WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Winston-Salem Forsyth County Schools has seen a troubling amount of safety concerns recently. A gun went off at parkland last week, hurting a student. Just yesterday deputies arrested a student, accused of bringing a gun and ammo to Glenn High School.
Now the district plans to increase how often it uses its random metal detector program. Leaders say that's a start, but real change starts outside school buildings. WFMY News 2's Nixon Norman heard from concerned groups tonight, trying to help kids stay on the straight and narrow.
Winston-Salem's Chief of Police, William Penn, Jr. said, it's not called 'police safety', it's called 'public safety'. He said everyone has a role to play when it comes to keeping the community safe.
At tonight's conference at Union Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, there was talk of gang violence prevention and building a thriving community but one of the main topics: keeping local kids out of trouble.
Chief Penn said metal detectors in school can help but parents need to step up too, "I'll up the ante and say this — now that the sheriff has told us this is an issue, our first wave of prevention could be parents checking book bags before they get in the schools. Again, we're all in this together and it starts at home."
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One of the volunteers at tonight's event, Waymon Monroe, Jr. said, it's important to mentor young people but don't forget about the parents, "not only do the children need help, the parents need help. Parents need help. They don't know what to do. Some of them are in tough situations; financial, maybe living standards, in their area there may be crime, maybe it's fear, maybe it's mental health, there's so many different things."
This meeting of the minds at Union Baptist has been going on for 20 years now. Bishop Sir Walton Mack said more young people are looking to gangs for a sense of family. He wants people to know, they don't have to take that route, he has made that part of his mission for over the past two decades with the church's outreach group, Corner to Conference or C2C.
"If we could shift them from looking to people who promote violence as their family and let them know that there are people here in the church, there are people in the community that will create that same kind of environment for them," Bishop Mack said.
Knowing the summer is around the corner, the City of Winston-Salem donated money to the church for summer programs, in the hopes of keeping even more kids out of trouble.