Nearly two years after the single deadliest shooting in the District in more than a decade, the D.C. Council is set to take up a massive youth mental health reform bill sparked by the tragedy.
Called the South Capitol Street Tragedy Memorial Act of 2011, the six-part legislation introduced by At-Large Councilman David Catania seeks to prevent youth violence by cracking down on truancy and requiring mental health screening for the District’s children starting in preschool. It goes before the full council Tuesday.
Catania has been working with Nardyne Jefferies, the mother of one of the victims, advocates and other attorneys to craft a bill that would get at the heart of what caused the March 2010 shooting.
“In the wake of the shooting we saw a lot of the typical response: Politicians show up and they mourn the loss, we say it’s never going to happen again and then everyone disappears,” Catania said in a statement to The Washington Examiner. “That’s the way it happens everywhere in this country. I made a promise to Nardyne Jefferies that together we would do better than the typical response.”
Six teenagers were injured and four others were killed in the drive-by shooting on South Capitol Street in the Highlands neighborhood of Ward 8. It was later found that some of the accused killers were wards of the city’s juvenile justice agency when they allegedly pulled the trigger.
Catania introduced the legislation last March on the one-year anniversary of the mass killing and has since continued to work with advocates and Mayor Vincent Gray. He said last week he did not want to rush in his approach to the reform and risk lessening its impact.
“We’ve been very thorough and intentional about this,” Catania said.
The legislation tackles truancy by reducing the number of unexcused absences to seven days in a month or 10 in a school year before students are referred to the court system. The current number is 25 days. It would also require schools to keep track of truancy and intervention methods, and then file reports to the council.
The bill would also create the “most comprehensive and sophisticated youth mental health screening system in the country,” according to Catania, and aims to streamline the Medicaid reimbursement process so health programs can focus resources on helping people.
