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A public forum to discuss violent crime committed by minors was held Saturday in Shaw County, the historic center of black culture in the District of Columbia.

Residents came looking for solutions and spoke frankly about what they saw as the root of the problem, much as urban black intellectuals did decades ago, in even more difficult times.

“We need to talk about parenting,” said Sheena Berry, a notary who serves on the local advisory board that represents the district. “We can’t be afraid to say, ‘This kid was arrested for stealing because he didn’t eat at home.’

Telling the raw truth about crime and its socioeconomic underpinnings has long been a forte of black academics, many of whom have worked at Howard University, which borders Shaw to the north. Professors such as E. Franklin Fraser, Kelly Miller, and Carter J. Woodson, known as the founders of Black History Month, well understood that while blacks did not create the circumstances that led to disproportionate levels of crime and poverty in our communities, blacks all yet to lead efforts to make their communities safe and prosperous.

And it all starts at home.

As the late African American psychiatrist Frances Kress Welsing told her students at Howard University College of Medicine in the 1960s, “Black people have to stop letting black kids play with their parents.” Education should be left to adults.

Who is responsible for the violence in the District of Columbia? Ask the young men closest to him.

The forum was hosted by Mahdi Leroy J. Thorpe, Jr., a social worker who formed Shaw’s neighborhood patrol called the Red Hats in 1988. The group still makes rounds, escorted by the DC police, at least twice a week.

Thorpe was a harsh critic of the city’s youth rehabilitation agency, saying that the management was “too soft” on juvenile delinquents and helped turn the county’s Juvenile Justice system into a “joke”.

“Some of these Children are very dangerous – they shoot at people, they rape them. No respect. No home workouts,” Thorpe said. “They should be placed in unpleasant conditions – no summer camps with video games where they can relax while waiting to grow out of the system. They need a rigid structure with behavior-changing components. They must be educated and have skills.” While many argue that putting kids in jail makes things worse, Thorpe takes the stand: structure matters, and it starts at home.

Jack Evans, who has spent more than 30 years on the DC Council representing Shaw’s ward, also attended the forum. More police, less guns, that was always his decision. But he also noted the importance of the family. He has triplets who are 26 years old. They were only 6 when his wife died, he said, and he thought a lot about raising his children as a single father.

“Parents are the first line of discipline and mentorship, or whatever you want to call it,” he said. “If the parents can’t do that, then there’s the extended family, and also, as Hillary Clinton says, you need a village, and if there’s no village, then it’s up to the government. So here’s the DC government with a $2.5 billion a year school system and we’re not moving the education needle. And we have social service agencies that we spend $5.5 billion a year on and we’re not moving there. We need standards to know we’re getting what we pay for, and most of you in this room know that’s not the case.”

Back in 2004, during a surge in juvenile delinquency, the D.C. Council began debating a proposed law that would hold parents accountable for the actions of their wayward children. Parents will be investigated for neglect of their children, possibly prosecuted, fined, forced to enroll in parenting training courses, and will have to appear at their children’s court hearings.

The measure failed amid strong objections from legal scholars and juvenile justice experts.

The Georgetown Juvenile Justice Clinic argued, among other things, that parents charged under the proposed law could resent their children and interfere with the child’s rehabilitation. The Council for Better Courts said the law would “inflict further harm on poor families and punish them arbitrarily” as black mothers unfairly take on more blame than absentee fathers.

Farewell to Caron Blake, “master of the house”, at the age of 13.

DC resident Kathy Henderson reminisced about those contentious times during a community meeting. “Parents just didn’t want to be held accountable for their children who commit crimes,” she said. “Everyone knows that good citizenship starts at home. We want to make sure we work with our parents, support them, but make it clear that you are responsible for your children.”

Surprisingly, forum members spent more time looking for solutions than discussing the problem. Third District Police Commander. James M. Boteler, Jr., whose officers patrol Shaw, urged residents to join Thorpe’s Red Hat Patrol. “If I can take one cop and put him in with 10 community members, we look like a 10-man squad,” Boteler said. “It helps a lot given our limited resources.”

Boteler was born in District 7, one of the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods. He has served with the District of Columbia Police Department for over 25 years.

“Last year we had 16 children killed, which is 64 percent more than the previous year,” he said. “And then there is the number that everyone forgets – 88 children who were shot and survived, which is 81 percent more than the previous year. It stuns me. These numbers need to be blown up everywhere.”

Boteler also knows that if left unchecked, children involved in violent crime get worse as they get older.

“The night before last we had a robbery, and two teenagers aged 10 to 14 were on guard,” Boteler recalled. “It was heartbreaking. They asked the victim for the car keys and he refused, so they punched him and threw him to the ground.”

This was not news. But, fortunately, this has not become the norm. At least for now.

Boteler said: “If we can catch them early, maybe we can stop them from becoming repeat offenders.”

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