Parents of East Valley teens remained guarded into the new year, more than two months after the death of a student at a Queen Creek party brought unrest about youth violence to a head.
The slow pace of the Preston Lord homicide investigation, as well as into other youth assaults in Gilbert, brought frustrated outcries from community parents.
But as 2023 turned to 2024, things began to happen.
Gilbert police reopened some previous investigations that had gone nowhere and turned to the public for help. Queen Creek police referred charges Dec. 28 against seven people to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in the Lord case. And three Gilbert Town Council members asked for a subcommittee Jan. 5 to look into the scope of the youth violence issue in the community and what could be done about it.
QCPD has submitted charges against seven individuals in Preston Lord's beating death.
Photo courtesy of Mariposa Gardens Memorial Park & Funeral Care
Those actions did not wipe out public concerns. And some of the same teens tied in social media postings to incidents were still being reported on social media as acting recklessly in the community as recently as Jan. 5.
“I think they (community parents) are a little bit less frustrated and anxious, but they’re still very persistent and the intensity of their pursuit has not lessened,” said Katey McPherson, a childhood advocate and education consultant who has been a partner to the Lord family.
Working up safety plans
McPherson, a Queen Creek parent who formerly lived in Gilbert, has built a timeline of incidents, traced connections among teenagers involved in them and spoken to dozens of parents who have shared their concerns about what is happening.
McPherson did not allow her own teens out at first, but as the situation has improved, she has been trying to make reasonable compromises as she did not want them to repeat the shut-in situation of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I shouldn’t have to do that because a bunch of 17-year-olds decide that they want to go beat people up,” she said. “So we’ve lifted the red zone level, and now we’re on orange.”
That is what she hears from other community parents too.
“I think everybody is just really honed in on situational awareness and making safety plans,” McPherson said. “You’re not allowed to go anywhere alone. If you’re going to get a cheeseburger, you have to go in a pack of four. You’re not allowed to hang out in the parking lot at In-N-Out (Burger). You can go get your food and come home or go to a friend’s home. Everyone’s just making a reasonable safety plan that allows their child or children to go out but being safe about it and being vigilant.”
McPherson said she is also glad to see progress with officials addressing the problem.
Getting officials involved
McPherson was the first of four people to address Gilbert Town Council during the public comment period at its Dec. 12 meeting about Lord and the “perfect storm of collective trauma” that had come about since his death.
“While I did not know Preston, he is all of our children,” she said. “He looks like my children. He acted like my children, and he has quickly become our town’s child.”
Queen Creek resident Katey McPherson addresses Gilbert Youth Council in the wake of 16-year-old Preston Lord's homicide, asking council to condemn youth violence and set up listening spaces for youth to be heard by adults.
Screen capture from YouTube
She called on leaders in Gilbert, Queen Creek, Chandler and Mesa to condemn the violence and work on solutions.
“Unfortunately, kids don’t get to choose their parents and the environment, and when those environments don’t meet the needs of ‘I see you, I hear you, I love you,’ they will find other ways to be seen, heard, and loved and form a crew and a cause, and that is what has happened here,” McPherson said. “I’m hopeful that together we can see, hear and love each other and our youth. They need us now more than ever.”
Gilbert Police Chief Michael Soelberg gave a statement after public comments that night, acknowledging the public’s fear and frustration.
“I’m here to tell you that we do condemn any violence within our community, and I’m here tonight to reassure our community members that we will do everything we can do to successfully investigate and prosecute those who have committed violence within our community,” Soelberg said.
The council issued its own written statement the next afternoon.
“Violence and hate have no place in our community and the Gilbert Town Council strongly condemns violence of any kind,” it stated. “We are committed to continuing the policies and budget, tools and resources necessary for supporting a safe community.”
Social media fans flames
The council also discouraged people from posting details to social media, which exploded with information but also rumors and innuendo around Lord’s death and other youth assaults, “to avoid the creation of confusion and the dissemination of misinformation.”
Social media is likely where the term “Gilbert Goons” came into use for teenagers involved in the assaults and Lord’s homicide, but it is unclear if it is a term the teens coined or adopted from other users.
One council member, Chuck Bongiovanni, said he avoids the term because they are not officially a gang, but McPherson said the name is important because it is one of the markers of a gang, and that can bring additional charges on perpetrators.
Gilbert police initially said no one had used the term in previous youth assaults they investigated and thus they never tied them together. But police later reopened at least four investigations that might be tied to the teens and asked for the public’s help on an Aug. 18 aggravated robbery.
