CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Teen crime continues trending in the wrong direction in Charlotte.
According to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department, over the last few months, there have been about 80 shootings involving kids and teens.
CMPD says they also continue to break into cars at an alarming rate.
The police department and several nonprofits across Charlotte are seeking solutions to try and curb these trends, but they all note that it's going to take the entire community to make a difference.
WCNC Charlotte's Lexi Wilson sat down with Mecklenburg County District Attorney Spencer Merriweather to see what accountability among young people looks like.
Merriweather said that for people under 18, right now, the punishment isn't deterring them from committing crimes.
From stolen cars to gun crimes, those behind the offenses are often kids, some as young as 11 years old.
“We need to do be doing something different in the way we tackle juvenile crime," Spencer Merriweather, Mecklenburg County DA, said.
Merriweather said criminal issues with the youth are fueled by several different factors. At times, it's a lack of understanding of conflict resolution.
“The child’s answer to knowing that they have been bullied, the child’s answer to knowing that there are people in their schools or neighborhood who may threaten to rob them or even worse… that the answer to that, is that they got to go pick up a gun,” Merriweather said.
The latest statistics from CMPD show shootings involving kids or teens as the suspects are up by 32% compared to this time last year. And when it comes to cars, about 5,800 have been stolen this year. CMPD says kids are to blame for about 70% of those thefts.
“There are people who might be willing to write off the theft of a car, breaking into a car being a small thing, but anybody who has been in the system longer than 5 minutes knows that is step one," Merriweather said.
Merriweather said prosecuting kids is no easy task. Many who commit crimes often make their way back into the system.
“It’s a troubling thing when the prosecutors that I assign to our juvenile courts will recognize a juvenile from being an offender in our system and then only within a couple of years when I reassign those same prosecutors to the prosecution of violent crime in adult court, they see the same faces," Merriweather said.
Rules and laws are different for juveniles and adults. To keep it simple, juvenile courts use methods like community service, education, and supervision to keep the juvenile from re-offending.
"Often the juvenile person who is less likely to receive accountability for the crime is often the person holding the gun," Merriweather said
He states that older individuals involved in a crime, usually are aware that a juvenile is less likely to be held accountable in a significant way.
Merriweather said that they're working with the General Assembly and the courts to create more structure around accountability and development, as well as longer periods of supervision for kids and teens who are involved in serious crimes.
But Merriweather said that the system in North Carolina is greatly underfunded.
“It doesn’t mean that we don’t treat kids like kids," Merriweather said. "But the search for some level of accountability, a greater level of accountability and an interruption of the crime that has happened is certainly warranted in this day and age.”
Merriweather said teen crime is an issue that will take everyone to solve.
“It takes not just law enforcement, it takes the entire community making sure we are engaged on how we work with our kids, that we monitor our children, that we know where our children are, that’s extremely important."
Contact Lexi Wilson at lwilson@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, X and Instagram.
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