Losing Youths to Homicide

A comprehensive approach is needed to a crime trend that resists solutions.

FRANKLIN FANTROY was 17. He loved basketball and his family, had legions of friends, and planned to go to college. He was killed on an October night in Northeast Washington, shot as he walked home from a recreation center. He was a fine young man who leaves behind a father who can't speak about his only son without crying, his mother, a sister, two sets of grandparents, two great-grandmothers, and a host of aunts, uncles and cousins. It's important to know that hundreds packed the church for his funeral, because too often America looks upon the murders of its black youths as just numbers. How else to explain the unconscionable increase in homicides involving African American teenagers?

While the nation's overall homicide rate increased by only 7.4 percent, there has been a 39 percent jump in murders of black teens, according to a study released this week. Professors James Alan Fox and Marc Swatt of Boston's Northeastern University found that homicides in which the victims were blacks age 14 to 17 increased from 666 in 2000-01 to 927 in 2006-07, the last years for which statistics were available. Data for Washington were not broken out in the study, but information from the Metropolitan Police Department shows that the number of juveniles being killed is on the rise. There were 20 juvenile murder victims in 2008; the totals were 13 in 2007 and 17 in 2006. The majority of those killed, both nationally and locally, were black males, and most of the perpetrators also were African American.

The authors of the study faulted reduced federal funding for community policing, cuts to social programs that provide alternatives to juveniles and a weakening of gun laws. That's a bad omen for the District, which is entering the new year facing big budget deficits as well as yet-unknown fallout from the striking down of its handgun ban. A citywide task force that has been studying ways to combat violence will soon issue its findings. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) would be wise to use the opportunity to improve the city's strategies for dealing with troubled youths.

Without a doubt, Mr. Fenty is on the right track in emphasizing school reform as a key to giving new possibilities to young people. Yet, at the same time, there's been a tendency to be too reactive to spikes in crime -- a blockade here, more police there -- when a comprehensive approach is needed. Likewise, there's a real need for new federal involvement. We hope President-elect Barack Obama will restore some of the social programs, such as the summer jobs program, that were effective.

Nonetheless, governments alone can't stop the killings. Consider, for example, that Franklin's Oct. 27 slaying -- which police believe to have occurred during an attempted robbery -- remains unsolved. He was shot multiple times about 8:30 on a Monday night, and those close to the case believe there were witnesses. It's likely that some are afraid to come forward, while others may have something to hide. "We shouldn't have to live in fear," Franklin's father told us, adding that he hoped people would come together to fight what he sees as a war. Franklin was a tragic victim of that struggle; anyone with information about his death should call 1-888-919-CRIME.