All she wanted to do was make a quick buck from a quick hustle. According to Riviera Beach Police investigators, that decision put a 17-year-old Riviera Beach girl in a situation that last August ended with her death. Three juveniles have been charged in connection with the killing, and additional charges may follow as the investigation continues.
Now there is a grieving family, friends trying to understand what happened and a community once again asking the question we have asked far too many times: How do we stop this from happening again?
I have spent more than 40 years working with young people through mentoring programs, and one lesson has stayed with me: There is a child before there is a headline. There was a child before there was a victim.
There was a child before there was a defendant. And somewhere along the way, adults either reached that child, or they did not.
I am not writing this to excuse what happened. There must be accountability when a life is taken. But accountability after tragedy is not enough. We have to ask a harder question: What are we giving our children to run toward before they run toward trouble? Children need something to belong to. They need somebody who knows their name. Somebody who notices when they are missing. Somebody who says, “That is not a good idea. Come with me.”
Sometimes that person is a parent, a teacher, coach or mentor. Sometimes it is a city official, which is why Riviera Beach's next Parks and Recreation director matters far beyond parks, playgrounds and recreation programs. That person will have an opportunity to help answer one of the most important questions facing this community: What are our young people going to do, and where are they going to go, when school is out and the sun goes down?
Riviera Beach does not simply need someone who simply manages facilities, schedules and budgets. It needs a leader who understands that recreation can be prevention. A community center should be more than a building. They should be places where a child is seen, where a teenager discovers a talent, where a young person finds an adult who cares enough to say, “I expect more from you.”
We need safe places after school and well into the evening. We need sports, music, technology, aviation, robotics, art and journalism. We need summer employment and mentoring. We need programs that teach young people how to handle anger, pressure, disappointment and impulsive decisions. And we need adults who show up consistently.
You can't mentor a child you never see. You can't influence a child you never reach, and you can't wait until a child is standing before a judge to decide that child needs guidance. By then, we're having the wrong conversations at the wrong time.
The 17-year-old at the center of this tragedy made a terrible decision, but she was still somebody's daughter. The teenagers accused in her killing are somebody's children, too. That does not erase accountability. It reminds us of our responsibility. If we want safer neighborhoods, we cannot simply ask what went wrong after another young person is killed. We have to ask what we could have done differently before the tragedy?
Those are not soft questions. They are community questions that the next Parks and Recreation director must understand because the job is not simply about keeping parks open. It is about helping keep possibilities open.
If Riviera Beach wants safer neighborhoods, it has to give its children something worth choosing and someone who will not give up on them because the best time to reach a child is not after the police tape goes up. It is before.
C. Ron Allen is founder and CEO of the KOP Mentoring Network. He can be reached at cronallen@gmail.com or 561-665-0151.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Youth violence makes Riviera Beach's parks job more crucial | Opinion
