COMMUNITY MUST DO MORE TO REACH AT-RISK YOUTHS

This is the second of three editorials that focus on crime, young offenders
and public safety in Huntington.

Sunday's dealt with
(http://www.herald-dispatch.com/2005/May/15/OPlist1.htm)the drug trade and
teens. Today's focuses on identifying at-risk youths early. The final
editorial addresses cuts to the police force.

In 2000, at the age of 10, DeAaron Fields was arrested on a charge of
third-degree arson. The next year, he was arrested for a break-in at a
school. Two years after that, at age 13, he was arrested and charged with
destruction of school property. That same year, he made a crude "hit list"
and referred to a 9-mm weapon.

In May 2003, he was removed from his parents' custody and sent to a reform
school in Elkins.

By April 2004, Fields was back in Huntington, living with his parents. A
year later, at age 15, he was tried as an adult and found guilty of
first-degree murder in the death of Karen Stultz of Catlettsburg, Ky. He
shot her over a $40 debt for crack cocaine. A few days after the jury
returned the guilty verdict, Fields was sentenced to life in prison with
mercy. He will be eligible for parole in 15 years.

"To me, there's a lot of red flags with this case," Cabell County Circuit
Judge Alfred Ferguson, who presided over the case, said the day Fields was
sentenced. "You could see that something like this could happen down the road."

Fields' first arrest was at age 10. He was sent to reform school at age 13.
Now he has been convicted of murder. Do the people of West Virginia have to
wait until a trouble-prone child kills someone until he is effectively
dealt with? Whatever intervention programs the juvenile justice system used
on Fields obviously didn't work.

Fields lived in an environment where drug dealers were free to recruit
youngsters to do the street-level retail work. At his age, there are few
legal ways to earn money for shoes, music, video games or a trip to the
movies. Child labor laws and lack of entrepreneurial opportunities prevent
that for all but a fortunate few. So the lure of a profitable life of crime
is always there.

Someone must have supplied Fields with the crack he sold to Stultz and
undoubtedly to others. Someone had money to invest in Fields.

The community must match and exceed the investment the drug dealers can
offer. We're talking here about finding kids who are at risk of a life of
crime.

If Fields were to spend his next 15 years in state custody, taxpayers will
pay more than $265,000 for his food, lodging, medical care and other
expenses, not counting the legal fees that will come from his appeal of
this conviction and sentence.

That money would pay for a lot of community service programs that would
target kids like Fields and steer them in the right direction. Whether it's
something at a community center, or something in the schools to find these
troubled youths, or a nonprofit program or something else, someone
somewhere must have the resources and expertise to prevent another
14-year-old from shooting a customer over a $40 crack debt.

Fields' problems surfaced during his elementary years. Some child care
providers say the patterns can be seen even in the preschool ages.

More than likely, society will pay for DeAaron Fields for the rest of his
life. It will be an expensive undertaking. His life may have been headed
for this tragedy regardless of who intervened. But for every DeAaron
Fields, there is a child who can be reached. That child must be found and
helped.