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 online showing two youths, aged 16 and 17, in handcuffs being led into separate cells, with the sheriff calling them “knuckleheads”.
The local community reaction to Chitwood’s strategy has been largely supportive, with public comments on the posts praising him for taking a stand amid an increase in the numbers of threats and actual shootings, including one earlier in September at a Georgia high school that killed four people.
“Something has to be done. Where are the parents?” Chitwood said, adding his department dealt with 54 threats in a 12-hour period following the killings of two students and two teachers at Apalachee high school.
But several experts, while acknowledging the anxiety and disruption the threats engender, question the effectiveness of the sheriff’s reaction.
“While it might feel good in the moment to shame and scare a child … these kinds of tactics ultimately don’t work,” Melissa Goemann, senior policy counsel for the National Youth Justice Network, told the Washington Post.
Daniel Mears, a criminology professor at Florida State University and expert on school shootings, said that while Florida law allows the sheriff to identify minors charged with felonies, such a move violates the principles of the juvenile justice system.
“Juvenile records were supposed to be confidential for a reason. The idea was that kids would have a second shot in life,” Mears said.
But he conceded that “school shootings are just really unbelievably scary and concerning to people”.
Marsha Levick, chief legal officer and co-founder of the Juvenile Law Center, questioned Chitwood’s motive in an interview with the New York Times. “Is the goal to shame or is the goal to prevent?” she said.
“He doesn’t need to parade this kid, this 11-year-old child, in front of a camera to achieve his purpose. Just do traditional things – arresting, charging – that don’t add this layer of shaming, embarrassing, humiliating and traumatizing.”
Levick said she accepted that the sheriff was reacting in a strong manner to try to deter students from making hoax calls and reduce the risk of real gun violence.
“He is trying to respond to a terrible situation,” she said. “We also have to be aware of this sort of dragnet of children. They may make threats that are completely non-serious, and doing a sweep of any kid, I do think raises questions.”
Talking to the Associated Press, Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son Alex was among the 17 murder victims of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, said he welcomed Chitwood’s approach.
“We had a culture of complacency that led to the Parkland school shooting. And we can’t be complacent any more,” he said.
“We should be holding the individuals that perpetrate these threats and become mass shooters to the highest extent of the law. And ultimately we should be holding their parents responsible.”
In April, the parents of a student who killed four students at a Michigan high school in 2021 were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison after they were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for failing to prevent their son’s actions. It was the first conviction of any parent of the perpetrator of a US school mass shooting.
Meanwhile, in August, a jury found that the parents of a former student charged with killing 10 people at a high school near Houston in 2018 do not bear financial responsibility for the shooting.
In Georgia, the father of the alleged Apalachee shooter is also facing charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.
Chitwood was critical of parents of the students in his county accused of making the hoax threats – and said he was investigating if they could be held financially or criminally liable.
“Since, parents, you don’t want to raise your kids, I’m going to start raising them,” Chitwood said in one of his posts.
“Every time we make an arrest, your kid’s photo is going to be put out there. And if I can do it, I’m going to perp-walk your kid so that everybody can see what your kid’s up to.”
