Five kids have been killed in Tacoma in 2023. How do we protect youth from violence?

Tacoma’s elected and community leaders see a plague spreading in one of the city’s most vulnerable populations: youth who have increasingly become both victims and perpetrators of life-altering violence. Finding solutions is another problem.

Mayor Victoria Woodards led her State of the City speech two weeks ago by addressing the “deeply distressing uptick in violence” that has rocked communities citywide, and she pleaded for people not to give up on Tacoma.

“Tragically we have already lost six lives to homicides this year, three of which happened in just the first three weeks, and heartbreakingly involved gun violence among our youth,” Woodards said during the speech. “This level of violence is unacceptable and must stop.”

Another four people have been killed since the mayor’s address on March 16, including a 16-year-old boy shot dead near Tacoma Community College on Wednesday. Of the 10 people killed in Tacoma since January, half have been younger than 18. Two were cases of young children whose parents are accused of fatal abuse.

For teenagers living the violence firsthand, shootings, fights and lockdowns have become commonplace, worsening their mental health and numbing them to the body count.

“They commit crimes and do things people think are bad because they’re angry and it’s a getaway for them to just, I guess, feel freer in a way,” Imani Prince, a Lincoln High School senior whose friend died from gun violence in January, told the News Tribune recently.

Since 2020, the Tacoma Police Department has reported an increase in juvenile victims and suspects in connection to homicides, aggravated assaults, robberies, weapons violations and car thefts.

“My friends tell me they do certain things because mentally they don’t feel OK, and they’re just depressed and angry,” said Prince, 17, who reported feeling increasingly paranoid walking around her Eastside neighborhood.

The solutions for violence that can seemingly strike anyone at any time are more difficult to grasp than the usual approaches to street crime, such as hot-spots policing and harsh sentences for offenders.

Although the Remann Hall Juvenile Detention Center’s daily jail population has dropped by more than a hundred in the past 20 years, the two dozen-plus who are in lock-up today mostly face violent Class A felonies, troubling officials who have walked the facility’s halls for decades.

Those on the front lines of the crisis say creativity and collaboration are key to solving a myriad of issues, including an abundance of guns in the hands of teens, a proliferation of crime-driving social media trends, a weak ecosystem of extracurricular programs and an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, among other obstacles.

Leaders say the first order of business is getting people marching in the same direction.

The News Tribune has partnered with Safe Streets to host a free community panel on youth violence prevention on May 4 to cap off a series of stories on the topic over the next four weeks. Safe Streets will host its own youth safety-themed spring conference on May 12.

“We all see what the problems are. We see what the violence is doing to our community, where disorder is creating problems,” Safe Streets executive director Nora Flemming de Sandoval said in a recent interview. “I think we all need to take that next step to be solution-oriented.”

The city of Tacoma perspective

Youth violence has been top of mind for city leadership this year.

After 14-year-old Xaviar Siess was shot dead at an Eastside bus stop, allegedly by a 17-year-old who Woodards has said used two stolen guns, the mayor called on gun owners in Tacoma to stop leaving their guns in their vehicles. Police say a gun is stolen out of a car in Tacoma every 48 hours.

“If we leave them in our cars, then we might as well hand out guns to young people,” she said.

In February, an update on the city’s Violent Crime Reduction Plan showed an increase in homicides during a three-month period in late 2022. City Manager Elizabeth Pauli said in an interview it “impacts the heart and soul of our community when we lose lives and particularly when we lose young lives.”

Woodards again homed in on gun violence as a scourge for today’s youth in her State of the City address earlier this month.

She cited Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department data that 4.5 percent of 12th-grade students reported having carried a weapon like a gun at school. The statistic was part of the department’s most recent Youth and Young Adult Violence Assessment.

Woodards announced in her speech that the city would nearly double its funding for youth violence prevention programs to total more than $2 million for 2023-2024. Money would go toward programs for case management, mentorship, peer support, mental health and substance use treatment, among others. Additional funds would go to restorative justice to repair harm done during conflict and specialized probation programs.

The mayor also announced a new partnership to create a community trauma response with Tacoma Cease Fire. The grassroots organization promotes non-violence and will begin responding to traumatic incidents with the goal of helping the community heal.

After 14-year-old Iyana Ussery was killed in the crossfire of an apparent gang-related conflict involving two 17-year-olds last July, Cease Fire led a peace walk in Hilltop.

The leaders of the organization, Tacoma natives Candace Wesley and James Watson, told parents at the gathering that they need to do more for their children. Cease Fire aims to bring resources to families who need help working through dysfunction and miscommunication.

“The family is the nucleus,” said Watson, a longtime pastor in Tacoma. “They’re the ones that are going to court. They’re the ones that are crying when somebody is hurt. Not only the families where the violence is happening at but the people that are doing the violence. You know, they all have families too.”

The community perspective

Outside of city-backed programs, faith-based organizations, nonprofits and residents who feel called to address violence in their neighborhoods are stepping in to mentor young people and help them however they can.

