could try to provide interventions. Currently, he said that practice is not being done due to privacy laws.

"Right now, their behaviors need to be interrupted," Davis said. "They either need to be interrupted with a jail cell or some other type of intervention. But the way we're doing it now is not working."

The commissioner said that he would be in Annapolis during the upcoming legislative session to advocate for a lower threshold for the detainment of youths in what he called a "broken juvenile justice system."

Still from Baltimore Police/Periscope.

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