Overreacting to a confused 11-year-old
Donn Esmonde
I think we are taking this a little too seriously. I think caution has jumped the fence into overreaction.
The common refrain is you cannot be too careful. I think this case shows that, yes, sometimes you can be too careful.
An 11-year-old Tonawanda Middle School pupil recently took personal animosities to a new level: She created a “hit list” on a computer in the school library. Nine pupils and two teachers were on it.
It sounds to me as if the girl has emotional issues. She was suspended for 10 weeks, which—along with counseling— sounds about right to me. But it did not end there. School officials contacted Tonawanda police. She was arrested and charged with “making a terrorist threat.” The case is now in Family Court.
Call me “soft on crime,” but I do not think an overly dramatic 11-year-old girl is a threat to society. I do not think a sixth-grader should be placed in the same file as the Lackawanna Six.
Before anti-terrorism laws were passed, police say, they could not have charged the girl with a crime, because she never threatened anyone (the list was discovered by a classmate). Even the arresting officer, Youth Services Detective Tim Toth, believes she was “just venting” and has neither the ability nor the desire to take action.
“Ultimately, this means she will get the help she needs,” Toth told me. “We did not do this to punish her.”
Fair enough. But there are other roads to counseling than through the courts. The girl’s parents are suitably appalled, and the girl reportedly said she was not serious about any of it. I put this in almost the same category, 11-year-old division, of yelling “I’ll kill you” at a classmate who cuts ahead of you in the cafeteria line. Charging her under a terrorist statute seems to me like overkill.
Amherst psychologist John Northman said he understood post-9/11 concerns but did not see this as a legal matter.
“I think it’s more helpful to look at this in therapeutic ways, instead of charging an 11-year-old with a crime,” said Northman, an expert in family counseling. “You first have to evaluate what is going on in her head.”
An American Civil Liberties Union official told The Buffalo News that using anti-terrorism laws to deal with an 11- year-old’s emotional issues was “a perversion of justice.”
The problem, I think, is that caution seems to have smothered common sense. In the wake of Columbine and other tragedies, juvenile threats that once would have gotten a kid suspended from school and grounded at home now end up in a courtroom.
I do not think that there is a “bad guy” here, just a chain of overcautious-ness that wrapped its links around an 11- year-old.
School officials made sure their backs were covered by calling the police. Police made sure their backs were covered by finding something to charge the kid with. State legislators, post-9/11, made sure their backs were covered by passing a slew of anti-terrorism laws.
This is nothing new. Throughout history, we have seen hysteria toss a hammerlock on common sense. Japanese- Americans were thrown into internment camps during World War II. McCarthyism victimized innocent people and fueled paranoia during the Cold War. The post-9/11 fallout hit UB Professor Steven Kurtz, who used harmless bacterial cultures in art presentations. Kurtz was arrested on federal charges of mail fraud that ultimately were dismissed.
This is the way—unfortunately— that authorities often work. When threatened, they lean too far one way, until time passes, concern fades, and balance returns.
Sometimes it is a college professor who is caught in the fallout. Sometimes it is an 11-year-old girl.
http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/691025.html
Girl arrested for creating hit list
Linear Mode
