. >> good sunday morning. welcome to "viewpoint." crime in our communities makes the headlines far too often. from the young to the old, crime affects all of us and in the words of police chief lanier, people are sick of the violence. our guests this morning are sick of it and they're working to stop it. tony leads the group save silver spring, david smith, president of the dean wood citizens association and daphne doyle banbo with alpha kappa alpha sorority. welcome all of you to "viewpoint." david, dean wood made the headlines because of the two high-profile killings at the metro station involving teenagers, teenage victims and suspects. how are people

about safety in their community? >> i think the reactions of the community are predictable based on our concerns over the past few years. we've kind of sceeen this comin. we look at indicators at the health of our community such as graduation jobs, health disparities and concentration of poverty and we've seen an influx of new residents that fall within those danger areas, and we've seen an increase in crime that are directly tied to poverty. so we've been pushing for some time to try to be proactive in how we get ahead so the recent incidents of violence to us, we've boiled completely over because to us it was predictable. >> do people feel safe in their homes, walking down the streets? >> well deanwood is a very interesting community. we feel safe in our homes but understand at any moment things can go wrong despite your

you have people that are in poverty, usually they do things just for survival. growing up in the neighborhood i've seen our community go through ups and downs and ups and downs but as a whole i think our community feels safe in their homes, but not safe on the street. and that's an uncomfortable situation. >> tom, at one of your recent meetings with safe silver spring, police talked about a recent uptick in gang violence in montgomery county. and these gangs are recruiting heavily among unaccompanied minors. talk about how the gang violence and the violence that we see in the community in general, is impacting the quality of life for silver spring and residents all over the county. >> yeah. i don't think most of us are experiencing on a day-to-day basis any significant impact. we are aware there's been an increase in murders. in 2014, there was one

in 2015, eight murders. so that's definitely a major concern. and secondly, we're seeing fights by gangs, not inside the school, but outsides the school, or other communities. so it's not impacting us personally so much, but we're seeing an hearing about violence and that's causing concern. so we had a major meeting with a lot of key players last week to talk about this and talk about directions to pursue. >> daphne, they're neighborhoods we know where crime tends to be higher than others, but no matter where you live, you know crime happens. >> absolutely. you know, being a member of alpha kappa alpha for more than 20 years now and the organization in general we've tried to -- we've tried to work with the entire watches and d.c. community. myap

serving more than 30 years, almost 35 years, and so we look at washington, d.c., as a whole. we service all wards, in particular ward 7, 8, some of those more impoverished wards as mentioned earlier. we currently actually meet at idea public charter school which is right here in its backyard but we are working with groups and the school to make sure we provide programs and services that will hopefully keep the youth occupied off the streets and looking for positive options. >> you all are tackling the issue of crime in the community in your own different ways. tell us how you are approaching it in deanwood, the citizens association that is. >> as a citizens association, we looked at what was our most pressing issues and our most pressing issues we found to be connected which were schools, parental participation in schools with their children and the ability to get employment. we found that when parents are working, they participate more in pta and their children

they have less conflicts. when we have that sort of parental involvement in our community we can stay ahead of neighborhood altercations between gangs because our children communicate and share the information and as a parent and adult we're able to intervene on their behalf. that's where we've started. we've had success working with programs like ideal at houston elementary, language immersion program, the first one of its kind going east of the river. we have ron brown being reopened. we've gotten jobs at ron brown specifically for the fathers of the kids that are at houston elementary school. we're starting to make these connections between economy, intervention, the parental involvement in schools and we think that's our first step. we have a long way to go but starting to see now we're getting information we would not have gotten had we not engaged both the parent and the child. >> tony, what's the big issue or what are the biggest issues facing residents of silver spring? >>

we take a number of approaches. we work with state government advocating for legislation, for instance, gun safety legislation. we work with county government in terms of advocating for programs, advocating for budget changes. we certainly have a number of, for instance, teenagers that were concerned about from lower income areas, well, all income areas, to find constructive activities. we want to have vital youth programs to meet their needs. we want to see more vocational programs. these are some of the solutions. but we're also right now, because of the gang activity, we're -- we've been -- we brought a lot of players together last week. we are going to work with t

county to revise the positive youth development program, which looks at prevention intervention and suppression phases and they've had a comprehensive one that's going to have to address social media. that's the new kid on the block, gangs are using a good bit of and we need to get a handle on that aspect because that's playing a major role in this too. >> it is a major role. i want to pick up on that point. we have to take a break but we'll continue to talk about crime in the community after this break.

