SOS Juvenile Justice: Helping kids out of cycle of violence in Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA - Just within the first two weeks of March alone, at least eleven children were shot in the city of Philadelphia. Among the victims, 17-year-old Dayemen Taylor, an Imhotep Institute Charter High School student, was killed at a SEPTA bus stop in Ogontz shortly after school dismissal. Eight Northeast High School students were shot at a SEPTA bus stop as well, only days later.

It’s a scenario we are seeing far too often in the city, and we are left asking "why?" Who is targeting children, and what is leading up to tragedies like this? There is not one right answer, but we spoke to some of those with boots on the ground about what is going on, why, how they are tackling it, and where do we go from here?

Level Up Philly provides "safe space," neutral ground for neighborhoods at war

Every Thursday in West Philadelphia, Pastor Aaron Campbell, lovingly known by so many children as "Unc," calls it their carnival.

Hundreds and hundreds of young people, mostly 81 students from 81 different schools and neighborhoods come together.

"It's said that this is considered to be the only neutral location in the entire city, where all the different, warring neighborhoods will gather without feuding," he says.

It started with 10 people in his home five years ago, and has grown into a safe space to dance, play games and eat like you’re in a five-star restaurant - seriously.

"We got the ox tails, the homemade mashed potatoes, we got Caribou, giant stuffed Caribou making a Caribou hash, collard greens, always gotta’ do a vegetable," says Pastor Campbell.

On Tuesdays, they lower the music for a weekly academy. They have numerous partnerships, including one with Pepsi, but most importantly, they have mentors, listeners, lovers, security, and accountability. They sign a pledge before they even walk through the door, and if kids break the rules inside or outside of Level Up, it can result in a suspension.

We spoke with one of the security guards outside of Level Up.

"They’re not allowed to leave and come back. Once they leave, they could be going to start a problem somewhere, or there might be an issue or fight somewhere," she says. "They leave and they come back, they can’t come back after that. Once they’re out, they’re out."

One day at a time, this is how Campbell is hoping to change the course for kids coming from the city's highest-risk neighborhoods.

"You said our kids are living in a war zone. Is that truly the reality of what's going on in the city?" asked FOX 29’s Kelly Rule.

"There's a war zone going on right now. It is a war zone, and it is engulfing our young generation," says Pastor Campbell. "Guns, ghost guns, 3D printed guns, guns with switches, and put extended clips in them. It turns them into, like, an Uzi, a makeshift Uzi. It is a war zone. And kids will tell you that it's normal for them to look over their shoulder every five seconds when they're walking."

Campbell says he’s lost eight of his teens in the past 13 months.

Their most recent loss was after another epic Thursday at Level Up back in January, where Campbell celebrated his 50th birthday. Hours after they closed their doors, Campbell got a call that one of their young men, Tyshaun Welles, 16, who was singing happy birthday in the crowd that night, was shot and killed on the westbound Market-Frankford Line platform at 15th and Market.

"My phone just begins blowing up. And it was actually two of my 13-year-old girls, who were both down at 15th Street as a crew of them were just down there hanging out, and they witnessed everything," he says. 

Campbell says the next few weeks involved comforting Welles’ mom and family, and then walking his young people through another balloon release and funeral; showing them how to cry and letting them cry on him.

"The mourning doesn't stop. You know, it just gets deeper and it's just another piece being stacked up. It's just more burden on their minds, on their hearts," he says. "So we have to continue, in this culture of death, if you will, to speak life, to tell them they're going to not just survive, but thrive."

FOX 29’s Kelly Rule asked some of the young people at Level Up how they feel about safety in the city.

"In Philly, I ain’t gonna lie, I be scared to walk out of the house, you never know if you’re going to die or not," says Terrence Lee. "But when you come here, you’re just in a safe spot. You got protection, you got food, you got music, you got games."

"When I’m not here, you know, of course it’s Philadelphia, so, no, I don’t feel safe," says Siani, an 18-year-old who attends Level UP. "But, when you come in this facility, you know for a fact nothing is happening to you."

Pastor Campbell feels there are a number of factors contributing to the issues he is seeing.

"You have the post-COVID element, you have the social media element, the drill music, you know, the most aggressive form of music that really just incites violence and killing. The PTSD element, back to schools that are overcrowded and underfunded, poverty," he says. "They’re just angry. They're afraid. They're confused. They're being driven by this riptide of a culture, and they're just no mentors in place."

"It’s living life with them, not just giving them a quick adage or a quick word of wisdom, but entering into their world and living life with them. So this is all created a perfect storm, a perfect storm of what we're dealing with now," he says. "It’s time for us to get away from the blame game and it's the parents fault, or it's social media's fault. It's all of our faults. It’s all of our faults. And we have to jump in the game with broken hearts."

New Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel brings experience with School District of Philadelphia to policing

"I never thought when I took over school safety for the school district, that I would be seeing young children getting shot and killed at the doorstep of a school. That would be one of the most difficult things for me to deal with," says Commissioner Kevin Bethel.

