Experts criticize Michael Chitwood’s ‘shaming’ tactic of uploading videos and mugshot of teens to deter gun crime

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”.

  • @AA5B
    3•11 hours ago

    Maybe keeping the kids privacy will:

    • deprive a potential shooter of their publicity
    • let an innocent accused resume their lives
    • allow someone in a crisis more opportunity to get treatment/recover without making it worse

    What does this humiliation do?

    • let the sheriff enact spiteful revenge against someone not convicted
    • ruin the life of an accused innocent
    • force someone in a crisis into a more desperate state
    • help a perpetrator achieve notoriety
    • Stern
      -3•11 hours ago

      deprive a potential shooter of their publicity

      Remove a potential shooter from the field you mean?

      let an innocent accused resume their lives

      Or let potential shooters know they aren’t being ignored until they start blasting.

      allow someone in a crisis more opportunity to get treatment/recover without making it worse

      Jail can also provide treatment, without the possibility of them snapping and murdering people. Seems reasonable to me.

      let the sheriff enact spiteful revenge against someone not convicted

      Identifying threats to society is “spiteful revenge” Do you think we should have referred to him as O.B.L. instead of Osama Bin Laden because he wasn’t convicted yet to keep his anonymity? That it was “spiteful revenge” to let folks know who he was? Cmon now.

      ruin the life of an accused innocent

      or stop a copycat killer.

      force someone in a crisis into a more desperate state

      who will be locked up and thus unable to act on those urges.

      help a perpetrator achieve notoriety

      Least sensible of the lot. They’ll be notorious for making threats and going to jail. Much preferrable to murder and jail.

      • @AA5B
        2•2 hours ago

        This is a kid who’s been accused. There’s been no trial, no evidence, no conviction. He’s not been proven guilty of anything.

        It’s a kid. Everywhere else kids have privacy by default. Publicizing the name of this kid is not justice nor any part of justice.

        Even if he did it, we have no idea whether it was serious - calling a kid such a criminal before he’s convicted dies nothing prevent any crime