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daphne, you're with alpha capita alpha sorority. you focus primarily on middle and high school. >> middle and high school students. we have a partnership with idea public charter school in the northeast but we've worked with the washington middle school for girls. we have a plethora of programs and services that we provide. from scholarships to back packs to school supplies to educational enrichment trips. i think, you know, we hear a lot in the community tha there's nothing for the kids to do. right. everybody screams and shouts that when something happens, but there are so many programs out there, there are so many wonderful groups doing things, not just alpha kappa alpha but many groups. those programs are free or reduced. but, you know, we want families to be able to reach out to us and be a part of our programming. we have so many programs that we provide, so many diverse programs. you heard earlier about language immersion

programs that address the whole family as a unit. it's not just about just the middle or high school student, but it's about the whole entire family, the entire community and that's what we do at alpha kappa alpha. our pillar is education and that's a big focus for us. >> my mother always said an idle mind is the devil's workshop. we know young people have energy that needs to be channelled. how are you dealing with young people in deanwood no. >> we've started consistent dialog with our schools. we work diligently with the police department to do community policing that's more community driven as opposed to responsive. and we're also trying to get our school systems to open back up our playgrounds. for instance, in deanwood, all of our playgrounds are locked. literally. and that goes all the way over to the more affluent community. >> why are they locked. >> i would love if someone could give ne

the bottom line these are taxpayer dollars that support these playgrounds and they're not open. when i was a child in the crack epidemic we had similar situations. under the leadership of some of our former like marion barry, he made sure every young person in the community was hired at some position and we had playground monitors with walkie tau kis so if there was a fight or beef we could go -- and i played on the plow ground because i knew the monitor was there. i had a choice between whether i was going to be a crack dealer or whether i was going to suffer and say no. i knew i had at least one person that was responsible on that plow ground. no matter what we talk about related to why these places don't feel safe for our young people we have plenty of money in d.c. and we should be investing it into our next generation's success. >> like to piggyback off of that. we have a program called aka 1908 playground where we go around and beautify and fix up old playgrounds for children and our youth and we've beenun

into the same challenges trying to identify partners and playgrounds we can go in, fix up for our kids. we want them to be healthy and in a vital community. we hear all this talk but no one is helping us get to do that and to supply those programs for our kids. >> i want to transition if you will to social media. because this is the playground of many people who are now engaging in, you know, the bullying that you talked about addressing. it's where young people, students, are having to work out issues. it's where fights are starting. one of the fights that led to a stabbing in deanwood of a 15-year-old allegedly started on-line. >> and it's still going on. still going on on social media right now. >> and tony, it's at the heart of a lot of gang violence we're seeing. >> these guys, there's a video of several gang members

up a young vulnerable kid inside of a tunnel and then they're displaying weapons and, you know, trying to show how strong they are through these -- through social media. >> you are using the street outreach network to try to fight this problem. what is that and how does it work? >> it's run by the county department of health and human services. louise cardona has been the long-time director of that. he was a former gang member himself. he has a number of counselors that meet with gang members or people who are victims of the gangs and tries to steer them into constructive programs of vocational or academic programs in the school. he's a real miracle worker. he's under staffed and one of the things we've done is recommended ,

staff. they work with all of the major player organizations in the county to kind of coordinate things. part of the health and human services the police department, and the recreation department, are the leaders in this positive youth development initiative which tries to take a comprehensive program, they develop the plan, a number of years ago, they're going to update it as soon as the county council decides on what the budget levels will be for the different programs and they're working quite extensively with the school systems and a lot of other organizations. >> one of the many strategieses that are being tried. we're going to take another break and. right after this.

