Attorney General Eric Holder (center) addresses the media in Chicago as Education Secretary Arne Duncan (left) looks on. (AP)
CHICAGO (AP) — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Wednesday pledged federal support to fight a surge in youth violence in Chicago and other cities, calling the brutal beating death of a teenager on the city's South Side a wake-up call for the country.
But neither offered specifics or outlined any new strategies on how the government would help quell the increase in the number of violent deaths among teens.
Duncan and Holder were sent to Chicago by President Barack Obama to meet with officials, parents and students from Christian Fenger Academy High School after the vicious beating of a 16-year-old sophomore whose Sept. 24 after-school death was captured on a cell phone video.
Holder said the disturbing images of Derrion Albert's beating death have been a wake-up call for the country and a call to action for the Obama administration.
"Youth violence is not a Chicago problem, any more than it is a black problem, a white problem or a Hispanic problem," Holder said. "It is an American problem."
A study on youth violence funded by the Department of Justice and released Wednesday found that 60 percent of respondents had been exposed to violence in the past year, and nearly half had been assaulted at least once, Holder said. Exposure to violence included a range from minor to serious incidents. The findings also appeared Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
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