Dick Yarbrough

Syndicated columnist

I have a new hero. His name is Mike Chitwood and he is the sheriff of Volusia County, Florida, which includes an area known as Daytona Beach. I assume you have heard of the place.

Sheriff Chitwood is tired of a bunch of brats calling schools and threatening to shoot up the place, like it was some kind of joke. For the 2022-23 school year in Volusia County, Chitwood said his department had seen 357 written threats to kill or shoot up a school. In case you are wondering, that is not only an unfunny joke, it is also a felony. Plus, the sheriff said threats against schools whether real or not, are costing his department thousands of dollars.

So, what to do? He is naming each child arrested for making school threats and says he plans to post video of them. Chitwood said, “I can and will release the names and photos of juveniles who are committing these felonies, threatening our students, disrupting our schools and consuming law enforcement resources.” And he has.

Volusia Sheriff ’s Office has arrested 10 juveniles for making threats to conduct a school shooting or harm students and has, thus far, released the names as well as photos and videos of three of the juveniles on social media, as promised. A 16-year-old high school student arrested after posting a photo of a gun he downloaded from the internet and a threatening statement on social media because he was mad at other gamers on Xbox, is autistic and, while still charged with a felony, won’t be publicly identified.

One middle school student, an 11-year-old, in custody after making school shooting threats, had a written list of names and targets. The boy apparently told deputies “it was all a joke.” Guess who the joke’s on now? He was charged with a felony and is in custody of the Volusia County Sheriff ’s Office, which released the booking photo and a “perp walk” video of the kid.

Since my closest brush with the law was a speeding ticket I got in high school (which I managed to sweettalk my way out of in traffic court), I wasn’t sure what a perp walk is. I have since learned that it is “when a person in custody is led into a police station or a courthouse, etc. in such a way as to enable the media to publicize the event.” Looking for attention, kids? A perp walk ought to do it.

While most of the reaction to Sheriff Chitwood’s action has been positive, it has brought the expected hand-wringing from the usual suspects. “I can understand the frustration and the need for law enforcement to have some kind of response,” said Deborah Weisbrot, a child psychiatrist and professor at Stony Brook Medicine who has researched students who make shooting threats, “but whether that should be a child doing a perp walk, I would question whether that’s going to achieve the goal of preventing further threats.”

I can think of a response that would be even better. Have the parents held responsible for their kid’s behavior and publicly perp walk their fannies down to the jailhouse. The sheriff might agree to that suggestion. He said, “It seems that since parents don’t want to raise their children, I’m going to have to start raising them.”

Some parents are being held accountable, including the father facing second-degree murder charges in the Apalachee High School shooting in Winder last month and the parents of the teenager who killed four students in Oxford, Michigan, in 2021, both of whom were sentenced to prison after being convicted of manslaughter.

“I agree perp walks alone are not going to solve this,” Chitwood said. “I believe Florida needs to enact a fine on the parents and judges need to cut off the kids’ access to social media.”

Hopefully, somebody is listening. In a Facebook post, Sheriff Chitwood noted that since his announcement school threats had been reduced from 188 down to 40, a 79% reduction with eight arrests being made between Sept. 15 and 22, one between Sept. 23 and 29, and a tenth juvenile arrested October 1.

It is a shame that a Florida sheriff has to do what parents ought to be doing, Which raises the question: Where are the parents and why aren’t they doing their job? Being a parent isn’t about being your child’s best friend. It is about teaching them right from wrong. Threatening to shoot up a school is very wrong.

You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@dickyarbrough. com or at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139.