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welcome back. we're continuing our talk about crime. i want to talk about girls because we often associate the gangs and a lot of the violent behavior with boys and the fact is, girls can be just as, if not more vicious than the boys. >> absolutelily, pat. i mean, it's mind boggling to see the young women today, you know. they want respect and everyone wants you to address them a certain way and approach them a certain way, but our young girls are very lost and you can call it or you can point to a number of different things. i know some point to reality tv, some point to not enough role models in the community but when i look at an organization like us and other organizations there are role models. i just think that we have to really just let t

there. i know, again, so many different groups doing wonderful things, wonderful things for girls. different opportunities. like i said earlier we've partnered with washington middle school for years for girls and again it was a role model, miss daphne can we go with you here and see this. exposing our youth to different things. i don't know what has happened in our society that have gotten our young women, young girls, our diamonds, so upset and so intense that they have resulted to being so vish slus towards each other. it's amazing. david mentioned just different relationships within their household and with young men coming back from being incarcerated, it's a plethora of things but so many groups willing to put their arms around the young women and take care of them and nurture them. >> david, during a panel held recently in d.c. about teen violence, the city's attorney general carl

numbers of youngsters don't have have enough responsible adults around them to be a positive influence on them. >> i would say without really looking at the data of our communities or data in my community that would be true. if you have parents who work two jobs, who don't make a living wage, the school is the only and the rec, recreation center, the only location that has that audience. we're not depositing into these children while their parents are working 50, 60 hour work weeks and still not making ends meet the children are coming to school with frustrations. carl ra seen's comment is probably head-on and i think we need to look at how we support families at our schools as early as prekindergarten through college, especially if we're going to continue the economic trends we see in our community we're getting a push of concentration of poverty to our neighborhood and we're trying to stop that. as we figure out

resource our family's capacity within our community based organizations to deal and combat those issues. >> i work with boys and girls club of greater washington, a full-time staffer there, and we see this all the time again. i mean you're right. it's what are kids doing after 3:00 when the bell rings what are they doing? >> we know their parents are generally at work. >> right. >> it if they're working. >> so if they don't have a place to come they're out in the streets, doing things unsavory and not safe and being a dent meant to their community. when i look at boys and girls clubs our membership is $50 for the year. we have parents that say i can't pay that. we see they give other resources or the hot and hip things to their kids, but this is a place where you a safe place for your kids to be nurtured, to be educated, to experience things that they would never experience. we've taken kids to the white house, nasa, everywhere, but these are programs that again, are out there for the community

out that there are places that want to take care of our kids. >> all right. we've got to take another break. we'll continue in a minute.

welcome back. david, our community police rowlation getting better in deanwood? >> our community police relations are at an all-time high. there are cracks in the system. for instance, one of the families in our community identified a perpetrator who committed multiple crimes, that information was shared, her

perpetrator's attorney and that perpetrator was no papered a term in d.c. that means they're in court, out of court. they were turned right back to the community. that's injuring and hurting our ability to stay engaged because that is one of the issues why community members don't come forward. if you're not going to actually treat the same crime the way you would treat it if it was in a fluent area, you put our families in danger. >> tony, what are some of the biggest pieces of legislation your group is trying to get passed on the county or state level? >> so, we advocated in 2013 for several pieces of gun safety legislation and we're very pleased that was passed. we advocated again this year for gun safety legislation, particularly for domestic violence victims and fortuna

between the two branches and they couldn't resolve last-minute differences. we particularly worked on gun budget issues, police in the past, school resource offices, which are -- had been cut back and they've restored the number of school resource officers, a number of youth programs expanding the street outreach network, as well as several of the other programs involved in this gang initiative. >> quickly daphne, are we overlooking mental health? >> i don't think we're overlooking it. i think we are not funneling all of our energy and resources into it. a lot of groups are focusing on mental health. we have a national platform alpha kappa alpha around mental health and in particular with youth. so we are doing more, again, on the bullying and is it a directive from their family and things like that, yes, i think mental health should

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right now, investigators pea together a dangerous late night wreck. what we're finding out. xwl and incredible show of support for a firefighter. and new safety problem for metro, a familiar issue that closed another station and what is being done to make sure your ride is safe. >> we are off to a chilly start this sunday morning. good morning, everyone. i'm angie goff. >> and i'm adam tuss. you might need a light jacket on your way out this morning. tom kierein tracking when the temps will be back up into the 70s. >> a spring chill in the air on this sunday morning under