Natasha Lavallee's life has been marked by death -- the 19-year-old's mother was murdered when she was four.
After being bounced around foster homes, stealing an estimated 50 to 100 cars, completing rehabilitation for crack cocaine addiction and alcoholism and spending years in gang life and working the streets, it took another death to set tough-talking Lavallee straight.
Natasha Lavallee has seen more than her share of tragedy in her young life.
Thursday, she sat quietly at a corner table in the basement of the Clarion Hotel, listening to municipal and provincial officials, aboriginal leaders and Winnipeg Police Service Chief Keith McCaskill weigh in at an Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs roundtable on youth crime and protection. After spending months in the Manitoba Youth Centre for assault and running through the list of friends she's seen murdered or commit suicide, the baggy-panted young woman now studying social work at Red River College said she had her own recommendations on how to stop youth crime. Teens in custody need more counselling programs, she told a reporter. "There's not too many programs for them, they have nobody... . If all you have to do is sit there all day, they may as well talk about their problems," she said. Lavallee credits a group home for sexually exploited youth run by Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre with her recovery. It was the car crash death last March of 22-year-old employee Tannis Bird, who Lavallee idolized, that caused her to shut off from troubled friends, spend time alone evaluating her life and disconnect the cellphone that connected her to crime. She said she has become used to the death of young people she knows.
"I think (teens) need more experiential workers," said Lavallee, who is now living with another social worker she met during her teens.
"I think they need more healing lodges and treatment centres instead of locking (teens) up. They also need to do something with (Child and Family Services) kids when they turn 18, because they're not ready. I wasn't ready. A lot of girls I've seen in my group homes, they do so good until they turn 18 and then they go back to their old ways because that's all they know how to survive."
Officials at the two-day roundtable, which costs about $25,000 and was partially subsidized by the province, said solving youth crime requires participation of police, community members and different levels of government. The police chief, who has been in his role for five months, reiterated the message his organization is trying to build relationships in the aboriginal community and beyond.
He said he has been working to improve "quite low" police morale by improving communication between different levels of the force, and talking to the force's 1,700 employees about how they think policing can improve. He said, however, police alone cannot solve crime.
"Communities have to drive it, there's no doubt about that," said McCaskill, who added the police force is focusing on recruiting more aboriginal officers. "We have some issues, and we need to deal with them, and we need to deal with them together. We can't fix these problems by ourselves," said AMC Grand Chief Ron Evans. He pointed to a host of issues -- including a federal cap on post-secondary education funding for aboriginal students -- as contributing to causing youth to commit crime.
gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca
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