Tim Thomas, executive director of the Oasis of Hope Center, grew up on Hilltop in the height of the gang era in the 1980s and 1990s. When Thomas, 45, thinks back on his childhood, he recalls gunshots, emergency sirens and helicopters buzzing through his neighborhood. He said he remembers the pellet holes left in his wall when a gunman fired a shotgun through his family’s living room window.

Now, Thomas said, violence in Tacoma doesn’t feel much different. The only distinctions he sees are the youthfulness of those committing violent crime and the fact that the conflicts motivating them now are playing out when social media is baked into childrens’ daily lives, turning online disagreements into real-life beefs and serving up school fights as content.

“There’s so much violence that they’re privy to online, and it changes the way they think about life,” Thomas said. “Their approach ends up being violent. They don’t like themselves anymore.”

The Oasis of Hope Center is a community facility on South G Street focused on addressing the needs of young people, particularly gun violence and poverty among at-risk youth. Built in the early 2000s, the center is tied to nearby Greater Christ Temple Church, but Thomas said he’s been pushing to connect with children outside the church community.

The young people Thomas speaks with are struggling with homelessness, poor relationships with parents, drug use and social anxiety, he said, which can make it difficult for them to open up to others. He said the first step to understanding their situation is dealing with their immediate issue, whether it be access to food, clothing or housing. Thomas said he thinks there are too many people ages 18 and under living without housing and using drugs, and he said some of them have become comfortable living that way.

“My goal is to show them that there’s more to life than drugs and violence,” Thomas said.

Safe Streets recently launched a new focus on youth well-being with two new programs. One initiative that’s part of the city and Tacoma Public Schools’ Jobs 253 program focuses on neighborhood engagement and youth job-skills building while giving students up to a $1,000 stipend. The other is biweekly mental health education sessions called, “Get Your Mind Right,” founded by Tacoma business Game Time Store.

“We recognize that it is going to determine what our future looks like,” de Sandoval told The News Tribune about youth well-being and violence prevention. “It’s important that we work together to face these challenges head-on so we can have a thriving community.”

Following the death of the 16-year-old Wednesday, Tacoma Public Schools superintendent Josh Garcia sent a message to the school district’s families.

“When a child is killed, it strikes at the heart of the community,” he wrote in an email. “It’s a tragedy in its own right, and another layer of trauma on top of the local and national violence in the news every day.”

Garcia said the district has counselors and partners available to provide guidance and support to students and staff. He added TPS is working with the Tacoma Police Department to add precautions to keep its campuses safe and has continued its joint “See Something, Say Something” campaign.

The law enforcement perspective

The gun battles that terrorized Tacoma’s streets in the late ’80s could be boiled down to the drug trade and turf wars between gangs that operated under an unwritten code, local law enforcement officials say.

Today, there are no apparent rules of engagement, no clear conflict. On top of that, the ones wielding the weapons have grown younger, from triggermen in their 20s to teenagers who got a gun from an older relative or friend.

Deputy prosecutor Diane Clarkson said she has seen tremendous change at the Remann Hall Juvenile Detention Center since she first began prosecuting cases there in the early 2000s.

That’s primarily due to a major shift in philosophy that brought the average daily population of 163 kids in 2000 down to just above two dozen in recent years.

But today’s youth also are involved in an increasing number of Class A felonies, which include murder, first-degree manslaughter and first-degree assault. Most cases in the early 2000s involved thefts, robberies, sex offenses and other lower-level felonies and misdemeanors,

“It was so rare. So rare,” Clarkson said about violent felony cases.

Of the 27 teens currently jailed at Remann Hall, Clarkson said, almost all are from Tacoma. Several are accused of murder.

Clarkson said Remann Hall’s overall caseload has remained relatively steady in recent years, even amid a nationwide uptick in some crime reports. Data show about 78% of Remann Hall’s 162 total bookings in 2021 were for felonies, while court-order violations made up an additional 17%.

According to the county health department’s Youth and Young Adult Violence Assessment using Tacoma Police Department data from 2016 to 2020, more than 60% of violent crime reports with at least one victim under 30 also involved a suspect or arrestee under 30. About 4 in 10 cases with a youth victim involved an older suspect or no suspect was identified.

The report also states young Black people in Tacoma die from assaults at about twice the rate of Hispanic and white youth.

“During community engagement events, people express concerns about how easily kids are acquiring guns, how prevalent drugs are in the schools and how social media videos encourage kids to steal vehicles and commit other crimes,” Tacoma police deputy chief Paul Junger wrote in response to written questions from The News Tribune.

In some instances in Tacoma, stolen vehicles have been linked to cases of youth violence. Three teens were arrested on suspicion of robbing two groups of students at gunpoint and fleeing a high-speed chase in January.

In Clarkson’s view, there are plenty of dollars and resources available to fight the problem, but too many programs have overlapping services, and kids are falling through the cracks.

“I’m concerned that summer is coming,” Clarkson said. “And kids are going to have a lot of time on their hands, a lot of challenges to face.”