Two teenagers and a 12-year-old boy were arrested after assaulting a man last Saturday in downtown Long Beach.
According to the Long Beach Police Department (LBDP), the preliminary investigation indicates that a group of minors approached the victim with whom he engaged in a verbal dispute.
The confrontation escalated when the suspects hit the victim with tent poles and a tripod, then the group of young people threw objects that hit the victim.
When officers responded to the emergency call, they found the victim with non-lethal injuries to his upper body and were able to locate and arrest the three suspects in the area.
The three detainees, all minors and residents of Long Beach, are 12, 14 and 15 years old.
In 2024, 504 instances of aggravated assault have occurred citywide, according to the most recent LBPD data through the NIBRS system.
In late 2023, residents at the Camden Harbor View apartments in Long Beach were fed up with juvenile delinquents, according to a KTLA report.
“These kids don’t care. They are looking for problems,” one tenant, Kimberly, told KTLA. “One hit me with a skateboard.”
According to Dr. Elliot Currie, professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, the United States has a more serious youth violence problem compared to other similar countries.
“We have a very low floor when it comes to how well we support low-income people,” Currie said. “So we leave a lot of children in situations where the level of poverty they face is very unusual.”
Currie mentioned that factors such as overcrowded schools, lack of affordable housing and lack of supervision of minors due to the amount of work parents need to do to survive affect youth.
During the pandemic many support services for at-risk youth were affected, which could also contribute to the problem, Currie explained.
According to Statista’s research department, there were around 123,000 serious violent crimes committed by youth between the ages of 12 and 17 in the United States in 2021, an increase from the previous year.
But the research department added that this is still a significant decrease from 1994 levels, when violent crimes committed by youth peaked at more than 1.05 million serious crimes.
Dr. Currie says that one of the solutions to combat violence in minors is to have activities where they can be part of the creation or involved in something.
“We can actually do something about these problems that make us angry, alienated and feel like we have no future,” Currie said. “So instead of attacking each other, we attack the problems themselves and build a better community.”
Action Sports Kids (ASK) Foundation is a nonprofit organization in Long Beach, California, dedicated to providing youth with an alternative to the streets and gangs through sports, education, and community involvement.
When Mike Donelon, ASK’s executive director, was a Long Beach city councilman, a resident complained about a young man using a skateboard in front of his house.
Donelon spoke to the young man and asked him to create a skate park for him because he can’t do it in his own neighborhood.
“As soon as we opened the first park 22 years ago I realized the impact it had on at-risk youth,” Donelon said. “They finally had a place in their neighborhood they could go.”
The former councilor says that in his experience it is extremely important to have activities for young people where they can be involved and also where they can make connections with different people.
Donelon says the Silverado skate park in west Long Beach was special because young people were directly involved in the design of the park.
“When they are proud owners and everyone comes from different backgrounds, they get along and don’t want to go down the wrong path,” Donelon said. “They don’t want to be in gangs, they just want to be skaters.”