![\"Felicity](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/f5da7f48-268e-42a1-b4ad-fef6d26640a6_1741638383.png\")
<\/a>PITTSBURGH \u2014<\/p>\nParents, teens, and community leaders gathered in Pittsburgh Wednesday night to discuss solutions to the growing issue of teen takeovers.<\/p>\n
“What does the school need to do? What do the mayor need to do? What do nonprofits like us need to do? Make sure we dealing with the social-emotional learning of these young people. And then how do we connect and relate to the parents?” said Rashad Byrdsong with Community Empower Association, who put on the meeting. <\/p>\n
Over the past few months, teen takeovers have occurred in areas like East Liberty and Market Square. <\/p>\n
Sixteen-year-old Omarion from Northview Heights shared his perspective, saying, “Because all the violence, all the… I’m scared to go outside, to be honest. And I really want to go outside, but I can’t because I know something’s going to happen. Because I get into a lot of fights, I get bullied, I’m tired of me getting bullied.” <\/p>\n
A key takeaway from the meeting was the need for safe spaces where kids can gather, with adult supervision.<\/p>\n
“He needs a fun, safe place that it needs to be at all times, you know, need chaperones, need to be involved to make a safe place. Maybe not police,” said Justin Smith, Omarion’s mentor. <\/p>\n
Currently, the only city-enforced solution is a chaperone policy in Market Square implemented by the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership during some events.<\/p>\n
Renee Wilson of Homewood has filed a lawsuit against the policy. “You cannot give a private nonprofit rules over, making policy for a public square. Like, I don’t think that that’s legal at all that, you know, it’s public and the public, the people are allowed to be there,” Wilson said. She added, “Criminalizing black children is the problem here.” <\/p>\n
Pittsburgh Public Safety Director Sheldon Williams addressed concerns about the policy, stating, “There’s never [an] approach where public safety is looking to criminalize youth. That term came up in the policies that are being instituted. It’s always about response to behavior.” <\/p>\n
Williams also emphasized the importance of collaboration with community leaders, saying such meetings help build relationships and strengthen future efforts. <\/p>\n
“How do we not just be able to respond to these, but how can we direct them into some of these spaces that they said that they want to be able to gather? But it’d be better if we had a way of being able to identify those spaces and network them together,” he said. <\/p>\n
Organizers plan to hold additional, smaller, and more focused meetings based on what they learned during this session.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh discusses solutions to teen takeovers days after lawsuit filed over chaperone policy PITTSBURGH \u2014 Parents, teens, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[82059,82058,106976,52809,10400,2163,106977,2676,12510,6411,106978,73,18711,75,74,6975,106899,106900,106979,17584,97289,8322],"class_list":["post-250287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-adult-supervision","tag-chaperone-policy","tag-community-empower-association","tag-community-leaders","tag-east-liberty","tag-homewood","tag-justin-smith","tag-lawsuit","tag-market-square","tag-northview-heights","tag-omarion","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-downtown-partnership","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-public-safety","tag-rashad-byrdsong","tag-renee-wilson","tag-safe-spaces","tag-sheldon-williams","tag-teen-takeovers","tag-youth-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}