He started his new role as top cop in January. He has decades of experience with the department, but most recently worked with the School District of Philadelphia as Chief of School Safety.

Rule: "What are the biggest issues that juveniles are facing right now in the city?"

Bethel: "I think it’s a different time. I tell people, when this guy was a kid growing up, there was no social media, so I’d probably would stay there. The social media has really, really created this thing with our young people that often times, spirals out of control. I think I would probably put that as number one. It creates the beefs that we see," he says.

"They see so much. They see more guns than they have ever seen in history. We can see by just the sales of guns, the number of young people we do get guns from now. They go online and purchase guns and ghost guns that accessibility now creates so many challenges."

Rule: "Kids have openly told us it’s easy to get a gun. Is that true?"

Bethel: "Absolutely, I mean we have to think it through, and I’m very upfront. During COVID, a lot of money was flowing into the streets, a lot of money. The street is very smart. Those guys that work in that illegal space saw the opportunity. There’s money flowing into our neighborhoods and guess what we’re going to offer up? We’ve always had these, we’re going to offer up guns," he says. "Then we create a narrative that we’re telling young people, carry a gun because you’re scared. We’re the adults. I get that narrative, I understand a part of it. but it’s our responsibility as adults to send a different message."

Commissioner Bethel says he’s seeing a shift from "group" guns, where people are sharing weapons, to more teenagers getting them individually - as young as 11-years-old. Meanwhile, the department continues to take a record number of guns off the street every year.

"I don't walk around with a badge of honor, saying, look how many guns our men and women are getting off the street," he says. "It scares the hell out of me that we're getting that many guns out of the streets. Even though we focus on juveniles and they rightfully get a lot of attention, 90 percent of our violence and our gun arrests are in adults."

The latest numbers provided to FOX 29, from Philadelphia Police, reflect that.

In 2023, of the 274 homicide by gun arrests, 15 of the arrests were juveniles. For robbery by gun, 168 of the 769 arrests were juveniles. For aggravated assault with a gun, 52 of the 1,098 arrests were juveniles. For VUFA arrests, of the 2,6000 arrests, 254 were juveniles.

The numbers show 17-year-olds with the highest number of arrests, and as young as 10-years-old. In 2023, one 10-year-old was arrested for robbery with a gun, two for aggravated assault with a gun.

"Part of this work has to also be around, what do we do with a young person with a gun?" says Bethel. "How do we change the trajectory of where they're going?"

Rule: "So, what is the right consequence for a 14-year-old that’s arrested with a gun?"

Bethel: "That’s a good question. That's an absolutely phenomenal question. Those consequences have to be significant enough that a child understands the consequences of their actions. So, I'm not saying that that child needs to go away to be put in some cell block up in State Road somewhere. But, the consequences have to be a scenario where you're compelling that young person not to engage in that behavior again," he says.

Commissioner Bethel says they are seeing most kids are shot within two hours after school, within two miles of school, and the majority are coming from five zip codes in the city. Overall, he says there are 10 districts in the city that represent almost 80 percent of all city violence, including North Philadelphia.

"When you have a district of 4.5 miles, almost 50 homicides and 200 shootings, you know, that's more per capita shootings than Baltimore. And Milwaukee. And some other cities just in that pocket there . And you imagine what the children must endure there. And then there's no surprise that the largest percentage of my kids, juveniles are being shot or coming from that same community," he says. "So part of that work now is, as we build out our strategies, how do we focus in on those specific areas? So we could potentially have an impact on those young people?"

"We're going to do everything we can from a policing perspective, but we're going to also call upon everyone else, all of our stakeholders, both internally with the city, as well as external folks, to really help us. How do we change that? How do we help that pastor change those young people to give them hope?"

What do consequences look like for a juvenile? What does justice look like for a victim of a crime committed by a juvenile?

The Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project feels no child should ever be charged as an adult.

FOX 29 sat down with two client partners working with the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project in Philadelphia, that asked that we protect their identities. The young man, charged as an adult at 15-years-old, spent seven to eight months at the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center, before moving onto the Juvenile Justice Services Center. The young woman, charged as an adult at 16-years-old, spent two months at the Riverside Correctional Facility, before spending two years at JJSC - time that did not end up counting as "time served."

"That set me back a lot. I had to readapt, relearn things, basically relearned the world, what's going on. To be honest, I did have a setback just on an educational level," says the young man.

FOX 29’s Kelly Rule asked, "Are there days you were not brought out to a classroom at all? "

"Yeah, some days, if there isn’t enough staff, you have to be in your room. You’d be in your room all day," says the young woman.

"We’re doing such a disservice to the young people that are in the system that is meant for rehabilitation. We are not properly educating them and we are not staffing these centers with consistency and care," says Kat Bakrania, a Reentry Coordinator at YSRP.

