From left, Councilmember Chuck Bongiovanni, Town Attorney Chris Payne, Vice Mayor Scott Anderson and Councilmember Jim Torgeson prepare for the first meeting of the Gilbert Town Council Subcommittee on Teen Violence.
The Gilbert Town Council’s Subcommittee on Teen Violence started Jan. 18 to lay out the path for its work addressing community concerns after the death of one high school student and attacks on several more.
The subcommittee of council members Chuck Bongiovanni, Scott Anderson and Jim Torgeson chose Anderson to be the chair, staked out preliminary ground and took public comment from four people at a meeting more attended by media than the general public.
After assuming chairmanship, Anderson, the town’s vice mayor, set down his desire to be mostly listening to what the public had to say.
Bongiovanni, who initially proposed the subcommittee, said he had five initial goals he wanted to see the subcommittee work on:
Focus on teenagers and schools, using a survey to find the scope of the problem;
Legislation, possibly a ban on minors purchasing brass knuckles;
Investigate working with the faith community and volunteers on a mentorship program;
Investigate working with businesses on activities for teens;
Work with community groups and parents to help teens have a voice when they feel threatened at school.
“(It is) going to take the whole community here to get involved,” Bongiovanni said. “Not one piece of it creates the puzzle. We have to work with schools, work with parents, work with all of us, and maybe work with the Legislature to change the laws. So it's going to take a village on this point, but I have faith in people here.”
Public comments received positive feedback from the council members, including finding ways to hear from teachers, perhaps anonymously so administrations cannot retaliate against them, engaging the faith community and establishing something like a block watch program where kids could find an identified safe house.
Both members of the public and councilors liked the idea of getting into the community to conduct listening sessions.
“Somebody else will have the million-dollar idea,” Torgeson said. “We're just trying to create enough space and enough communication to find it.”
Higley Unified School District governing board Vice President Anna Van Hoek, one of those who spoke during the public comment period, said the board was interested in being involved with the work. She referenced discussions from the previous night’s board meeting regarding how the district formerly met with council, police and fire and hosted community meetings.
Gilbert Police Chief Michael Soelberg also briefed the subcommittee on teen violence in the community, noting police had made 13 arrests in teen-on-teen violence from February 2022 to Preston Lord’s death in October, and nine more arrests since then.
But overall, calls on such incidents represent just 0.7% of the calls police receive, he said.
“Having said that, every call for service matters,” Soelberg said. “We will continue to investigate reports of crimes, pursue justice for victims and hold offenders accountable, teen or otherwise.”
We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X.
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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