Maj. Robert Martin, center, of the Portland Police Department speaks during a news conference in March to discuss arrests in connection to an exchange of gunfire near Pleasant and Forest avenues on Feb. 26. Martin was joined by Chief Mark Dubois, left, and Maj. Jason King, right. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

Portland police say they’re concerned about an uptick of teenagers involved in violent crime. But there’s no data available to back up that assertion – and some juvenile defense attorneys are worried about the message police are sending.

“I’ve been on (the police force) for 38 years; 20 to 30 years ago it was 30-year-olds that we were dealing with, it wasn’t teenagers,” Maj. Robert Martin said at a news conference this month. “Teenagers were drinking beer and maybe smoking weed. But we were not seeing them shooting each other.”

There have been 23 reports of gunfire in Portland so far this year, but only two were people shot, according to data provided by the department. That’s down from a recent high in 2022, when there were 56 reports of gunfire and 13 people were shot.

But several state and local officials said they couldn’t provide data on how many teenagers were involved in these shootings. The Press Herald requested data from the Portland Police Department, the Cumberland County District Attorney’s office and the Maine Judicial Branch on how many teens have been charged in shootings so far this year, but none could fulfill the request.

The Maine Judicial Branch said there would be too many types of charges related to shootings to search through them all and find the right cases. The district attorney’s office said it simply doesn’t have that data, and wouldn’t elaborate. The Portland Police Department said its system can’t easily break down reports by age – a task that would have to be done manually – and its crime analyst is working on overdose statistics.

Instead, Martin referred a reporter to former investigations as evidence of the rise in youth-related violent crimes.

He said he’s seen groups of teenagers 16 to 19 years old engage in “gang-like activity,” like exchanging gunfire, dealing drugs and owning “ghost guns” – untraceable firearms that can be ordered online in pieces without serial numbers. One investigation uncovered a “significant drug trafficking network” over multiple cities after a shooting in February.

Many of these teens, he said, were involved in less serious crimes when they were younger, but their offenses have gotten more severe, now involving handguns and drugs.

Last month, Portland police arrested two teens they said were found with more than 60 grams of cocaine.

“It used to be this environment did not have conflicts between drug dealers very often,” Martin said at the news conference. “Lately, it seems like weekly we have a conflict between rival drug dealers and drug networks. That’s why we’re getting this, I call it, ‘big city crime.’ What they’re seeing in Detroit and some other bigger cities, we’re seeing in Portland, Maine.”

Detroit had a total of 804 non-fatal shootings and 252 homicides in 2023, according to city data, equal to four homicides per 10,000 people. Compare that with Portland, which saw 0.3 homicides per 10,000 people, or less than one-tenth the rate in Detroit.

Martin also expressed concern that families in dense residential areas, like Kennedy Park and Grant Street, are being put at risk.

“It’s like we’re living in a video game, ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ ” he said in a phone interview last week. “They’re shooting somebody, stealing a gun. They don’t see a difference between the video game and real life.”

On the other end of these cases, juvenile defense attorney Jenna Zawislak said it’s not so straightforward and she’s concerned about the way police are sharing this information.

“Those are areas where we know that have communities of more people of color,” Zawislak said in a phone interview. “(I’m) really keeping an eye on where this is going, we don’t really want to create more fear and outrage directed at certain groups of people.”

But Zawislak said she has noticed that her clients are younger than she has worked with before, between 16 to 19 years old, like Martin said. And some clients have returning to court five or six times. But she remembers the “superpredator” scare in the ’90s, which spurred unfounded fear of teenagers and violent crimes, and doesn’t want to see that again.

“Now that we’re getting to the level of press conferences being held about it, where is the narrative going with this?” she said.

THE PANDEMIC A FACTOR

Juvenile defense attorney Amber Miller said the teenagers involved in these crimes could have been part of the at-risk youth who struggled without school as a support system during the pandemic. Some, she said, didn’t return to class.

“We just don’t have the services we need,” Miller said in a phone interview. “We’re really failing to provide what these kids need. If this is going on for years and years, of course these kids are going to struggle.”

Miller also works in educational law and sees a lot of crossover between her clients. When representing a juvenile client involved in a violent crime, Miller asks herself what they might be missing in their life. She said defending juveniles needs to be an individualized process based on their experiences.

Martin and the attorneys agree that there is a widespread mental health crisis among young people.

Martin said Long Creek Youth Development Center, which holds a small number of defendants as Maine’s only youth prison, isn’t the proper place to rehabilitate teens because it is understaffed and lacks sufficient mental health services.

He said community policing efforts, like going to block parties with local housing authorities, help officers connect with kids. But now that there are no school resource officers in the city, he said it’s harder to connect with teens. He said as the department increases its staffing, he wants to refill the youth service officer position, which is responsible for efforts like youth sports leagues and recreation programs.

Zawislak said as a defense attorney, she thinks Long Creek doesn’t solve anything, especially while young brains are still developing.

“What’s the best way to handle a situation like this, where we address things that have happened that are potentially violent and concerning to the community while also balancing the safety and future welfare of the child involved by not traumatizing them further by incarceration?” Zawislak said.