VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. – It’s been just over a year since Volusia County’s answer to the growing juvenile crime problem first opened: An all-encompassing juvenile detention center in Daytona Beach, officially named the Family Resource Center by Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood.
When News 6 first toured the facility in 2023 shortly after it opened, Sheriff Chitwood promised it would get results, but that hasn’t happened in the way the sheriff expected.
Chitwood is still very proud of what he did, something that has never been done in Volusia County: Bringing all of the different youth services from across the county to one place.
What has changed though is the sheriff’s expectations.
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“When you have these types of programs come in, you say to yourself we’re going to reduce crime,” Chitwood said. “Well I think that was a pie-in-the-sky thing that we’re going to break the cycle. But what we have seen is there is a huge need for the service that we’re providing, whether it’s mental health or helping with parenting to know what’s going on. Since we opened our doors in November of 2022 over 2,000 kids have come through our doors. A couple of weeks ago a mom came in because she had discovered her son was doing meth, a 15-year-old, and had no idea where to turn.”
Chitwood said the number of juveniles getting into trouble has not dropped as he initially expected.
“What it’s showing to me is the dire need for services for our youth,” Chitwood said. “Whether it’s mental health, substance abuse, mentoring and structure. In some case it’s the needs of a family. In some cases when you drill down you discover this kid has no life whatsoever.”
Now when juveniles end up at the Family Resource Center, either through the back door in handcuffs and a patrol car or through the front door with a parent, they aren’t released almost immediatley after some paperwork.
Now, juveniles must talk to several different professionals here who assess them. Often, juveniles share their “inside information.”
“We’re seeing more kids come in because as kids come through the door, it’s almost like this is an intelligence center, because as they come through the door not only are they briefed by a juvenile detective, but then they go in and are dealing with the folks from mental health or substance abuse or counseling,” Chitwood said. “And they’re telling them about all these other things, about regular conversation that we get alerted to.”
Chitwood said drug tests are now required and the results he’s seeing are scary: Hard, addictive drugs showing up in the bloodstreams of young teenagers from unregulated vapes bought on the streets of Volusia County.
“The most shocking thing in the center we’ve come to learn as we do more with the Juvenile Justice System, as we administer the urine test that these kids are required to take, what we’re seeing now is these kids testing positive for cocaine, fentanyl, meth,” Chitwood said. “Because they don’t talk to us, but when they talk to the drug counselors or social workers or mental health workers in the other room and they tell them, ‘you tested positive’ and they say, ‘no I’m smoking THC oil.’ Well what we’re discovering is that the THC oil that they’re buying on the black market are being laced with these things, so that’s the danger, that’s the big thing we see. Cocaine and fentanyl, clearly the things that these scumbags that are selling it to make it more addictive than the THC oil.”
And investigators would have never been made aware of the vapes laced with illicit drugs if it weren’t for the drug testing that the Family Resource Center does, Chitwood admitted.
Now that the Sheriff’s Office is aware, what does it do with the information?
“Now you know you’re targeting what the issues are with these kids,” Chitwood said. “You provide families with resources. Because, if you want to scare a parent that your kid got locked up for vaping or a stolen car and his urine test came back for fentanyl, any parent worth their salt hears the word fentanyl and what’s the first thing they think of ‘oh my gosh my kids going to overdose!’”
Chitwood encouraged any parent struggling with a child to walk in any time to take advantage of all of the available services. Find out more here by clicking here.
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