Washington – In this Southeast neighborhood, where gleaming new townhouses are rising up in stark contrast to blighted housing projects in the midst of Washington’s push for urban renewal, a seemingly forgotten demographic – young people – roam the streets.
This is the section of Washington known as Ward 8, an overwhelmingly black area that has the most poor children per capita in the area and the highest percentage of unemployed in the city. It is also home to five juveniles and two adults arrested for robbing seven university students last month.
Since the arrest of then-17-year-old Bowie resident Marcus Perry Bradford, accused in the August on-campus shooting of a university student, who is set to go to trial today, police have arrested a slew of juveniles for various crimes – many of them violent – against students, and in one case a University Police officer.
Of 18 arrests for major crimes in College Park in the past six months, half have involved juveniles, part of an explosion of crime in Prince George’s County that has resulted in a 13.2 percent net increase in referrals to the Department of Juvenile Services from 2003 to the end of last year, according to statistics provided by the agency.
The juvenile crime wave has community activists such as the Rev. James Kennedy casting a wary eye toward encroaching developers who have moved to bring higher-end housing to his Southeast neighborhood. Kennedy worries as the city’s swelling household incomes continue to pump up tax rolls and fuel the rapidly-expanding economy, troubled youth are in danger of being forgotten and led astray.
Kennedy lives just a few blocks from the apartment buildings on Southern Avenue and Wheeler Road that are listed in police documents as home addresses for the two 16-year-olds, 14-year-old and 22-year-old accused of systematically robbing six students near the campus last month.
One of the 16-year-olds, Vernon Wilson, is charged as an adult with six felony counts of armed robbery and six felony counts of assault. William LeGrand, 22, is charged with six counts of conspiring to rob because police say he drove the car that served as a getaway vehicle after Wilson allegedly robbed the students.
Kennedy is the founder of several non-profit projects aimed at keeping area youth off the streets and away from the drugs and violence that often surround them. He was not surprised when told about the youth from his neighborhood arrested for robbery in College Park.
He speculates an area full of students supposedly flush with parents’ funds might prove too much temptation for the young people growing up in a low-income neighborhood who are constantly bombarded with images of “must-have,” high-end materialism.
“These kids are lucky to get a pair of sneakers every year, let alone the $200 pairs they want almost every week,” Kennedy said. To get their materialistic fix, he said, “They go into areas like Maryland and Upper Marlboro. They’re not going to rob another gangster, because there’s going to be a reprisal.”
As Kennedy speaks about his concerns for the youth of his neighborhood, he fixes his world-weary gaze on the cinderblock wall of the Johenning Baptist Community Center office – a squat little building that has housed a number of after-school programs and activities for children since the 1980s – and begins ticking off a long list of concerns regarding the youth he’s observed during his time living in the neighborhood.
“They’ve gotten progressively worse,” Kennedy said. “You’ve got one-third trying to do something positive, and the other two-thirds pulling them down.
“Absentee fathers, no male role models – no positive role models in the neighborhood other than the drug dealers, and they ain’t no positive role models,” Kennedy said. “I can’t leave out abuse, and that’s a downward spiral.
“When I was a kid, the community raised you,” added the community center’s office manager, Brenda Tyree, who was standing nearby. “It’s not like that anymore.”
An unprovoked attack
If there was anything that jarred the nerves of the campus community more than the August shooting of senior computer engineering major Steven Bennett Rogers, it was the fact the crime appeared to be completely random.
There was no apparent intention of robbery or argument between Rogers and the suspects. Witnesses told police the group of teens had been making fun of Rogers and calling out to him as he walked away.
But Rogers told police he had been wearing earphones at the time, and it is unclear whether Rogers even heard the suspects trying to get his attention.
According to police documents, witnesses said Bradford “ran up to the white guy, yelled at him and then shot him.” Rogers told police he heard a gunshot, fell to the ground, then made it to an emergency blue light phone seconds after he was shot. It happened so fast Rogers reportedly hadn’t even realized he had been shot until University Police responding to the call told him.
Bradford was arrested a week later at his mother’s home after police were able to link him to two men stopped the night of the shooting for questioning. He has been held without bond since his arrest, turned 18 in September while in jail and has appeared in court once for a juvenile waiver hearing, where his attorney tried unsuccessfully to get his case moved to juvenile court.
At the hearing, Bradford appeared slim and boyish – barely filling out his orange jumpsuit – and at times glanced around the courtroom, smiling once when his mother waved at him from the gallery. Dr. Edwin Carter, a psychologist who had previously treated Bradford testified for the defense at the hearing.
Carter told the court Bradford had previously been in and out of juvenile facilities in Prince William County, Va., after being arrested for possession of marijuana, armed robbery and possession of a handgun there. But while in the juvenile facility, Bradford had received treatment for a range of psychiatric and learning disorders, and had shown the “greatest growth” there, Carter said.
Carter testified Bradford was born with massive language-based learning disorders, has difficulty picking up basic skills such as reading, writing and applying logic and is functionally illiterate. In addition, Carter said, Bradford is diagnosed bipolar, has an inability to resist temptation and has never been able to appreciate the consequences of his actions.
“I believe when he is in a manic phase, he has a periodic psychosis,” Carter said. “If you don’t get him into treatment now, he is a danger to himself and a danger to society.
