Bluster and Punishment
Friday, December 17, 2004; Page A32
washingtonpost.com
YISHAI ASIDO is an 11-year-old boy in Loudoun County who refused a class assignment last month to write a letter to U.S. Marines and, according to his teacher, said he wished that American soldiers -- and "all Americans" -- would die. His offensive remark led the county sheriff's office to dispatch two plainclothes officers to Yishai's home, where, according to Yishai's mother, they quizzed his parents on their political beliefs and asked whether they had taught him "anti-American values."
Let's start with the caveats. We don't know exactly what Yishai said on this occasion or may have said on past occasions. Yishai and his mother, Pamela Albaugh, deny that he wished death on "all Americans" and say his remark about the troops was somewhat less violent than what the teacher reported. Nor do we know exactly what was said by the sheriff's deputies who questioned Yishai's parents -- they are not talking.
Furthermore, every school these days has to be vigilant about violent or vicious speech: It can be hurtful (plenty of Yishai's schoolmates at Belmont Ridge Middle School near Leesburg have parents in the military) or worse.
And yet: Did it really make sense to send law enforcement officers to interrogate his parents, especially if the questioning had a political tone? It is true, as Loudoun Sheriff Stephen O. Simpson suggested, that the county needs to take threats of violence in the schools seriously; if not, he told The Post's Rosalind S. Helderman, "something tragic [could] happen down the road that we could have prevented." But so far as is known, Yishai made no credible threat of violence directed at teachers or students. Although Yishai's mother acknowledges that he has been a rambunctious student, no previous incident at school was grave enough to result in serious disciplinary action or even a letter in Yishai's file. Moreover, if school officials or the sheriff's office regarded Yishai as a genuine threat to public safety at Belmont Ridge, why did nearly a month pass between his outburst and the investigators' visit to his home?
Perhaps the idea was to scare Yishai straight or to impress on him the indecency of his views. If so, there were probably better ways to deliver the message, starting with the teachers, guidance counselors, principal and other administrators at his school. Let the deployment of sheriff's deputies to a schoolboy's home be a last resort in the event of a specific, well-founded threat of violence. |
