News & Events

Does a police officer need a warrant to pat you down? How should you recognize your right to remain silent? What could happen if you buy something that was stolen from a friend?

To improve interactions between youth and law enforcement, training and development are key. This is the mission of Strategies for Youth, a national nonprofit policy and training organization that works in 15 Indiana counties, coming to Indianapolis in 2014.

Direct file is a practice by which a district attorney—not a judge—can decide if a minor as young as 14 will go to adult court. The practice is used differently across California’s 58 counties. But whether direct file will continue to be used in the state is up for a vote.

One organization’s approach focuses on the adults, not the kids.
Strategies for Youth has spent five years essentially going door to door to convince police officers they can dramatically lower the number of youth arrests, recidivism rates, and minor offenses that can lead young people to repeated encounters with the law.

It has been almost four years since Chicago police officers broke into Charlene and Samuel Holly’s Roseland home and held the couple and six of their grandchildren, ages 11 months to 13 years old, at gunpoint for more than half an hour. The officers, dressed in army-style fatigues, ordered everyone to lie on the ground, repeatedly called the children “mother-f—–s,” rummaged through the Hollys’ bedroom, questioned the 13-year-old grandson without an adult present, and strangled the family’s aging dog, Samson, according to a federal lawsuit filed in 2013.

In the coming weeks, US Attorney for Massachusetts, Carmen Ortiz, is expected to announce the results of an investigation into alleged racial harassment and discrimination at Boston Latin High, the city’s premier public exam school. The probe started after Ortiz created a full-time civil rights unit in her administration. Many welcomed the BLS inquiry. But some question the motive behind the investigation.

The Policing the Teen Brain training event seeks to improve interactions between youth and local law enforcement.
The Solano County Probation Department, Fairfield Suisun Unified School District and officers from local law enforcement agencies across Solano County will be attending the Policing the Teen Brain training event June 27-30 at the Solano County Events Center, 601 Texas Street in Fairfield. The training is funded through the Mentally Ill Offender Crime Reduction Grant Program which was received by the Probation Department in 2015…

Students who went to Millard North High School in the last decade probably were stopped in the halls by Officer John Martinez. He would ask about their weekends, the people they were dating or their extracurricular activities.

Some of the most high-profile incidents of police violence in recent years have involved youths and teens. In Ferguson, Michael Brown was 18. Baltimore’s Freddie Gray was 25, and had a history of encounters with police. Tamir Rice, in Cleveland, was only 12.