YSRP is fighting to end the prosecution of young people as if they were adults by partnering with young people, their families, and their defense team, and also help plan for reentry.

"We are being profoundly uncreative in how we’re responding to human behavior," says Bianca Van Heydoorn, Executive Director. "We are allowing our fear to cloud our ability to be creative, restorative, and helpful."

In 2023, Philadelphia Police say 15 juveniles were arrested for homicide by gun.

"What would the ideal consequences look like for you in a situation that severe?" asked FOX 29’s Kelly Rule.

"In an ideal world, each situation and each case would be dealt with individually. And I think that the primary place we should look is to the victims and survivors in that situation to say, what do you need?" says Van Heydoorn. "Then we resource that person to do the thing that would repair the victim, and we put them in a position where they do not have 44,000 collateral consequences after a conviction. We set them up to never do it again."

After working with YSRP, both individuals had their cases decertified to Juvenile Court. Now, several years later, they can focus on their futures. The young man is pursuing his CDL, and the young woman is studying architecture in college.

"Removing children during their high school years and from families and communities, placing young people in environments where they do not have access to adequate education, and expecting those young people to return to our communities and be able to adapt, absorb and move into lives where they are thriving is insanity," says Van Heydoorn. "It does not produce fewer victims or more safety. It only turns more people into victims, including the young people that we are trying to hold accountable through punishment alone."

In an ongoing cycle of violence, with progress and setbacks, there’s still hope.

Pastor Campbell says they take as many photos as possible at every gathering because there’s no guarantee who will make it to the next one.

The heartbreaking reality only reinforces the importance of his work at Level UP.

"We're not afraid to attach ourselves to the most violent, young teenager. We're not afraid. We're not afraid of what someone's going to say about us if we decided to bet on them having value and loving on them," he says. "What happens when that person just goes throughout life not getting one word of life spoken to them, not one hug. What does it turn into?"

Campbell has a nickname for all of his young people. He introduced us to "Shorty Shakedown," 15-year-old Safier Ammons.

"Promise me, behavior. If that crew comes today, what?"

"I’m gonna chill," says Ammons.

"Not just chill. Try to become friends. Listen. What do you call me? Unc. What do they call me? Unc. What does that make y’all? Cousins. You’re fighting your cousins," says Pastor Campbell.

"I had to fight, because I don’t like people talking about my dead family. It hurt me, that’s why it make me fight," says Ammons. "But, I’m going to squash the beef with them, I’m going to tell them we cool."

Samai Harris, a Level Up regular, says she was shot in the chest last year at 10th and Thompson streets

"Before coming here, what was life like?" asked FOX 29’s Kelly Rule.

"I was bad, I was horrible. My mom passed away when I was young, so, I just lost my mom, so I always fought, all the time, every day basically. I was always on punishment," says Harris. "I don’t be outside anymore like that, that’s all. It just be too much shooting and everything, everywhere."

Terrence Young is now the official Level Up barber.

"Honestly, before Level UP, my head wasn’t on my shoulders, I was outside, doing the wrong things, doing stuff I wasn’t supposed to be doing," says Young. "It’s just a community, a spot for all the kids in the city. Say, if a kid got a problem with somebody, they come here, dance it off. They just dance with each other. At first it’s weird, and then it’s like, wow, they just building a bond, building a relationship with each other. Y’all was just beefing, now look at y’all!"

"We need to bring back that web where all of us adults are connected in every space and we have a web and they know there's this web of accountability, but also a web of of intentionally caring about them," says Pastor Campbell. "We’ve seen it. The toughest ones, the wildest ones, the most violent ones, the most feared and notorious ones, They will reach for your hand to lead them out of this mess. If they trust that your hand will stay there and be there tomorrow."

"You said it's up to us to give these children hope. Do you have hope?" FOX 29’s Kelly Rule asked Commissioner Bethel.

"Oh yes. You know, listen, I tell people I would not be sitting here, coming back, into this space if I didn't feel like there was hope," he says.

Commissioner Bethel says he plans to use the results of a study underway with the district that will analyze 2,000 students over the last five years - those shot, those murdered, and those accused of shooting and/or killing someone, and dissect them.

"Maybe in seventh grade or sixth grade, we see this thing happening. And if we can find that thing, then maybe we can now start to pour those resources in. Maybe. way, way early, before, you know, spirals out of control and never stops, and gets into the system," he says.

As Commissioner, he hopes to also bring the diversion program he introduced to the district, to policing.

"Young kid who just stole a $3 candy bar doesn't need to be cuffed, transported anywhere, and be traumatized through that, when we don't even ask them the why, you know, why are you stealing that? What is causing that?"

FOX 29’s Kelly Rule asked the staff at YSRP if they are hopeful.

"My hope comes from the young people that I work with and seeing them when they come home," says Bakrania. "They are oftentimes returning to the same contexts and environments and reasons that got them into their decision-making, that led to the system in the first place, but when they come home, they don't want to be that same person anymore."