ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Nearly two weeks after what is known as a “teen takeover” that led to a 17-year-old getting shot in Clearwater, communities around Tampa Bay continue to talk about how to stop the same thing from happening in their neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the public came out to a community meeting in St. Petersburg. Some spoke about providing activities to make sure kids don\u2019t have too much free time on their hands, others talked about the importance of mentorship, and more than one said it\u2019s up to people in the community to get involved and try to make a difference.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was tough. It was tough, but it was also a wake-up call,\u201d Lewis Stephens, Jr. said of his reaction to seeing a video of the teen takeover on Clearwater Beach.<\/p>\n
Stephens is an assistant pastor with Kingdom Changers Church and says he wasn\u2019t the only one concerned.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust not the congregation, but the community as a whole. We don\u2019t want to see our young people locked up. We don\u2019t want to see our young people with records, and then we don\u2019t want to see our young people tearing up our community,\u201d said Stephens.<\/p>\n
He put out the call to other pastors, community leaders, and the public to take part in this town hall. Bishop Manuel Sykes provided the space at Bethel Community Baptist Church for the meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis kind of behavior can be dangerous, but it also has meaning behind it. It\u2019s a way of youth expressing themselves, although negatively. It does give us something to think about,\u201d said Sykes.<\/p>\n
Moderator Kyandra Darling says she responded to Stephens\u2019 call to action because she thinks the answer to stopping teen takeovers in St. Pete can be found in the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are resources that are available in community, and we recognize that, and still, if those resources were enough, we wouldn\u2019t be seeing what we\u2019re seeing right now,\u201d said Darling.<\/p>\n
Stephens said the town hall was just phase one. He said he next wants to organize a meeting with teens. The goal is to take the feedback from both meetings and come up with a plan to bring change to the community.<\/p>\n
City Councilman Copley Gerdes also attended the meeting. He told residents he got word of a possible teen takeover in his district. He said police addressed it, and while there\u2019s no way to know what could\u2019ve happened, he said the important thing was that it was reported. Gerdes told Spectrum News that\u2019s another way residents can help \u2014 if they see or hear about a possible takeover, report it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Nearly two weeks after what is known as a “teen takeover” that led to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[2967,274,2200,115,596,277,2718,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,2032,835],"class_list":["post-306330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-public-safety","tag-app-top-stories","tag-instagram-bn9","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-public-safety","tag-sarah-blazonis","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories","tag-trending-topics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}