>> the remains of bodies discovered in a fairfax county park. in montgomery county 16 gang related homicides in the past two years. much of the violence involves young people under the age of 24. how do we stop some of the violence we're see something to talk to us about it we invited d.c. police chief. also joining us this morning, captain paul who is director of the special investigations division with montgomery county police department and joining us this morning, matt thompson who is deputy director f

services with the fairfax county juvenile and domestic relations district court. welcome all of you. i'd like to start with you. how much of the violence that we're seeing right now and that we're reporting every day, weekly, involves young people. >> it's not as much as people think. we arrest 30,000 adults and 3,000 juveniles and then if you look at the reason why juveniles are being arrested about 25, 24 or 25% of those young kids that we lockup are kids that are in some type of a placement violation. so we're already in the criminal justice system and failed to appear for court and left a group home or something to that extent. the one category of crime where it seems like a fair number of young kids being arrested

so about 14% of those 3,000 or so kids that we arrest every year are kids arrested for robbery so that's one of the things. we're targeting the youth population and look at the crime in particular. >> when you look at the weekend like we saw recently there were so many shootings in one weekend. >> we've had a tough weekend and we've seen that before in the summers. we did lose a 17-year-old kid on our city streets and that's one of the things we're fighting every day to prevent and you know, pat, as well as do, that crime in the district has gone down considerably over the last ten years and so far this year we have another 25% reduction in violent crime in our city but when you have a weekend like that the families of the victims, the family of that 17-year-old they don't want to hear about crime stats they're concerned about that shooting in their community and their son or their brother who they lost on

streets of montgomery county is committed by young people and what are you arresting them for? >> i think we're seeing a surge in our homicides but all crimes in general are down or flat. one of the big things we're seeing, we're seeing a lot of theft from auto and auto theft itself seems to be on a sight increase of montgomery county. >> they just announced a plan to deal with gang violence. what can you tell us about this new initiative that the county executive wants to get underway. >> he's working with the county executive to formalize more of a plan to get more resources to the police department and it's part of a greater initiative called the positive youth

have a number of focuses in that. so it's intervention and a prevention model using our recreational services in montgomery county as well. >> matt, earlier this year, you had some really violent incidents in fairfax involving ms-13. back in the spring, the remains of two people were found in a park in fairfax county and your police chief said the gang problem was getting out of control. is it? >> regionally we have seen an up tick in terms of the overall number of petitions for gang related offenses in the county. that number has remained flat over the last several years and constitutes just under 1% of the total number of complaints we have. >>

seems to me it's more pretty and the violent acts are more brutal. >> with the proliferation of social media, the ready access, they're often using their cell phones and video taping and there's ready access to people are seeing these images much more quickly than in the past and perhaps that contributes to the perception that there's an increase in overall violence. >> is there a little bit of gang hysteria or is that overblown? >> any time you have such significance as there is in february there's attention to the gang problem. it is a problem and it's something that we need to be aware of but i also caution it's not spiraling out of control. >> got to take a break. we'll be right back and continue our discussion in a minute.

>> we do have some gangs in the city. >> you're talking about turf wars and crews in the neighborhood. >> that's the bigger problem. we haven't had the level of gang activity some of the other jurisdictions have had. we do have an intelligence community that pays close attention to the gang activity that we do have in the city. if we have an incident involving a gang that tries to initiate a young person into the gang we'll send our intelligence community out to go speak to all the involved gang members so the little bit of organized gang activity that we do have we try to keep a close

on it. >> captain, how much of the problem that you have in montgomery county is due to the influx of unaccompanied minors? >> that's one of the contributing factors that occurred. we see these people that try to get away from violence and often when they get here some of the structures aren't there to support them. so they're coming to families or sponsors where it's hard to adjust so they may not feel like they fit in there so they're also going to our schools where they're not at the same educational level or have peers they he can immediately bond with. without those two sectors of family and bonding and school we're finding that that's recruitment. need an intervention for any number of reason. drugs

issues even. >> the same risk factors are the same risk factors that are becoming involved in delinquent types of behavior in general. so when we see the risk factors they're more susceptible to the influence of gang recruiting. >> when you put them all in the same english class and they have different skill levels and they're coming from different backgrounds. you have the very vulnerable there. the ones preying on the vulnerable together. they continue to work to mitigate some of the risk factors that the youth are experiencing. >> how t i

people to resist? to say no? >> it's really the protective factors that keep kids from being in trouble. engagement in the community. carrying families, adults that are engaged in care. participation in extracurricular activities. community service, these are all the types of things that buffer and mitigation the negative influences of gangs and that's true of gang involvement as well as negative or delinquent behavior in general. >> whether they're involved in gangs or crews or engaging in neighborhood turf battles a lot of these young people are suffering from the same issues and one of the issues in d.c. and one that's becoming an increasing problem across the country is homelessness. how much is that impacting your ability to reach these populations? >> i think whenever you have a young person in there, they fall into the homeless category they become more vulnerable. do you know what i

person that has strong adult supervision, they can become very vulnerable and if there's something out there, a gang or somebody else trying to proey o a young person, that would be their target. the kid that is the most vulnerable. >> in d.c. there's hardly any for homeless unaccompanied minors. >> i think that the city has done a lot around the homelessness issue and we're moving in the right direction. they're trying to get rid of that shelter at d.c. general right now. it's been a very difficult process for the city. there's been a lot of communities disinclined to have these facilities in their neighborhood but you can see that we have a mayor that's very interested in solving that problem and making sure that we do have enough beds for our young people in the city. >> the trump administration pledged to aggressively target

what do you say about that? >> deportation is just a tactic and we have also seen it not necessarily the most effective tactic. we have seen gang members that have been deported and then reentered the united states illegally once again but we're starting to see more of a strategy where you now have attorney general sessions that's gone down to el salvador to meet with counter parts in central america to form more of a strategic thing and we're continuing to work with our law enforcement officers so we can have a broader strategy to attack the gang as an organization. >> take another break and we'll be right back.

