Evansville held the first of two public safety town halls planned for this month on Wednesday evening at the Dream Center, with about 40 people attending, according to the Evansville Courier & Press.
The panel for the Safer Evansville forum included Mayor Stephanie Terry, Police Chief Phil Smith, Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Diana Moers, Sheriff Noah Robinson, Superior Court Judge Gary Schutte and Circuit Court Magistrate Celia Pauli.
Juvenile crime dominated the discussion. Smith said the department was seeing about 10 juvenile arrests a year related to firearms before 2020, and that the figure is now about 40 a year. He said many of the guns are stolen from unlocked vehicles, while other teens have guns bought for them by older friends or family members.
The forum came in a week that included the Sunday night shooting death of 17-year-old James Brown in the 800 block of Madison Avenue — an 18-year-old was arrested in connection with that shooting and is preliminarily charged with murder, an allegation that has not been proven in court — and Tuesday's fatal police shooting in Evansville, which was covered in an earlier Hoosier Wire story.
