Over spring break, Baltimore will revive ‘youth engagement teams’ to reach teens out late

With warmer weather and spring break on the horizon, Baltimore will again deploy non-law enforcement “youth engagement teams” to areas that often draw young people like the Inner Harbor.

Those teams of city staffers and community partners will check in with children and teens who might be gathering in public spaces during evening hours: Do they need anything? Do they have a place to go? A ride home?

The spring break plan follows Mayor Brandon Scott’s implementation last summer of a “youth engagement strategy” that included a series of summer events, youth connection centers and a youth curfew that relied on social workers rather than police enforcement. He said Wednesday that his team was taking lessons it learned from last summer and “applying them early.”

“We know that every year when the weather begins to warm up, we need to take additional steps to make sure and ensure that everyone remains safe,” Scott said.

The administration has sought to distinguish its plan from more traditional youth curfew enforcement, engaging young people proactively, without involving any law enforcement.

Still, it’s expected the youth engagement teams will be most active in the upcoming break’s evening hours. Baltimore’s youth curfew, which has long been on the books but only periodically enforced, bars teens ages 16 and younger from being out late at night without a parent.

Critics say curfews create negative police interactions for young people and haven’t proved effective in reducing violence. The city has seen outsize attention around young people gathering in public spaces such as the Inner Harbor, even as gathering places for teens outside the so-called “White L” have grown sparse.

During last year’s spring break, police monitored a crowd of more than 100 teens talking, dancing and riding scooters downtown. It dispersed before 11 p.m.

But later that month, two teenagers were shot in the Inner Harbor when a fight broke out in a large crowd around 9 p.m., about 25 feet from Baltimore Police officers. That shooting prompted Scott to call for a youth curfew from last May through early September.

Scott’s spokesman Bryan Doherty said Scott’s modified approach “deemphasized law enforcement’s role” with positive results. How the strategy is discussed — whether it’s labeled as curfew enforcement or youth engagement — plays a role in how it’s received by young people and families, Doherty said.

“When we introduce words like enforcement and things like that, it conjures up an image in folks’ mind, because of how it’s been handled in the past, that is very different than the approach we took last summer and for spring break this year,” Doherty said.

The spring break model of engaging young people will not include the transportation piece or the youth connection centers that were part of it last summer, Doherty said. The administration saw the centers were rarely needed, as the “first touches,” when outreach staff initially engaged with teens, were largely effective, he added.

The Baltimore Sun reported last summer that in the first month of the centers’ implementation, no one was transported to one. Under the city’s plan, Baltimore Police officers were instructed to contact their supervisors and the so-called youth connection centers if they encountered 10 or more school-aged residents in violation of the curfew.

City officials still are planning for this summer, Doherty said, and it remains to be seen whether those pieces will be revived. He said the administration began planning summer activities “months out.”

Scott, too, said earlier this month that there was “great success” in last year’s strategy. He said the city was fielding inquiries from other cities interested in how they were putting on summer events.

Those events last year drew more than 4,000 attendees, officials have said. They included midnight summer basketball, pool and dance parties, and movie nights. Teenagers who registered for the events came from across the city, from Curtis Bay’s Benjamin Franklin High School to Ednor Gardens-Lakeside’s Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School.

Officials have described finding success in offering new programming as an alternative activity for teens out of school.

“We cannot continue to tell youth what they can’t do without creating spaces and places for them to go,” Noell Lugay of the Mayor’s Office of Children and Family Success said last year.

On Wednesday, Scott highlighted Baltimore Rec & Parks spring break camps being held at recreation centers from Monday through Thursday and said, ahead of spring break, Baltimore City Schools would be reminding families of program opportunities.

As Baltimore has seen recent reductions in homicides, young people being shot has remained an area of focus with numbers stubbornly high and reaching historic levels last year.

But so far in 2024, that trend appears to be receding.

Through Monday, Baltimore has seen nine total shootings targeting teens aged 17 years old and younger. Of those nine, four were homicides and five were nonfatal shootings, according to Baltimore Police.

During the same time period in 2023, there were 27 total shootings for that population, including seven homicides, the department said. Last year would go on to see a total of 112 shootings of teens 17 and younger, 17 of which were homicides.

Scott noted Wednesday that the city continues to see decreases in overall homicides and nonfatal shootings, adding that “we’re going to continue to do everything in our power to maintain that progress.” He described the city strategy for spring break as “particularly along those lines.”

Police spokeswoman Amanda Krotki said in an emailed statement that over spring break officers would have “increased visibility and patrol” in neighborhoods and around tourist attractions. The statement added the department “continues to adjust its crime and deployment strategies as needed.”

Krotki said the department was working with “partner agencies and community-based organizations” to “ensure positive outcomes.”

“The BPD wants all of Baltimore’s students, residents and visitors to have a safe and enjoyable spring break,” Krotki said.

This article may be updated.