LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- After two high-profile teenage runaway cases already this month, police are pointing to a growing trend -- more and more teens are taking to the streets.As of Thursday, there were more than 120 missing teens in Jefferson County, and most if not all of them have run away from home. That has police, parents and support groups working to stop a troubling trend.YMCA Safe Place Services is celebrating 35 years of offering crisis support to local teens. But workers there said the last few years have been the toughest."Either kids come into our program with everything they own because they've packed up and left, or they come with nothing," said Matt Reed, executive director of YMCA Safe Place Services in Louisville.That shelter serves any teen in trouble -- not just runaways -- and typically houses more than 700 of them each month."Four or five years ago, we were serving maybe 400 or 450 in our shelter, so there's been a real dramatic increase," Reed said.Police are seeing a jump as well."We've been seeing an increase in the number of runaway teens," said Lt. Tom Dreher, with the Louisville Metro Police Department's Crimes Against Children Unit.And Jefferson County is the heart of the problem in Kentucky. It's home to two out of three teen runaways in the state. Dreher said their numbers jumped 17 percent from 2007 to 2008. His unit now works about 200 runaway cases each month -- so many that the department is adding to its missing persons staff.
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