After Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Mike O’Malley turned to social media earlier this year to call out individual Cuyahoga County Juvenile judges for what he saw as overly lenient sentencing practices, the judges pushed back.
“Treating youth in the community can appear ‘soft on crime’ to some,” the court said in a September statement to 19 News, “but the vast majority of youth placed on probation do not reoffend. Probation officers work with youth in the community challenging their criminogenic thinking, and with family and the community members, [to] help youth become productive members of the community. For every criticism like Prosecutor O’Malley’s, there are others that criticize the court for being too harsh or punitive. Our judges must not and will not be swayed by pressure from either direction. They will continue to look at each case individually and determine what is best for the community and the child before them.”
The judges are right that part of their charge is to try to rehabilitate young offenders, not dispatch them directly into an adult prison system not equipped to handle juvenile offenders.
But it’s not their only goal. The judges also are charged with looking out for public safety. And they’re dropping the ball on that front.
When habitual violent offenders who’ve barely reached puberty have easy access to guns and teen confederates, and engage in serial violent crimes greased by their ability to get more guns and more stolen cars to commit more crimes, rehabilitation hasn’t worked.
That certainly seems to be the case with the 14-year-old Halloween marauder who, with his armed 17-year-old pal, terrorized a 61-year-old woman walking her dogs near the Thurgood Marshall Recreation Center on Hough Avenue in an attack caught on video. The woman wasn’t hurt, although both youths repeatedly threatened her with a gun, snatching her car keys before the older boy kicked one of her dogs and the 14-year-old got her 2010 Kia Forte running and drove off with it, picking up the 17-year-old nearby.
“The Oct. 31 attack was part of a daylong crime wave engineered by a boy in middle school,” cleveland.com reported. “Less than three hours later, he and the 17-year-old stole a 2019 Hyundai Elantra from a parking garage at Cleveland State University, according to charges filed in the case. The car contained a book bag and a set of golf clubs valued at $1,000.”
A few days later, the 17-year-old was caught on video again, driving a different stolen car that he used to chase two girls walking near Hough and East 89th Street, narrowly missing one of them, after they refused to give him the ski mask one of the girls had.
The 14-year-old was finally arrested Nov. 11 in a home in Hough. Cleveland police said then that he was suspected in dozens of crimes, asking for the community’s help to share videos of any car break-ins from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12 between the east side of downtown and East 55th Street, 19 News reported.
Worse, it turns out this middle-schooler had already been given numerous second chances from earlier cases in Juvenile Court, cleveland.com reported — including “therapy, probation, mentoring and social service programs, according to the records.”
True, there’s no evidence (yet) the youngster actually shot anyone. But isn’t terrorizing vulnerable people at gunpoint a step toward that? Is it time to decide that even a middle-schooler can forfeit further second chances by repeatedly terrorizing Clevelanders?
The courts will determine this boy’s fate, and it’s an unenviable job, requiring the wisdom of Solomon when confronted with a boy barely needing to shave but who’s shown himself to be a danger to the community. Prosecutors want to send him off to the big house with the adult boys where rehabilitation is unlikely. But on the other side of the ledger is how many other youngsters this 14-year-old has recruited or could recruit to his car-theft and street-terrorizing ways. When he was arrested, police also arrested a 13-year-old and 17-year-old with him.
Our “Delinquent” series revealed that, too often, authorities pull a trigger of their own by prematurely shipping youngsters off to be tried as adults, effectively closing the door on rehabilitation and second chances when they could have helped.
But in this case of a 14-year-old accused of dozens of crimes who won earlier breaks from the system that didn’t seem to change his ways, what else does the court have to try when community safety should be paramount?
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