DAYTON — One of our cities is running a pilot program in the hopes of reducing how often police interact with kids who run away from group homes.
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The Runaway, Outreach, Notification and Intervention (RONI) program is a two-year missing youth and anti-trafficking initiative led by the local nonprofit Daybreak.
“This is an exciting pilot program that is a collaborative partnership with a number of stakeholders,” Shelley Dickstein, Dayton city manager, said.
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Wednesday, city comissioners found out how a $550,000 state grant is working after about a year.
“We have been working with Denver to gather the information to pilot this here in Dayton,” Renee Collins said.
The RONI program was started in Denver.
Dayton is using this model to cut how much time police are dealing with habitual runaways.
According to Dayton police, that number is about 2,000 runaway cases a year.
“This is another outreach to that. To take something that police aren’t necessarily the best tool for, not the best response, and moving it onto those who are better trained,” Maj. Chris Malson with the Dayton Police Department said.
Malson told comissioners police spend two hours every time a kid runs away.
“The idea with Daybreak to be able to take those, freeing those officers up for criminal issues versus runaway issues is going to be beneficial to everybody in the community,” Malson said.
Police said most of the runaway cases come from the 60 group homes in the city.
Dayton Police Chief Eric Henderson said in a one-on-one interview last month that this only solves part of the problem.
“I still don’t think that helps with the underlying issues. Why is that individual running away,” Henderson said.
Still, Commissioner Darius Beckham said he’s happy to see the progress.
“I think the situation with group homes in our city and our region has been an issue for quite some time,” Beckham said.
People in the pilot program hope this will become the model across the state.
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