Tucson police seek way to cut rise in teen violence

The number of homicides in Tucson has dropped from last year but more cases this year involve young people, police data show.

As of Oct. 13, there have been 59 homicides this year, a decrease from the 68 at this time in 2022.

However, there are 12 open homicide investigations in the city where the alleged killer is a juvenile, said Lt. Adam Kidd, the Tucson Police Department’s violent crimes section commander. There were five such cases at the same time in 2022, he said.

There are a few “overwhelming” consistencies between this year’s homicides involving young people, Kidd said. Most started as armed robberies. In most cases the parties involved didn’t know each other and the firearm in question was often a handgun, he said.

“I can’t tell you why they’re committing these crimes, if it’s something at home (or) influences of a friend. I can’t get into what is prompting them to commit these robberies,” Kidd said. “What I can say is that we’re working with a multitude of community organizations right now in a community violence intervention program.”

Prevention efforts

Police hope the program will become a community violence intervention “ecosystem,” said TPD violence prevention coordinator Brittaney Petersen. That would involve building a coalition across the city to form comprehensive approaches tailored to the needs of Tucsonans.

“My position in the department is an acknowledgement that law enforcement alone can’t stop violence, it will take all facets of our community,” Petersen said. “Everybody in this city is worried about violence and any loss of life, so I think (motivation) has come from the community, from within the city and the department.”

“There are evidence-based, proven community violence intervention strategies that take a public health approach to gun violence (by) treating it as the social contagion that it is. Many members of our community have seen these strategies work in other cities and are looking to get them started here,” she said.

This ecosystem, while still in its early stages of planning, has been on the minds of Tucson’s officers for a couple of years, Petersen said. She hopes it will bring community organizations, neighborhood associations, medical facilities and victims of crimes together — with the goal of not simply “ending violence,” but ending the cycle of trauma that causes further violent crimes.

The community violence intervention program will not be an effort headed by the Tucson Police Department, but rather will be led by and for community members, she said.

“My position is centered on community violence, so gun violence that happens outside of the home in public places. It’s a relatively small number of people involved, whereas it affects entire communities with lasting individual and generational trauma,” Petersen said.

“Nationwide, if you’ve been violently injured you have a 30% chance of being violently reinjured … . Research shows that exposure to firearm violence, so if you’ve been a victim or witness, makes it twice as likely that an adolescent will commit a violent act within two years.”

“It definitely affects us,” police say

The most recent homicide involving a minor occurred on Sept. 23. In it, an armed 12-year-old boy was shot and killed after police say he confronted two men — who were both carrying firearms at the time — at a gas station on East 22nd Street and South Pantano Road. One of the men, 54-year-old Dennis James Sherwood, was also killed in the gunfight.

Days before that shooting, two teens were arrested in connection with the Sept. 18 killings of Bryan Antonio Torres and Emir Arreola-Morales, both 18. Jacob Sosa, 16, was arrested on Sept. 22 in Tucson, while Trystn Montoya, 17, was arrested by police in Clovis, New Mexico. He was awaiting extradition to Tucson while being held at the Lea County Detention Facility.

Kidd said cases such as Sept. 23’s hit close to home for his colleagues.

“It definitely affects us and affects the detectives on these cases,” he said. “The majority of the homicide unit have kids that are often around the same age. It’s not something any of us take lightly or like investigating … . It’s definitely affected the department as a whole.”

“This isn’t something the department is going to be able to solve all on their own through arrests and prosecutions. This is going to take a large community effort to figure out what the root cause is and stop the cycle of violence,” Kidd said.

National trends

Nationally, an uptick in violent offenses has been noticeable in recent years, partly due to a “rebound effect” as communities continue to slowly reintegrate socially after the pandemic, said Nicole McKenna, an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

“There’s been a general decline in violence (really since) the 1990s, especially for youths. We did see some pretty significant drops during the height of the pandemic, partially because everyone was in their homes. Part of this uptick we’re seeing is because we’re comparing extremely low levels in 2021 and 2022 (to now),” McKenna said.

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“Contextualizing it in the trends of pre-pandemic is also important. It is very interesting, definitely, that the types of crimes we’re seeing in youths increasing recently are violent offenses, specifically gun violence and homicides.”

Boys make up more than 90% of arrested and incarcerated youths, McKenna said. The majority of these offenders come from poverty, not just in terms of median household income, she says, but also in terms of unequal access to public resources.

