Remember back in the day when, if you were disruptive in school or flicked some other kid in the ear or whatever, the teacher made you write, “I promise I will not do such-and-such ever again” about a thousand times on a chalkboard? Okay, so probably not since like 1967 - but I bet it left you with a heck of a hand cramp. Still, as punitive measures so, it ranked pretty far down the list of stuff that sucked, and was generally reserved for minor infractions.
Turns out that in 2024 America, the same deal will get you out of being punished for planning to shoot a bunch of strangers and telling people about it on the internet. Because that seems to be all the rage among America's youth these days.
A 13-year-old kid who police say wrote a detailed plan to shoot up a local Jewish synagogue and posted it online will be made to write a book report as punishment.
A book report.
The kid, whose name isn’t being released because of his age, pled “true” to accusations that he came up with a descriptive plan to gun down members of Temple Israel in Canton, Ohio and posted it on the website Discord. Police found the post in early September and quickly arrested the teen before he could carry out his plot.
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After pleading “true” (the juvenile equivalent of “guilty” in Ohio) to the charges, the young man was given a year’s probation, required to see a therapist, restricted from unmonitored use of the internet, and made to write a report about Carl Lutz, a Swiss diplomat who saved the lives of some 62,000 Hungarian Jews during World War II.
A book report and probation, for planning to shoot up a synagogue and mow down a bunch of Jewish people. I won't mention here how much worse this kid's punishment would surely have been had he targeted a different group of people either for their ethnicity or their faith, but this was Jews, so hey.
Maybe it’s just me, but this whole “no consequences for criminals” garbage hasn’t been working out so well for us. And I’m thinking anyone with enough hate in their heart or mental illness in their skull to dream about gunning down people in a house of worship and write about it on the internet is unlikely to be swayed by having to write an essay. And perhaps in a day and age in which it's not unheard of for some angry teenage head-case to stroll into a public space and light it up, we should take threats - especially detailed ones posted in forums online - a bit more seriously than assigning it some English homework.
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