Safe Keeping Blog

A January 22, 2012 article in the Fort Wayne, Indiana Journal Gazette inspired me to think about the variety of issues in play when a student uses social media to impersonate a principal or teacher.   As I’ve written in the past, doesn’t it make sense to have an idea of how you would handle something like this long before it happens?

When there is a failure in planning for a complicated, yet very possible incident, having no plan could cause the response to be an under-reaction, an over-reaction, or at minimum, a delayed-reaction.  None of these is an appropriate way to address a problem containing many layers and involving people and their reputations.

The Journal Gazette article has quite a few points of interest.  First is how the school learned about the offensive messages posted on Twitter.  Students brought the situation to the attention of the school, and Principal Crousore commented, “It tells me how great kids are today.”  He is correct—kids are great!!  However, it only takes one disgruntled, angry or undisciplined youth to create a firestorm.

A second issue is the school’s indication that they handle incidents like these internally and don’t need outside police help.  Police don’t need to be involved in all or even most online impersonation or technology incidents, but wouldn’t it be a good idea to have a plan with law enforcement in case a problem does appear?   A good working relationship between the school and the police is a good idea before there is an incident that requires law enforcement intervention.

As my department’s police juvenile officer, I was lucky to have a great relationship with the local principal.  I met with him regularly on a formal and informal basis, getting to know his style and philosophy, and in turn, he knew mine.  We didn’t always agree, but worked well together and were able to address a variety of incidents and issues without a problem and often without prosecution.  Yes, it is possible for the police to deal with a situation without prosecuting the offender, just as schools respond to situations without suspension or expulsion.  However, if we didn’t have a good working relationship we probably would have dealt with incidents by holding to our respective roles and failing to work as a team.  It’s very realistic to see how things would have been quite difficult and conflicted.

Parents, schools and law enforcement need to partner in the response to technology related incidents.  Sometimes the best course of action is to let parents deal with it.  Sometimes the school is the best choice, and sometimes, depending on intent and content, law enforcement is the best option.  Intent and content mean the incident needs to be reviewed through the totality of the circumstances.  It means looking at what was done, how it was done, why it was done, or even how often it has been done when determining the best course of action.

Let’s take a lesson from this article.  Bad things do happen online, and we must be prepared to address them.  Every minute the content is online is another chance for more people to see it and forward it to others.  Off-campus indiscretions will remain a difficult problem to discipline, and knowing how your school will react and respond before the problem arises will result in a significantly better response.

Administrators must protect their staff’s reputation and equally important, the morale of their team.  A slow or poorly handled response when a student harms a teacher’s reputation creates an issue for the staff, even if the staff isn’t  personally affected.

Planning is hard.  It is time consuming and requires people who may not always agree to address a common problem.  Having in place a plan of action long before the bad thing happens goes a long way to protect those victimized, and will create a positive environment for both students and staff.

Former Missouri ICAC Commander Lt. Joe Laramie (retired) provides strategies and solutions for law enforcement and schools to address policy and training on a variety of technology and child exploitation issues.