ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The St. Petersburg Police Department announced its new program to help prevent young people in the area from committing crimes.
The Youth Care Program will start this week with Lisa Wheeler-Bowman, the city’s community impact and safety liaison, spearheading it. She will interview children involved in crimes and family members to make recommendations about how they should proceed. Wheeler-Bowman will make recommendations to services already in place based on the child's needs.
Chief Anthony Holloway said at a news conference Monday morning that the goal is to prevent these crimes before they happen and help support parents and grandparents who might feel overwhelmed with trying to address the crimes their kids are committing.
"Once the child does something, within 72 hours, we're going to bring resources to that family," he said.
This is not a diversion program, and the kids will still have to go through the court system.
"We want them to know they still did something wrong, but we are here to help them," Holloway said.
Some of the services kids can be directed to include social services, food assistance, drug rehab and mental health services.
"The Youth Care program is designed to break the cycle of crime among our young residents through early intervention and comprehensive support," Mayor Ken Welch said at the conference.
This past weekend, the city of St. Petersburg kicked off its safe summer program for kids, with the goal of keeping them busy and out of trouble. This comes after more than 200 kids and teens gathered in downtown St. Pete near the Pier, some armed with gel pellet guns.
Several teens fired into crowds, hitting two police officers, a couple and a patrol horse. Two teens were arrested as a result.
10 Tampa Bay requested information on juvenile crimes. SPPD says it doesn't track youth crimes month-to-month but did share arrest reports for the past five years.
Looking through these stats, we discovered overall crime has been slowly going down since 2019.
However, taking a closer look at certain violent crimes committed by kids, some have trended upward.
Aggravated assaults within the city have gone up 35 percent, larceny went from 94 cases to 121, and motor vehicle thefts also went up by 24 percent in 2023. In fact, 70 percent of the stolen vehicles in St. Petersburg were taken by kids. The other 30 percent, adults were responsible.
Overall, when you take into account both youth offenders and their of-age counterparts, violent crime did go down year-over-year by about 7 percent which amounts to about 100 cases fewer than in 2022.