Youth Violence

PRESIDENT Clinton's summit on youth violence was held last week with much attention paid to the possible causes of the recent school tragedies -- guns and media violence making it to the top of the list.Though these are important issues that intensify the risk for violence, I am troubled by a startling omission from the list of potential causes: the under-diagnosis and under-treatment of mental illness in children and adolescents.This under-reported factor was brought to light in a report by Dr. Jeffrey Fagan, director of the Center for Violence Prevention Research at Columbia University, in a recent New York Times article.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton emerged from a White House meeting on youth violence yesterday with a flurry of new proposals, from limited agreements with firearms manufacturers on gun control to a new task force to help parents screen out violence from their television sets and computers.But beneath the harmonious surface, representatives from the entertainment and gun industries continued to insist that their businesses should not be held responsible for incidents such as the massacre at a school in Littleton, Colo.

WASHINGTON -- Hoping to jump-start a grass-roots campaign against youth violence, President Clinton announced the formation yesterday of a nonprofit organization to safeguard children, and he unveiled a guest list for Monday's White House youth summit that is top-heavy with powerful Washington lobbyists.Since the school massacre April 20 in Littleton, Colo., White House aides have sought to focus on youth violence through a steady stream of events and proposals, hoping that the tragedy will mark a turning point for a nation beset by school violence.

THERE is much not to like in American popular culture: rock groups that celebrate the morbid and gruesome, the virtual gore of video games, vicious and misogynist rap, Internet sites that incite hate in the name of everything from abortion opposition to White Revolution. And more, probably worse.In the understandable urge to discover what probably will elude us, we search in the media mishmash for incitements that will explain why two youths armed like guerrillas came to murder 13 in their Colorado school and kill themselves as if that were just about the neatest way you could end such a swell party.

WASHINGTON -- Hoping to spark "a grass-roots movement to turn away from violence," President Clinton announced yesterday that he will summon religious leaders, entertainment and Internet industry executives, explosives manufacturers and weapons makers to the White House for a youth-violence summit on May 10.In the wake of the Littleton shootings, the president once again pleaded for parents to connect with the children, children to connect with their peers,...

Wearing a double-breasted suit and a large, white hard hat, the Rev. Robert Turner, pastor of St. John Baptist Church in Columbia, was ready to get down to business.Standing before a panel of Howard County school, police and family service officials last night, Turner launched into a stirring speech.His words were aimed at the panel and an audience of concerned parents, their children and members of the Columbia community who met to discuss how to prevent an incident such as the one at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

WASHINGTON -- Baltimore's police commissioner used the ornate setting of the White House yesterday to promote his youth crime programs and to describe to a national audience how his department helps troubled children.Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier showcased the Goodnow Police Athletic League Center in Northeast Baltimore with a five-minute tape showing officers helping children who otherwise might be out on dangerous streets."Mature police officers understand that we cannot arrest our way out of this dilemma of youth crime," Frazier told Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Tavon Middleton was known for his fade-away jump shot that routinely sailed through the metal hoop at his neighborhood basketball court in Northeast Baltimore, across from Clifton Park.Yesterday, a day after the 15-year-old was gunned down in front of his home, his friends wrote a tribute to their slain friend on the court: "R.I.P. Tavon, 1983-1998, You'll Be Missed."It is a simple statement that speaks to a city struggling to curtail youth violence that continues, despite an ambitious initiative launched by police in January to clamp down on young offenders.

WASHINGTON -- Over the past dozen years, the U.S. Department of Education has poured nearly $6 billion into an ambitious yet flawed program that has fallen far short of its mission to control violence and narcotics abuse in the nation's public schools.Billed as the federal government's largest program to deter student drug use and aggression, the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act provides more than $500 million annually to local school districts with virtually no strings attached.

LURID STORIES of violent murder turn up in a Taneytown middle-school literary magazine. A different type of magazine -- an arsenal of firearms, ammunition and the makings of a bomb -- is found in the home of an Eldersburg teen-ager.These recent incidents in Carroll County resonate beside more horrific events elsewhere in the nation, in which armed youngsters killed and wounded teachers and classmates.The news causes people to wonder about the deepest psychology of adolescents; we wonder how to discern harmless role-playing from truly harmful intent.