Meanwhile, Queen Creek Police Chief Randy Brice also asked for public help on the Lord investigation and said in a statement some parents were not allowing their teens to speak to police to help with the investigation, whether they were persons of interest or eyewitnesses.
That was a point of concern for McPherson, who said she is worried about the strength of the case against those alleged to be involved with Lord’s death.
“That’s no fault of Queen Creek PD if the parents aren’t going to allow their children to speak,” she said. “I mean, their hands are tied.”
McPherson also had a prediction from that.
“If this (case) gets kicked back to Queen Creek, this town is going to flip upside down,” she said.
Forming a subcommittee
The cases being referred did allow Gilbert to move forward in another area: the formation of a council subcommittee.
Councilmember Scott Anderson, who joined with Bongiovanni and Councilmember Jim Torgeson in asking that the formation of a subcommittee on youth violence be added to the council agenda for Jan. 9, said he previously had supported remaining quiet so as not to jeopardize the investigation. But the referrals cleared that hurdle.
“If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t call it a subcommittee,” he said. “I would call it listening sessions.”
Courtesy Town of Gilbert
Courtesy Town of Gilbert
Courtesy Town of Gilbert
Anderson pointed back to the listening sessions former Mayor Jenn Daniels called for when community unrest arose after the 2020 death of George Floyd while he was in the custody of Minneapolis police. Anderson participated in those and said he found them useful.
“I think it’s time now to get out into the community and let people express ideas,” Anderson said. “They had lots of good ideas and emails about things that we should do. Involve the schools. Involve nonprofits, the religious community. Let’s talk about the issue of teen violence and how we can address solutions. And now’s the time to do that.”
Bongiovanni said it was misinformation on social media accounts that got him thinking about a subcommittee.
“I wanted to find out what the scope of the teenage violence is,” he said. “Are we talking about 10, 20 kids? Are we talking about 50 kids, unrelated? I mean, I wanted to know what the scope of the issue was, if we could really do anything about it. And also wanted to help separate the facts from the fiction, from the rumors, and also to hear more from the community and open up a dialogue about it.”
Bongiovanni said he and Torgeson approached Anderson about a subcommittee because of Anderson’s experience on council, “and he took over from that point.”
Torgeson said he was concerned about the perception of the police department and stressed he believes the department is doing its job properly.
“I guarantee no one on our police department wants to hush-hush this kind of violence — no one,” he said. “When people are on social media saying that, that’s not fair to our chief and our officers. That’s not fair. And this is an opportunity to get some of the misinformation cleared up.
“This is (also) an opportunity to hear good ideas. Face it, there’s always a better idea somewhere.”
Torgeson said people’s fears are valid.
“There’s a reason to be afraid,” he said. “Somebody got murdered, right? Why shouldn’t we, representing people, help facilitate a better circumstance. And for God’s sakes, if we can do something to make sure that that kid’s death doesn’t pass in vain, and it can help somewhere, can’t we do that without somebody thinking we’re trying to be critical of police?
“I’m not trying to be critical of our police, and I’m not trying to be critical of parents that are talking, but I want to make sure that they’re talking about the right things.”
Anderson also said he was not interested in a listening session about a police cover-up or corruption, but rather focusing on solutions to the youth violence problem.
Skepticism
Some parents have expressed skepticism about the subcommittee, and McPherson shares some of their concerns. She recalled serving six months on a teen mental health ad hoc committee at the Arizona Legislature last year that made 23 recommendations, but the legislature only adopted one.
“So for me, I might be a little jaded on things called committees,” she said. “If you don’t have the right people at the table, anybody can sit around a table and form a committee.”
She said she hopes the subcommittee will bring in and listen to experts on teen violence prevention.
Despite her concerns, McPherson said she looks forward to hearing the details of how it will work and is glad the step is being taken.
“I think we’re making progress and the community is now aware and educated around some things that they didn’t know were going on,” she said. “And it’s going to take the community and the schools, it’s going to take all of us to come together to get in front of this.
“And I truly believe if we can really all be very honest with ourselves (that) this is happening, it’s happening here and now, we can eradicate this pretty quickly. But if we have people who are not responsive, who just sort of hide behind the story, it’s going to take longer than necessary to confront it and shut it down.”
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).
Gilbert youth violence,
Gilbert Police Department,
Queen Creek Police Department,
Preston Lord,
Gilbert Town Council,
Michael Soelberg,
Katey McPherson,
Chuck Bongiovanni,
Scott Anderson,
Jim Torgeson
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