BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — Community leaders taking action to combat crime within the youth in Buffalo after are seeing young people in Buffalo being a victim or part of several crimes this summer.
Pastor James Giles, president of WNY Peacemakers, tells 7 News reporter Yoselin Person mental health and trauma are the reasons for the youth to be violent.
Police say earlier this week a 12-year-old girl had hot liquid thrown on her face by another teenager on Montana Avenue.
Last month 7 News reported that a 13-year-old girl was fatally shot in the back several times outside Forge Apartments.
Now Giles says his organization is going to encourage more students in Buffalo schools to take part in their programming.
“One is our school mentoring program where we’ll have two Peacemakers in six volatile schools where we have the most struggles with our highschool students,” Giles says.
Giles says his peacemakers are ready to be in place for the new school year.
“We have about 40. Anywhere between 20 to 30 on the street and ten or 12 inside the schools,” he says.
Others are calling on the local government to step up.
“We’re trying to talk to the County Executive Mark Poloncarz to actually create jobs for young men and women like the program we had before,” says Murray Holman, executive director of Stop the Violence Coalition. “The gun intervention program which this year was slided. We had 150 on our streets with an opportunity to get into mischief.”
17-year-old Joe Mcghe is on his way to basic training in the military, and he believes that having job available for the youth will reduce crime.
“I feel like it do help take the youth away from the crime and stuff,” he says. “Because I feel like who wouldn’t want to make money and have money in their pockets?”
Some say more needs to be done by the Buffalo Common Council to make more funding available.
