‘About 15% are school aged’: Gun violence is on the rise across the nation, including Amarillo

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - Gun violence is on the rise across the nation, including right here in Amarillo.

A new report from Harvard and the Amarillo Police Department details the increase in gun violence among area youth.

Expert on the subject, Jeanette Arpero, instructor of criminal justice at West Texas A&M University, shares some shocking statistics.

“Most of the cases here are committed by young adults or juvenile, about 15 percent of them are school aged,” says Arpero.

It has been found that the median age of these offenders is 28 years old.

Experts say a majority of these offenders are in a revolving door with the criminal justice system because these offenders typically have prior records.

“It’s typically young men of color who are the victims and the offenders, most of the gun violence cases are being perpetrated by people who have violent histories so they have had encounters with the criminal justice system more than once, more than twice,” Arpero says.

A lot of these juvenile offenders have prior records they started from a very young age.

Arpero goes onto say that solutions the city of Amarillo can implement involve intervening in the schools and flagging these students for a service or mentorship program.

“There should be some hope with intervention through schools. We should see the continual increase of gun violence, unless we do something to mitigate that. We can go into the schools, we can have some type of mentorship programs and type of gang intervention programs,” says Arpero.

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