TOLEDO, Ohio — Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz and Toledo Police Chief Michael Troendle in a press conference on Tuesday shared crime statistics for the first half of 2024.
Four of the six major crime categories that the department tracks, compared to the same period in 2023, have improved, while two — homicides and people shot — increased by 26.7% and 5.8%, respectively.
But these numbers are the general crime reports.
How does the impact to local youth factor into the bigger picture?
"Getting them off the street could interrupt that cycle of violence," Troendle said. "If they are not on the street, then it's impossible for them to commit or become a victim of a crime."
Kapszukiewicz at the press conference said the city has a goal to reduce youth-related crime in Toledo.
That can be a tricky task, though, so local organizations are stepping in to help offer a chance to change youth behavior.
"Officers are frustrated that there is no accountability, or there is no tough love or something that's going to wake our children up," said Shawn Mahone, executive director of Young Men and Women For Change, an organization that provides parents and kids with behavioral training programs to help transform lives.
Mahone says he has helped over 4,000 kids nationwide since 2006 through the organization, all with a goal to try to change and save lives.
"We want them to be law-abiding citizens, we want them to understand what accountability and responsibility looks like, we want them to understand the value of the community in which they live," he said.
Some of the programs the organization include a "Behavior Modification Bootcamp," a "Parent Accountability Program" and the "Dose of Reality" program, the last of which 15-year-old Landon Nighbert of Sylvania says turned his life around.
"If I don't change, if I don't keep doing these things, I'm going to get mixed into the wrong crowd and then bad things happen,' he said. "I could end up in that funeral home or I could end up in that prison."
"Dose of Reality" runs on Friday nights into early Saturday mornings. Mahone says parents and kids learn accountability and how to make decisions that will benefit their lives, such as respecting authority figures and surrounding themselves with healthy people.
Landon joined the program in May and admitted that prior to then, he was a troublemaker.
"Extremely defiant, I didn't like to be told what to do, and if I was told what to do, oftentimes it was like 'if they (his parents) told me something I shouldn't do, I would go and do it," he said.
While Mahone says he's helped 4,000 kids, he hopes more reach out.
"Nothing changes if nothing changes," Mahone said. "If we continue to keep doing the same thing, we're going to keep getting the same results. But we're going to get a worse result because of the simple fact that there's zero accountability there upfront."