A series of high school fights resulted in 12 Washington, D.C. students facing assault charges in juvenile court, according to police reports.
Aquita Brown, spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police Department, told the AFRO April 30 that D.C. police made arrests at two high schools on April 26 and April 27. Arrests were made at H.D. Woodson in Northeast D.C. and Washington Metropolitan High School in Northwest after fights broke out between students.
On April 27, a female teacher was punched by a student at Washington Metropolitan High School. The student is being charged with simple assault, police said. Police also arrested a young woman for assault on an officer after she got combative with responding officers.
One day before the Northwest incident, 10 female students were arrested after a number of brawls broke out at Woodson. Three separate police reports were filed.
According to police reports, authorities were dispatched to Woodson April 26 to help stop multiple fights around 1 p.m. Responding officers worked to clear the hallways and usher students into the cafeteria, while detaining some. One girl was arrested and transported to the Youth and Family Services Division after she struck an officer with a closed fist.
In the wake of an increasing homicide rate, the District is also seeing a rise in teenage arrests. “Adult arrests decreased by 13 percent while juvenile arrests increased slightly by 5 percent,” D.C. police told the Washington Post.
On April 25, D.C. Public Schools adjusted the dismissal times of Dunbar High School and McKinley Technology Education Campus because of reoccurring violence afterschool as students from the rival schools traveled home. There is now a 20-minute gap between dismissal times, Mckinley at 3:05 p.m. and Dunbar at 3:25 p.m.
“It’s just really crazy,” Sondra Phillips-Gilbert, an advisory neighborhood commissioner for Ward 6, told the AFRO. She is unsure if the staggering dismissal times will help prevent future juvenile altercations. “If teens want to fight, they will wait around,” she said.
Phillips-Gilbert is programming a community Olympics on June 25 at the Rosedale Community Center for young adults in the surrounding areas to assist in keeping kids out of trouble. The second term commissioner said she hopes D.C. Public Schools and city officials will work on different strategies across the school district to engage youth and better respond to emergency incidents during the summer.
The police department is trying to combat crime with community outreach and engagement programs. According to Brown, one of the department’s youth programs, “Youth Creating Change” is a training program for teens between the ages of 14 and 19 who “ . . . receive training in various activities that promotes leadership, teamwork and community development.”
