A Policing Approach That Improves Health and Wellness of Youth

This podcast is part of a series highlighting innovative approaches to reducing violence and improving health outcomes among at-risk minority youth at the nine demonstration sites of the Minority Youth Violence Prevention Initiative. One of these demonstrations sites is Policing Approach Through Health, Wellness and Youth (PATHWAY) in West Palm Beach, Fla., an initiative led by the City of West Palm Beach that seeks to promote healthy adolescent development, discourage harmful and violent behavior, and provide youth with opportunities for positive social involvement. Reed Daniel, campus manager for the Youth Empowerment Division of the City of West Palm Beach Department of Recreation & Strategic Innovations and Special Agent James Lewis and Assistant Chief Sarah Mooney of the West Palm Beach Police Department joined this week’s podcast to discuss the role of law enforcement in PATHWAY, which includes offering critical mentorship and role modeling for program participants and creating meaningful diversion opportunities for low-level youth offenders.     The following is a transcript RAPHAEL POPE-SUSSMAN:Hi. This is Raphael Pope-­Sussman of the Center for Court Innovation. This podcast is part of a series we are doing with people seeking to curb violence and improve access to public health for at-risk minority youth, as part of the Minority Youth Violence Prevention initiative. The initiative is a partnership of the Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at the U.S. Department of Justice that encourages collaboration among public health organizations, law enforcement agencies, and community-based groups. Our podcast series highlights innovative approaches at the nine demonstration sites that have received funding under the program. Policing Approach Through Health, Wellness, and Youth, or PATHWAY, is an initiative led by the city of West Palm Beach that seeks to promote healthy adolescent development, discourage harmful and violent behavior, and provide youth with opportunities for positive social involvement. Through the program, police officers serve as mentors and instructors, and work alongside participants in community service projects. In October, I spoke with R. Reed Daniel, Campus Manager for the Youth Empowerment Division of the City of West Palm Beach, Department of Recreation and Strategic Innovations, Special Agent James Lewis of the West Palm Beach Police Department, and Assistant Chief Sarah Mooney, of the West Palm Beach Police Department. Our conversation focused on the role of law enforcement in PATHWAY, which includes critical mentorship and role modeling for program participants, and offering meaningful diversion to low level youth offenders. Hi, I’m Raphael Pope-­Sussman with the Center for Court Innovation. Today we’re speaking with R. Reed Daniel, Campus Manager, Youth Empowerment Division for the City of West Palm Beach, Department of Recreation and Strategic Innovations, Agent Lewis of the West Palm Beach Police Department and Assistant Chief Sarah Mooney of the West Palm Beach Police Department. Reed, Agent Lewis, and Assistant Chief Mooney, thank you for speaking with me today and welcome. ALL: Thank you. POPE-SUSSMAN: First of all, can you describe the PATHWAY program? REED DANIEL: My name is Reed Daniel. I’m the manager of the Youth Empowerment Center here in West Palm Beach. The PATHWAY Program came about about a year ago from a grant that we were seeking from the US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health and the Department of Justice COPS office, through which we implemented the city’s Policing Approach Through Health, Wellness, and Youth–PATHWAY. PATHWAY expanded the city’s current crime prevention based programs and activities which include diversion and restorative justice efforts to integrate health and wellness education and services. POPE-SUSSMAN: Can you talk about what that looks like specifically? DANIEL: We’ve formed a number of relationships with what we call key partners. On the health side we have the Board of Department of Health, Palm Beach County, the Health Care District of Palm Beach County, Mental Health Association of Palm Beach County, and on the crime prevention side, our key partner is the City of West Palm Beach Police Department. We integrate all those resources together in an effort to combat crime, and specifically juvenile crime, which really targets and focuses on juvenile crime involving black males. POPE-SUSSMAN: What kind of activities are involved? DANIEL: The program sends a lot of activities. All these programs are umbrellaed at the Youth Empowerment Center. We have programs in restorative justice, we have programs in crime prevention, we have programs in health and wellness, we have nutrition programs. All of these programs are joined together at the Youth Empowerment Center and offered to our teenagers, our youth who attend here, free of charge. POPE-SUSSMAN: What is the role of law enforcement in these programs? DANIEL: The police department actually is the component that drives the crime prevention initiative. West Palm Beach Police works closely with the Youth Empowerment Center and other key partners to find solutions that will divert our youth away from the criminal justice system. POPE-SUSSMAN: The police in the program work with the youth in what context? AGENT LEWIS: Basically it would be the law enforcement part of it. We do have an officer that works at the Youth Empowerment Center during the hours of the day and then also basically provides mentoring, give the kids an opportunity to have someone that they can talk to, with a law enforcement background. Some of the other programs we also offer as Reed mentioned earlier is the NAB–Neighborhood Accountability Board. The county itself has been experiencing an increase in juvenile that are entering the criminal justice system for misdemeanor crimes. In efforts to reduce the number of juveniles going into the systems for crimes that are not felonies, we created the Neighborhood Accountability Board and that gives our first time juvenile the opportunity to be diverted from the juvenile justice system at the program where they can basically take responsibility for their actions or the crime that they committed, but also it provides the community an opportunity to address the issue together. It instills some community feelings to these kids so they understand the impact of crimes that they’ve committed. We also have a great program that’s for gang prevention that’s offered here at the Youth Empowerment Center and that gives kids– middle school and elementary kids–the opportunity to learn and gang prevention before they get to into high school where they are kind of susceptible to be brought into gangs. We also have our Operation Youth Violence, which addresses issue with offenders between the ages of 14 to 24 who committed a felony crimes within a certain area in our city. That program, when kids commit a crime, we have a task force including members of our Youth Empowerment Center, the Urban League of Palm Beach County, and some other partners that we have. We give these kids an opportunity to basically take ownership of what they did. It’s a voluntary program but when it’s time to go to court, as long as they’ve successfully completed one of these programs offered here at the Youth Empowerment Center, we’ll go in on their behalf and let the judge know that while they were awaiting trial they did some positive stuff, whether it’s obtaining a GED, coming here for tutoring, or participating in one of the other programs we POPE-SUSSMAN: Assistant Chief Mooney, do you have anything to add to that? ASSISTANT CHIEF MOONEY: I would say, we’ve gone into the second year of this grant. We have an opportunity to kind of expand what we did last year. Last year the officers definitely had more presence at the Youth Empowerment Center, but this year we’re going to have the opportunity to have some of the officers that come in typically present some of their own types of programs that they want to initiate. We’re trying to encourage the start up of a couple of different initiatives that haven’t been laid out yet, that if we give the officer some time and have some autonomy to develop things that they are already good at, whether it’s a sports program, it might be some sort of hobby that they have that they could teach to the kids who come out to the center. Something that’s totally different, outside of the typical police interaction with the youth. They let the kids see that the officers aren’t just officers. They are just like everybody else. This year, that’s going to be our goal. To expand what we did last ye...