LITTLE ROCK — The morning after Harold Eugene Johnson III was killed in his living room, suspect Jarvis Robie went to school.
A student at Felder Academy in Little Rock, Robie, 15, lived two blocks from Johnson’s 2900 S. Tyler St. home.
Two days after Johnson’s death, police arrested Robie at a Taco Bell where he was hanging out. In his waistband was the handgun that police believe was used in the fatal shooting, according to arrest reports.
The Little Rock teen was charged with capital murder, and although he is a minor, he is being held at the Pulaski County jail.
And he isn’t the only area teen being held there and charged as an adult.
Since the beginning of 2011, Little Rock police say, they have arrested an “unusually high” number of teenagers for violent crimes, including murder and aggravated robbery.
Over the preceding two years, Little Rock police arrested only two teens for robbery.
On Feb. 3, Little Rock police spokesman Lt. Terry Hastings announced the arrests of eight teenagers since the start of 2011 in connection with about 50 robberies and two homicides.
Hastings said four 15-year olds, including Robie; two 16-year-olds; and two 17-year olds would likely be charged in state court as adults.
In Arkansas, a person age 14 or older can be charged as an adult in some crimes, including aggravated robbery and homicide.
Hastings said two of the youths facing robbery charges - 15-year-old Curtis Logan and 16-year-old Savion Malone - were also wanted in the Nov. 20 shooting death of Nicholas Sarat Jr. That brings the total number of teenagers arrested on murder charges so far in 2011 to three, compared with four in all of last year.
Hastings said the number of teen arrests and the severity of their crimes are things his department rarely sees.
“It’s a really high number [of teens arrested],” Hastings said. “I’m not sure if it’s unheard of, but it’s definitely an unusual amount.”
A DEFINITE BUMP
Pulaski County sheriff ’s office spokesman Lt. Carl Minden agrees with Hastings and points to the number of teenagers charged as adults who are now in the jail’s FUnit.
In November, there were 11 teens held there. On Wednesday, there were 20 in the 29-bed wing, down from a near record of 23 on Jan. 31.
“There’s definitely been a bump,” Minden said. “It doesn’t look like we’ve ever had that many in F-Unit.”
Lt. Glenn King, head of Little Rock’s homicide and robbery investigation division, said youths committing adult crimes is not a new phenomena.
As a homicide detective during the gang wars of the early and mid-1990s, King got a firsthand look at youth violence. And, he said, teens accused of violent crimes hasn’t gotten any easier to take.
“Through the years, we’ve always had a few crimes involving kids, but it really took off over the past few months,” King said. “[The arrests] we see are kind of embarrassing.To see so many kids, an upswing in juveniles coming in, it’s sickening.”
King said that in many ways, teenagers make for more dangerous criminals than adults because they might be more willing to pull a trigger, since they don’t have the experience or the wisdom to think through the consequences of their actions.
“A lot of these kids, they can’t handle the situation to start,” King said. “Anything startles them, their fear factor is higher. Put them in a tight spot, and they’re more likely to do something stupid.”
Police say that may have been the case in Johnson’s killing.
According to an arrest affidavit, Robie went to Johnson’s house to buy drugs. After he realized that Johnson had “shorted” him, he shot the 23-year-old in the shoulder, the affidavit says. Then, afraid that the older man would come at him, Robie told police, he shot until his gun was empty, the report said.
Like King, Benny Johnson - who founded the Stop the Violence organization in the early 1990s - thinks the involvement of “kids” in violent crime is tragic but all too common.
And like King, Johnson said the level of youth crime today pales in comparison with what he saw in the 1990s.
But unlike King, who said it’s too early to tell whether the recent rash of violent crimes committed by teens is a trend, Johnson thinks the face of crime is getting younger and younger.
“It used to be if you were going to commit a robbery, you were older,” said Johnson, whose outreach programs target at-risk youths. “It’s just unfortunate that that lifestyle is reaching a younger age.”
GROWING NUMBERS
The average number of teenagers arrested for murder has declined a bit since 1998, when police arrested seven, a number that accounted for more than 25 percent of all arrests that year on that charge, according to department statistics.
