In Cleveland, shootings drop but kids are at higher risk

This story was published in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence.

High school students were reading, studying, and hanging out on a Tuesday afternoon at the Shaker Heights Public Library, just seven miles east of downtown Cleveland, when a confrontation broke out between two teenagers. It started with pushes and shoves, but then one of them pulled out a gun and started shooting. In the end, 18-year-old Charles Lee Shanklin was killed, and a 15-year-old was arrested on several charges, including carrying a concealed weapon and murder. 

Since 2021, shooting and homicide numbers have declined throughout Cleveland, in keeping with national trends. Children and teenagers, however, are still bearing the burden of firearm injuries and deaths in Cuyahoga County, where Cleveland is located. Since 2010, shooting deaths among people 18 and younger have more than tripled in Cuyahoga, rising to 37 in 2023, the latest year for which data is available. 

The youth firearm homicide rate is more than 30% higher in Cuyahoga than it is in three comparable counties — Allegheny County, in Pennsylvania; Franklin County, Ohio; and Wayne County, Michigan, which includes Detroit. From 2020 to 2023, according to The Trace’s analysis of census data and statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Cuyahoga’s youth firearm death rate averaged to 17 per 100,000 residents, including a six-point jump between 2019 and 2020. A report by the Cuyahoga County Board of Health found that overall child fatalities in 2023 reached a five-year high, and 19% of them were by firearm. Last year, 41 people under 18 in the county were charged with homicide, which matched the record set in 2023. 

Cleveland, which is the largest city in the county, is responsible for around 75% of all homicides countywide, and a gun is used in over 80% of them. 

“Every week it seems like someone I know gets killed,” said Delano Griffin, a 17-year-old resident of East Cleveland. “You just never feel safe.”

Like other midwestern cities, downtown Cleveland is separated by just a few miles from the historically redlined and neglected neighborhoods surrounding the metropolitan area, like East Cleveland, Garfield Heights, St. Clair Superior, and Central. Police data shows those neighborhoods struggle the most with gun violence. All of them are predominantly Black. The vast majority of gun deaths in Cleveland are among Black men. Cleveland’s Black population is 47%  — yet its Black residents make up nearly 85% of all gunshot victims. 

Local activists said pinpointing a single reason for the higher rates of shootings among young people is difficult, but they said poverty plays a major role. Myesha Watkins, who runs the Cleveland Peacemakers Alliance, a community-led violence prevention and intervention group that focuses on children and teens, said the economic hardship young people experience can make them feel their lives are out of their own control. They can feel they have no choice but to get involved in street activity, and might even pick up a gun 

“A lot of the actions and the choices they’re making are because of the unmet needs of somebody that’s caring for them,” Watkins said. According to U.S. Census estimates, Cleveland has the single highest child poverty rate of any U.S. city with a population of more than 300,000, at 45%.

Demetrius Williams, who runs Beat The Streets Cleveland, a nonprofit program that gives young people access to mentoring, youth development, and wrestling, said that the peer pressure is heavy. “A lot of times they come from these type of environments, and everybody in your neighborhood is doing it, everybody that you been surrounded by is doing it,” Williams said. “Once they’re caught up in it, that’s it.”

Local activists point to other issues, like accessibility to resources, mental health services, and job training, combined with a lack of dependable financial investment from the city. 

“Young people who are already on the cusp of being involved in violence are living in a system that hasn’t been set up for them to succeed,” said Sonya Pryor-Jones, who runs the Office of Prevention, Intervention and Opportunity for Youth and Young Adults in the Mayor’s Office. 

In 2023, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb announced the Neighborhood Safety Fund, which allocated $10 million in grant money from American Rescue Plan Act funds to invest in violence prevention. From it, 44 different groups have so far received an average of $46,000 each, totaling roughly $2 million. The year before, the city was awarded a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice for the creation of Cleveland Thrive, a community violence intervention coalition meant to bring groups together and build a strategy to reduce gun violence. It’s led to some collaboration, including a gun violence training program, but activists say it hasn’t been enough. 

“We have to get the right resources to these areas. We cannot expect everything to change if we’re giving limited resources to people who need it the most,” said Richard Starr, a City Council member who represents several neighborhoods stricken by gun violence, including Central. He’s leading an effort to establish gun violence as a public health crisis in Cleveland, which would enable the federal Department of Health and Human Services to help fund a centralized Office of Violence Prevention. 

Local community organizations are appreciative of the existing funding, but “the biggest thing is getting consistent money, and a lot of groups that are working with these kids are not getting it consistently,” Williams said. That instability has them all vying for the same bucket of dollars, part of the reason many community organizations are doing their gun violence prevention work in silos — and struggling to sustain their efforts. 

“Collectively, if we come together and share resources and share language and share data, we can do a lot more and cover a lot more,” Watkins said. 

More importantly, though, the infighting projects a lack of legitimacy to young people who are faced with picking up a gun. “The youth are not dumb, when they see us beefing within ourselves, it’s a problem,” Williams said. 

Delano Griffin, the 17-year-old who lives in Garfield Heights, said he appreciates anyone from his area stepping up to help the kids — but he hadn’t heard of most of the community programs that exist specifically for him. If they want to address gun deaths, Griffin said the decision-makers downtown need to do a better job of reaching out. “They shouldn’t forget about us,” he said. “We live in this city, too.” 

Last updated 6:03 a.m., Apr. 23, 2025