“If we have a group of people living below the poverty line, then really close to those people there are also a group of people making a significant amount of money and are considered in a wealthier class.” That divide of financial health and wellbeing also creates inequality, she said. “Where money is filtered, where opportunities and resources are provided for different communities (are a huge factor).”

While incarceration rates for youths who come from minority backgrounds are higher than for those who come from white communities, McKenna says this is not because minority youths commit more violent offenses. Most of the time, these teens don’t have access to public resources, legal representation, or enough financial capital, she said.

“(White youths) have more access to resources they could bring up as a protective factor,” she said. “Like if they get into a fight at school, their parents could potentially enroll them in programs or get them into therapy, and they have the money to do that, then they could be diverted out of the system rather than being processed through.”

McKenna’s research, she says, is primarily centered on experiences of trauma, whether it be family or community violence a child is witnessing. These experiences cause these kids to be victims themselves, which she says can lead to “a host” of different mental health issues, substance abuse and unhealthy coping mechanisms.

“Unfortunately a lot of the times, resources within the community are just not accessible to kids who we see make it into the system,” she said. “Between 80 to 95% of youth who are system-involved have experienced at least one type of pretty significant trauma in their life, so we just see this huge group of traumatized kids … . There’s definitely a link between trauma and system-involvement.”

Incarceration

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice, there were 2,250 juveniles incarcerated in adult correctional facilities across the nation in 2021, the most recent data available. Of those, 290 teens were in federal prisons. As of Oct. 16, there were 27 juveniles in the custody of an Arizona state prison, an official for the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (ADCRR) said Thursday.

As of July, the ADCRR says 17 of the 109 teens currently housed in juvenile detention centers are in Pima County. However, there is a clear distinction between detention centers and somewhere like the Pima County Adult Detention Complex, where 25 juveniles are housed in the juvenile wing, “Kilo Hotel.”

“Our juvenile population has been consistent. Twenty-five has been our average for the last few years. ,” said chief Scott Lowing, who presides over the jail.

These 25 juveniles are all males, spending most of their days going through state-mandated schooling, doing chores and playing video games, which is dependent on their behavior.

“It doesn’t matter if we have one juvenile or 50 juveniles, I still have to have a separate housing unit,” Lowing said. “(I would say) every single one of them is a violent offender.”

State law requires correctional facilities to separate juvenile inmates by “sight and sound” from the rest of the general population, Lowing says. For example, when juvenile inmates go to their mandated in-house schooling, have rec time, need to go to court or visit the medical wing, the jail is shut down almost in its entirety.

“When they’re arrested, they’re brought in through a different entrance than everyone else. There is some crossover but it’s only when we have to do our fingerprinting and (booking) photos,” he said.

Lowing says housing violent juveniles is a completely different undertaking typical adult offenders. In 2018, Arizona legislation SB1073 was passed, which went into effect earlier this year and requires juvenile cases to be reviewed every 30 days in court.

Due to mandatory schooling regulations, the jail is also required to keep an isolated classroom on site, funding teachers as well as curriculum for offenders’ education. While it’s not required or mandated, juvenile inmates do have access to mental health-care services, including counseling.

Statistics show juvenile delinquents are likely to end up back in custody.

The U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention found in 2020 that, while national averages are hard to come by based on varying state laws and norms, the rate at which a juvenile is rearrested within in one year of release was about 55% nationwide. When reviewing the same state studies, the office found that reincarceration rates for youth offenders averaged about 24%.

However, McKenna says that based on national estimates, roughly 80% of youths who were incarcerated prior to turning 18 will not commit another crime after they’re 25. This is in large part due to the course of time it takes for the human brain to finish developing, she says.

“Sometimes individual factors like mental health or intellectual disability can come into play, but beyond those individual factors it really is so much more about how those individual factors react to, and engage in, the broader ecological system they’re a part of,” she said. “How your family responds to you, how your teachers at school respond to you, if you have a safe place to go, an adult to talk to, if you have something to do after school, if you feel like your education is valuable … .”

“Also, if broader society sees you as a worthy human being that is deserving of getting chances and believing in your future,” she said. “It’s not necessarily some innate characteristic inside, it’s more how society has set them up for success or failure, and how they’ve adapted to that.”