“Crime always seems to be like a roller coaster ride,” said Kenton County Commonwealth’s Attorney Rob Sanders at a speaking engagement with the Covington Neighborhood Collaborative Thursday night. “It comes in waves, and we’ve been on the biggest wave that I can remember in my career.”
Sanders’ comments reflected what many in the community were feeling following what appeared to be a spike in crimes involving guns, especially with kids, over the preceding months. Two deaths involving kids with guns in Covington grabbed headlines in January, and then this week, a student was charged with possession of a handgun after being caught with a loaded pistol at Tichenor Middle School. In that incident, no one was hurt, but the student remains in custody until his next court date.
Sanders said he hoped things were trending downward, but he said, “Kids with guns right now has been very alarming.”
Chatter on social media and in the community indicated that kids having access to guns was definitely on people’s minds, but it wasn’t just the guns themselves that people were concerned about. People also wondered how guns fit into kids’ relationships with their parents and broader social institutions.
For his part, Sanders laid a good deal of the blame at the feet of parents, or rather, parents who hadn’t put in the time to insulate their children from the dangers of guns properly. He was especially perturbed by the death of Khalil Adams, a 2-year-old who was killed by his 3-year-old sibling, who shot Adams after getting a hold of their parents’ gun.
Sanders said there are a lot of ways kids (or anyone for that matter) could get a hold of guns, and, as such, people needed to think seriously about proper safety and storage precautions.
Sanders himself recalled a time when someone broke into his garage and absconded with a gun he owned.
“It taught me a big lesson that, hey, just in the garage in your truck isn’t good enough,” Sanders said. “The garage has to be locked; the truck has to be locked. But, you know, in the instance of the 2-year-old who was shot, something as simple as not keeping a bullet in the chamber. People want to talk about whether or not guns should be locked in a safe or have guns locked on. In that situation, we didn’t even have to get that far. If they would have just not kept a bullet in the chamber, that would have prevented that 2-year-old’s death because that 3-year-old [would have been] strong enough to pull the trigger, but he wouldn’t have been strong enough to rack the round and put a bullet into the chamber.”
In addition, Sanders said, “I’m concerned with the number of kids coming and going to Covington Public Schools with guns. I don’t know that they have guns in school necessarily, but in the case in Latonia where the 14-year-old ended up shot to death, I know that there were multiple juveniles on that scene who had handguns, and they were all just leaving school.”
Sanders told LINK nky after the talk that there was a lot of rumor and misinformation floating around about that particular shooting, although he couldn’t share additional details about the case as the investigation was ongoing.
Erlanger’s Mayor Jessica Fette told LINK nky that community members had not contacted her about the incident at Tichenor Middle School earlier this week. LINK nky reached out to Erlanger-Elsmere Independent’s Superintendent Chad Molley for comment on how the community was reacting, but he had not responded by the time of this article’s publication.
Dovetailing from Sanders’ point about rumor and misinformation, other community leaders have tried to dispel misconceptions about gun violence that tend to crop up when these tragedies occur.
Shortly after the shootings in January, police gave a talk at a community forum in Latonia, where they spoke candidly about the topic.
“There’s not bands of criminals running around looking to murder people,” said Captain Joshua Bornhorn of the Covington Police Department at the forum. He also stated that gangs weren’t a problem in Covington. Bornhorn later gave similar talks to other neighborhood groups.
One of the key points Bornhorn made throughout his talk was the importance of community vigilance and communication, saying that if people saw or suspected something, they needed to report it.
This may seem like straightforward advice, but it may not be so simple for the kids.
“Fear is the number one driver of what these kids’ problem is,” said former Covington Commissioner Pam Mullins, “and they’re not going to tell on each other because of fear of retaliation.”
Mullins also sits on the Covington Human Rights Commission and is active in various community organizations and advocacy groups. She held a restorative justice circle shortly after the shootings in January, where community members and representatives from multiple institutions discussed the issue of gun violence.
One of the key takeaways from the meeting, Mullins said, was that kids needed to trust the adults (and the institutions they occupy) before they willingly share their problems.
“They have to trust you before they’re going to say anything,” Mullins said. “And to build that trust is difficult.”
The circle walked away with a handful of potential ways to deal with the problem, including youth initiatives like the Boys and Girls Club, de-escalation training, changing the stereotypical perceptions of racial minorities and people with lower incomes, and the overall fostering of partnerships between different community sectors.
Mayor Fette expressed a similar sentiment, albeit in fewer terms.
“Listen to your kids,” Fette said. “Talk to your kids.”