Escalating problem with teens at Northgate Mall

Colerain Township Police are working with Northgate Mall officials to address an escalating problem with unaccompanied teens at the shopping center on weekend nights.

Colerain police chief Mark Denny says for two consecutive weekends, police have had issues with teenagers left at the mall with no adult supervision who became unruly. He said there were seven arrests made after officers tried to contain a group of about 100 teens in the parking lot of the mall. Denny said the teens arrested were between 13 and 16 years old.

James Love, public information officer for the department, said an altercation inside the mall spilled out into the parking lot Feb. 6, and teens then moved on to the lots of other Colerain Avenue businesses as they left the mall property.

“The mall has been really cooperative,” Denny said. “They want to see the issue addressed.”

The Colerain Township Police Department has an annual contract that pays the department $309,447 to patrol at Northgate Mall 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It was approved April 14, 2015. Denny said his department is going to change assignments at the mall to see if the department can prevent potential problems rather than be left to intervene when trouble occurs.

The chief said he doesn’t want the recent issues blown out of proportion. “No one was injured,” he said. “It was a small group of juveniles who were fighting. Not large groups, and it does not appear that fights were planned. But when you have groups of unsupervised teens, you may have problems. Many of these youngsters, we found, don’t live in the township, and they were brought here, dropped off and left on their own. It’s not a smart idea and it led to problems on Saturday.”

Saturday night’s incident brought officers from Mount Healthy, Springfield Township and Green Township to assist Colerain Township officers as they dispersed the crowd. Denny said the response was large, because the township wanted to make sure the incident and the crowd didn’t get out of control. “My officers handled it well,” he said.

“We are not babysitters,” he said. “I cannot imagine dropping my 13-year-old daughter off at the mall to hang out until 9 p.m. It’s not a smart idea. And those 13- to 16-year-olds need to have a plan in place regarding how they are going to get home.”

Denny said the township is not asking for restrictions at the mall now. “We will revisit that idea if this continues to be a problem,” he said. “We are going to try the least-restrictive solutions first.”