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what is the police department doing about the truency problem. >> we always go out there to enforce them and make sure that the kids are where they're supposed to be at certain time of the day or if they're supposed to be in school we make sure that they're in school. one of the things that i would say i have seen throughout my career with young people the most vulnerable are the young people that don't have a trusting adult that they can go to and share things with. a lot of times young people get influenced either into bad behavior or this gang activity because they don't have somebody that they can go to and that fear from their peers can sometimes force them into behavior that they otherwise wouldn't be involved in so what we try to do as a police department is try to give them that

go to but i ask all adults to do the same thing whether it be your children or a neighbor or some other child you know give them a place they can feel comfortable to go when you're afraid. >> we're take a whole community approach. it's not just a law enforcement issue. we're using our recreation department to invite more kids to have positive activities as the chief explains so that they are more engaged in positive activities and also using our health and human services to see if something is needed. we're using our faith based community and our community organizations to do outreach in those communities as well. >> how about in fairfax now. >> it's not just a singular activity or program. it is really a system approach to addressing the issue and the problem. certainly from the

courts perspective we work closely with family services that provides specific intervention and education services. we also work across agencies with our partners from the schools, the police department as well as nonprofit and community based agencies and trying to provide education and resources to these families. >> and trying to get, to address this online is a challenge that is on going isn't it? >> it is. the kids have access now to this social media. they're sometimes putting out information that can get them into trouble. we're always out there looking for the predators that are trying to manipulate these children online but you go back to there has to be a little bit of adult supervision on the other end. be paying attention to what you're kids are doing. who are they communicating to. >> do you monitor young people's activity online to try

out where the gangs are going to be operating. >> we don't necessarily monitor their activity but we do get tips often from the community with screen shots showing us maybe young people posing with weapons or posing with drugs or things like that that are obviously of concern to the law enforcement community and we try to figure out if we can figure out where it's coming from. >> thank you. >> next, two leeraders working d redirecting youth in their community. we'll be right back. fios is not cable. we're a 100% fiber optic network.

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>> you're using those sports as medicine for what ails some of the young people in our community. tell us what you're doing. >> it's a crime prevention tool that we use to bridge the gaps between the youth and the police department by using recreational activities, most are police officers as well as people in the community. it's about bridging that gap and building bonds. >> how important is that today when there's so much news about bad relationships between the police and the community and so much of a distrust between the two? >> that's why these are so important. we have from elementary school all the way to high school teaching about that relationship and how you can trust us and

activities. >> as a preventive measure. reverend lee you're using techniques and programs to prevent too but you're also involved in intervention. >> yeah so, sometimes it's challenge or conflicts the police department will reach out or the state's attorneys office will reach out to us and we'll have our folks in the community dealing with young people in the community. we may be dealing with young people on both sides. two crews or two neighborhoods and we'll have foblgs that will go out and help mediate the conflict and work with those young people to give them an out. a lot of times young people don't want it to escalate. they're looking for a way to get out while saving face and not looking weak. so we're able to come work with them but that m could say out of the relationships that we built to be able to help them navigate the situation. >> tell us about some of the programs that you have. >> well, for

we have our talk to a cop program and we use a therapy dog to reach out to the kids. kids graf state towavitate towa >> what is it do for them? >> it shows that we are just like them and it's funny because every time we go to the school and you see nus in uniform they push us aside just to see penny. but that's a great way to talk about a lot of things that concern them. and then we have our pal program that gears toward middle school where we talk about development, leadership roles and go on different field trips all over the

we make sure that we have programs they can take advantage of. >> the programs are all free. >> all free. >> you run a social services hub at your church. >> yeah. we realized some of the issues that our young people are coming with, just say no to violence. so family services is equipped all members of our leadership team to be able to meet the nee needs and connect family to the services of the county. we have emamale and female mentoring programs so we're able to utilize some of those as well as just the regular summer activities and youth activities keeping young people plugged in but also to keep the family and farnts and the guardians plugged in to be able to move forward. >> and sergeant working in and with the schools is critical. >> yes. >> you to get

if they're there keep them there. >> exactly. one of the things it's a close intimate relationship with those schools and the principles makes our jobs a lot easier. >> do you work with all of them? >> not all of them. >> certain communities. >> and in the summertime we have different camps. art mentorship camp and just came up a few days ago to facilitate to help us with it. >> how important is it for parents to know what their kids are doing? >> it's important that they not just know what they're doing but be connected with them in those paces. he has the ame church adopting cools throughout the region so we're excited about that as well. >> reverend tony lee, thank you so much and thank you for the work that you're doing. thank you for joinings

i'm pat lawson muse. news 4 today snex.

. right now on "news4 today," tragedy in a church parking lot. what investigators are recovering as a couple recovers in the hospital. and then an aircraft with marines crashes off the coast of australia. . good sunday morning to you all out there. hope you are having a good start so far. it's 6:00 a.m. on the dot. i am adam