In 2008, there was only one teenager arrested for murder. In 2009, there were no teens arrested in a killing.
Last year, the four teens facing murder charges accounted for 14 percent of the 28 murder arrests in the city, according to department statistics.
So far this year, the arrests of Robie, Malone and Logan account for nearly 40 percent of people facing capital-murder charges.
And it isn’t just in homicides that police have seen a surge in teen criminal activity. The number of youths arrested for aggravated assault has steadily climbed since 2005.
In that year, police arrested 77 teens in aggravated assaults - which accounted for 10 percent of all arrests on that charge. By 2010, 193 teens faced aggravated assault charges, 20 percent of all arrests on that charge.
People younger than 18 are accounting for more of the total arrests - for violent and nonviolent crimes alike - in the city than they did six years ago.
In 2005, Little Rock police arrested 844 minors, accounting for 7.8 percent of all 10,837 department arrests.
Youth arrests peaked in 2008, hitting 1,208 and accounting for 11.5 percent of all arrests that year. The number of youth arrests dropped slightly to 895 in 2010, or 9.8 percent of all arrests.
“The numbers are hard to predict,” Hastings said. But he called the recent string of robberies “unsettling.”
According to court documents, Logan and Malone and another 15-year-old who police would not identify, had been “robbing Hispanics [in the area] since the State Fair was in town” in October.
Police say Sarat, 23, who had just returned home after picking up a pizza from Little Caesar’s, was shot and killed outside his apartment during a botched robbery.
The number of teens arrested in robberies has fluctuated greatly over the past 15 years. There were 47 in 1996, dropping to 14 in 2005. The figure bottomed out in 2009 and 2010, with one in each year. So far this year, there have been eight.
“It’s highly unusual to have this many kids involved in 50-some robberies and a homicide,” Hastings said. “I’ve never seen it like this.”
King, like Hastings, couldn’t offer an explanation for the recent surge.
“I wish I knew why, we’d be able to do something about it if we knew why,” King said. “The violent nature of it ... it is a random spike.”
FUTURE VIOLENCE?
According to investigators, Robie went by the street name “Lil Rambo,” and was affiliated with the Eastend Bloods, a Little Rock gang.
King said youth involvement in gangs is not uncommon, and that although the visibility and severity of gang activity is nothing like it used to be, gangs still play a role in criminal activity.
“There are still small groups in gang groups out there,” King said. “They’re leaving a lot of violence behind their activity, up to and including deaths.”
University of Arkansas at Little Rock criminology professor Jeff Walker said there are many factors at play, but mainly, he attributes recent youth crime to the struggling economy.
“This uptick is partially the result of continued economic problems. It is just beginning to wear on everyone,” Walker said. “But I am not all that worried about the uptick. I think it will be fairly small and short-lived.”
Benny Johnson is not so sure about that.
“It’s been building up like this for some time,” Johnson said. “And it’s getting harder for police. [The black community] has got this ‘no snitching’ thing, but if we want to make things better, we better start snitching.”
What bothers Johnson most is youth activity that creates career criminals, leading to even more violence a few years down the road.
For example, Raymond Moore, 28, who was recently arrested and charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping after a five-month manhunt, was convicted of aggravated robbery, first-degree battery and theft of property when he was 15 years old.
The Little Rock man who, when he was free, was considered “armed and dangerous” and a “threat to the public,” had the entire Little Rock Police Department on high alert in the few weeks before his arrest.
In 1996, at age 14, Moore was charged with first-degree murder, though the charge was later dropped.
“With drugs, you may start with marijuana, but you’ll move up to crack,” Benny Johnson said. “That’s how it is with crime, you start shoplifting, then you start robbing, it can lead to you wanting to kill. It intensifies.”
King and Hastings say time will tell whether the recent string of teenage arrests is a fluke or a trend.
“With the latest arrests, I expect to see quite a drop in robberies,” King said. “The sad thing is, when you arrest a group like this ... there’s always a group waiting to step up and fill in.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/26/2011