BALTIMORE — Police in Baltimore County are investigating after a 15-year-old was killed over the weekend.
Now, many youth advocates believe it’s going to take everyone in the community to help change the violent culture.
After speaking with parents and youth advocates like Corinne Griffith about the youth violence in our communities, she had many suggestions when it comes to combating it.
Griffith is a youth advocate and director of nonprofit “Different Kind of Smart." She believes combating youth violence starts at home with the role models teens witness daily.
“A lot of our children are, I guess I’d say, complacent to the violence that they grew up around, it’s almost the norm,” Griffith said.
On Saturday in Baltimore County, 15-year-old Lamar Leslie-Allen was killed. It happened near Shadwell Court and Carnaby Drive on Saturday evening around 9:00.
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Griffith said it hurts hearing of another tragic incident claiming the life of a child. However, she’s cognizant of the broken cycle that often leads kids to violence.
“If you’re in a state of panic all the time and you’re stressed there really is nothing to find violence in those situations where you’ve got a complacency and acceptance to violence.
But in addition they have too much free time," Griffith said.
Her nonprofit helps to home school children while identifying and nourishing their passions. She believes if kids were busier with fueling their passions they would have less time for drama or violence.
“A lot of individuals, especially young Black males, have to find a passion that they can focus on. Most of the time that looks like they don’t have outlets that are productive and in any way connect to their passions,” Griffith said.
Griffith said having less idle time and more time being productive could likely help to prevent youth violence.
“You find that a lot of youth that are connected to these violent incidents on the street find that they’re motivated by either personal passions that they’ve created because of situations they find themselves in. And also because they just feel forced in the state of the community in the city that they’re in that there really are no other options. Go hard and do what you have to do in order to survive, unfortunately, that’s the tone that’s been set in the streets and that’s something that a lot of children have grown up comfortable with,” Griffith said.
And as a youth advocate herself , she mentioned some things that people can do as a community to sort of change that culture of violence regarding our youth.
“Anybody that has any stake in life has a platform that they can use, so looking to use whatever platform you have to connect and engage with the community is really the biggest way that you can influence and really make a change that you want to see. It’s got to be some sort of personal value that they need to have for themselves and if every individual was focused on bettering themselves, there wouldn’t be enough time to be doing monkey business in the streets," Griffith added.
Police are still investigating the shooting where 15-year-old Lamar Leslie-Allen was killed. The motive for his murder is unclear, but youth advocates like Griffith are encouraging people to get involved to encourage and influence our youth.
