Teen Crime Causing Concern In Tulsa

A fourteen and fifteen-year-old have been arrested for at least six burglaries in the last two weeks.

These arrests come after a string of teen arrests in Tulsa over the last few months.

The recent arrests beg the question: What's going on with teens committing crimes in Tulsa?

Deonte Green and Kywaun Washington are now two new juveniles just 14 and 15 years old. These are some of the latest teens Tulsa police arrested in high profile cases.

“You hear it's a 14-year-old or a 15-year-old and instead of being in shock and awe you're just like, “It's just where we're at,’” said Tulsa Police Sergeant Shane Tuell.

Green and Kywaun are both accused of adult crimes.

While the two most recent teens are accused of a string of burglaries, which are non-violent crimes, the recent trend in teen crime is causing concern.

“Something's not reaching these kids, and whatever we're doing now is definitely not working,” said Tuell.

Tulsa police participate in community policing efforts, but their resources are limited.

That's where youth services comes in.

“We provide counseling, delinquency prevention, youth development and a runaway homeless program,” stated youth services spokesperson David Grewe.

The good news, Grewe says juvenile arrest rates are down and the statistics at youth services show prevention and intervention are key.

“We know that if we intervene at kind of the beginning of this acting out behavior that we're able to keep a lot of young people out of trouble in the future,” said Grewe.

In fact, 85 percent of the kids who complete the youth services first offender program do not go back into the juvenile justice system.

But much like we've seen recently, some kids still fall through the cracks.

Grewe says that if you think your teen may be headed down the wrong path but hasn't actually been arrested yet to contact youth services so they can hopefully prevent them from getting into more serious trouble.