A Florida sheriff’s novel approach to countering school shooting threats by exposing online the identities of children who make them is drawing ire from juvenile justice advocates as well as others who say the tactic is counterproductive and morally wrong.
Michael Chitwood, sheriff of Volusia county, raised eyebrows recently by posting to his Facebook page the name and mugshot of an 11-year-old boy accused of calling in a threat to a local middle school. He followed up with a video clip of the minor’s “perp walk” into jail in shackles.
Chitwood, who has said he is “fed up” with the disruption to schools caused by the hoaxes, has promised to publicly identify any student who makes such a threat. On Wednesday, another video appeared onlineshowing two youths, aged 16 and 17, in handcuffs being led into separate cells, with the sheriff calling them “knuckleheads”.
And whats your solution? This isn’t like… throwing a rock through a window or graffiti tagging a wall. Consequences need to be swift, decisive, and ensure no one gets any ideas to copycat them.
What about the kids who are wrongfully accused, since all that’s required here is someone reporting that you made a threat? Seems like a new avenue for bullies to exploit.
They can enjoy possibly multiple large piles of money off lawsuits. Unlikely in the case noted in the article though-
As if filing and winning a lawsuit is that easy or obtainable, not to mention this is after the damage is done and some innocent kid is completely ostracized from the community.
The kid was showing this stuff off so that means they were going to shoot a school up? This could easily describe some weeb who was trying to look cool and then had kids call him a school shooter. In my K-12 days 20+ years ago, the weird kids were constantly joked about as being potential school shooters. It only takes one person misinterpreting/hearing these jokes to ruin someone’s life.
As if lawyers won’t line up for the payday? C’mon now.
Also, in the current day and age, kids aren’t randomly showing off their weapon collections that include knives and swords, because, obviously, the whole school shooter thing exists.
Lastly, what solution do you think is viable? I don’t think a situation like this
Is tenable. Do you?
“Only country with multiple daily mass shootings and more rights for guns than for children wonders how it can solve its violence problem”
The rest of the g7 checking in here, with numbers so low as to be non-existent, despite some of us living 100mi from a border to the most casually-violent nation on the planet.
Maybe lawyers would line up to bring a suit but you’re still looking at a multi year case and potentially having to move to a new city and switch schools in the meantime. What does parading children in front of cameras solve when these kids are still considered innocent in the eyes of the law? Do you think someone legitimately planning an attack is going to be swayed by the possibility of being on TV or having their picture posted online and not the prison/death sentence that comes with an actual attack?
A viable solution is to pass laws that make it so guns aren’t so plentiful and easy to obtain along with making it easier and cheaper to obtain mental healthcare, but that’ll never happen. Everything else will just be a poorly thought-out bandaid that doesn’t solve the root of the issue.
So not viable. Okay.
So because the proper solution is unlikely to happen, that makes any other ham-fisted approach a good idea? That’s not really how things work.
Have to say I agree. This seems like a good deterrent. Not sure of the legality of it, but then “legality” is open to interpretation lately in the US.