“He’s never even been at even a middle school level of functioning,” Carter said. “He is depressed, he is frustrated, and he is an elementary school child, in my opinion. We have to protect him from himself … He will be a lifelong criminal unless we can get him into a psychiatric facility.”
After leaving the facility in Prince William County, Bradford was apparently introduced into a mainstream school environment at Bowie High School, Carter said, which did not offer the same individualized support as in Virginia. Lack of support may have led to increased drug use by Bradford as he made a transition into the new area.
Bradford’s attorney, Lawrence Hill, who did not return calls for comment for this story, told Judge Richard Sothoron because Bradford was under the age of 18, and because he would be better served in a secure, specialized juvenile facility, the case should be moved to juvenile court.
Sothoron agreed juvenile services had more to offer than the adult prison system, but questioned whether the specialized treatment Bradford would require was available in the state. The “unprovoked attack” Bradford had allegedly unleashed on his victim, Sothoron said, showed he had gotten progressively worse. And in ruling against the defense motion, Sothoron said previous treatment had not “proved really successful for Bradford.”
“The reality is that Mr. Bradford is not amenable to treatment here in Maryland,” Sothoron said. “That is unfortunately a reality of life.”
Anger, Fear and Pain
In the situations of Bradford, LeGrand and Wilson, two significant patterns emerge: How environment contributes to the behavior of disadvantaged youth, and how learning and psychiatric-based problems contribute to behavior.
Kennedy, who has observed juveniles from many disadvantaged neighborhoods, said he has come to the conclusion delinquency is the result of three central themes in the children’s lives: Anger, fear and pain.
“I’ve been brought up in the ‘hood all my life, so I refuse to fear,” Kennedy said of his battle-hardened approach. But children are different, he said. They are angry at the situations they are thrust in, fearful of the violence in their neighborhoods and pained by the lack of a cohesive family structure.
“The majority of them are socializing on the street,” Kennedy explained. “Behind closed doors, I’ve seen drug dealers cry over their situation. But as soon as they go back to the street, the shield goes up … They get caught up in what’s going on, and that’s when violence begins to escalate.”
Criminology professor Jean McGloin says in cases such as Bradford’s, where a person has language-based learning disorders, communicating anger may be highly difficult.
“He may not be able to fall back on verbal ways to deal with frustration, and may deal with frustrations in a behavioral way,” McGloin said. Additionally, she said, Bradford would have benefited had there been more supervision during his transition from a juvenile facility to Bowie High School.
In the case of environmental factors, McGloin said areas without a cohesive community structure tend to be breeding grounds for criminal behavior.
“If a neighborhood is not very well organized, if they don’t exert social control over each other, if they don’t supervise teenage groups, there’s this theory that that’s going to cultivate crime,” McGloin said.
“In an era of community policing, the police should not be alone in dealing with crime,” McGloin added. “Citizens and other organizations have a responsibility as well.”
An issue of moral crisis
In an expansive third floor office, sitting atop the main courthouse in Upper Marlboro, State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey has an uncommon view of the rolling hills that make up what is left of rural Prince George’s County. But Ivey has a clear sense that, as the county’s top prosecutor, he is dealing with a criminal justice system loaded with cases reflecting the largely urban area the county has become. Last year, Prince George’s reached a grim milestone in tallying 173 homicides; the previous record stood at 148.
In an interview last week, Ivey said a primary concern of his was that young people, much like their adult counterparts, are increasingly using violence to address problems.
“There are kids in certain communities that are too ready to resort to lethal force, even as a solution for minor things,” Ivey said. “The glorification of the stereotype of young black males as violent gun-toting thugs is perhaps a part of it.”
Ivey said a major issue in the state was a lack of services for juvenile offenders, adding many juveniles had to be sent out of state to facilities better equipped to aid in their rehabilitation.
“We don’t have a lot of good options in the state,” Ivey said. Treatment options are something “the general assembly and the governor are going to need to take a look at.
Department of Juvenile Services spokesman Edward Hopkins acknowledged many juveniles were sent out of state for treatment, and said the department is asking for an 18 percent increase in its budget to create more facilities for expanded treatment and hire more staff.
McGloin said it often takes drastic events to jump-start leaders to address a problem, but any problem involving crime should be considered extremely important, she said.
“If everyone can wrap their minds around an issue that is urgent and of moral crisis, it’s more likely to be solved,” McGloin said. “Sustainability [of juvenile programs] is rare but terribly important … It’s difficult to take a step back from an incident and ask what the larger problem is.”
Kennedy remains skeptical.
“How effective are we in stemming the tide?” Kennedy asked. “There’s money being thrown at the situation, but there’s no strategy. Quality programs remain to be seen.”
RECENT CRIMES
Name Date Crime Department Age
Marcus Bradford 8/11/05 shooting a student University police 17
Vernon Wilson 1/6/06 robbing six students PG police 16
*Name withheld 1/6/06 robbery PG police 16
*Name withheld 1/6/06 robbery PG police 14
*Name withheld 1/10/06 robbing a student University police 13
*Name withheld 1/10/06 robbing a student University police 14
*Name withheld 1/27/06 auto theft University police 16
*Name withheld 1/27/06 auto theft University police 17
*Name withheld 1/27/06 auto theft University police 17
*Names withheld because suspects were juveniles and not charged as adults
Contact reporter Kevin Litten at littendbk@gmail.com.
