He’s a troublemaker, but not a terrorist—such appears to be the conclusion of the South Dakota Supreme Court in the case of a teenage bully in Huron.
According to the Court’s account of the facts of the case, Huron High School principal Mike Radke sent a fifteen-year-old male student, identified as I.T.B. by the court, to the office during lunch on January 30, 2020, for “‘egging on’ a student who was having a behavioral issue.” School secretary Romana Olivo told the court that while he was waiting for Principal Radke to come talk to him, I.T.B. continued to act up: lying on the floor, pacing in and out of the office, grabbing her scissors from the desk, talking about feeling like he could kill someone, saying “bomb,” and saying he was “just kidding.” Radke arrived 20 or 30 minutes later, scolded I.T.B. for bothering the troubled student at lunch, and sent him to class. After Olivo informed the assistant principal of I.T.B.’s behavior prior to his meeting with the principal, Radke called I.T.B. back into the office to visit with school cop Christian Rodacker. Evidently not eager for another interaction with Officer Rodacker (who testified that he was familiar with this student and that “something similar ha[d] happened just a few months prior to this”), I.T.B. “became upset and left the school grounds.
O.K., this case isn’t hard. You bust the kid for bullying and truancy. But the state decided to try declaring I.T.B. delinquent and putting him in custody of the Department of Corrections until age 21 for making a terrorist threat (see SDCL 22-8-13).
The Court says the state picked the wrong fight, because I.T.B. did not threaten a crime of violence “with the intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.” The Court holds that saying “bomb” in earshot of others, “without further context, is insufficient to support a determination beyond a reasonable doubt that I.T.B. threatened to commit a ‘crime of violence’….” Grabbing the scissors and speaking of killing people didn’t constitute a threat, because the only witness, Olivo, apparently was so sure that the student was just kidding that she “did not immediately remove the scissors from I.T.B.’s reach….” And plowing new ground in interpretation of South Dakota law, the Court says the circuit court and the state wrongly tried to inflate “someone” into an entire “civilian population” under threat:
This Court has not before examined what is meant by “a civilian population.” In People v. Morales, the New York Court of Appeals examined the meaning of the phrase “intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population,” noting that “civilian population” could “encompass a variety of communities depending on how the relevant ‘area’ is defined and who lives within that territory.” … However, the court noted that “the concept of terrorism has a unique meaning and its implications risk being trivialized if the terminology is applied loosely in situations that do not match our collective understanding of what constitutes a terrorist act.” …
In concluding that I.T.B. had made a terrorist threat, the circuit court did not specifically identify a “civilian population” that I.T.B. intended to intimidate when he made his statements. Rather, the court found that I.T.B. acted with the intent to intimidate “someone even if it’s just the staff at the high school.” On appeal, the State claims that the circuit court was referring to all of the staff at the high school and that such group of people is sufficient to constitute a “civilian population.” On the contrary, it is clear from the record that the statement at issued referred only to killing some unidentified person, not a group, and it was made in the presence of only one person—Olivo. Therefore, while Morales and decisions by other courts further address what types of groups constitute a “civilian population,” we need not make that determination here because the term “population” plainly requires an intent to coerce or intimidate more than one person, and the evidence is clearly not sufficient to support such a finding [South Dakota Supreme Court, In Re Interest of I.T.B., opinion, 2021.07.07, p. 10].
The bully was not trying to drive fear into the entire community through an act of broad and public violence. He wasn’t trying to shut down the school with a genuine bomb threat. He was just mouthing off and misbehaving, trying to provoke a response and deflect attention from his own bullying… and, thanks to an overzealous prosecutor and an Attorney General who doesn’t really understand terrorism, mission accomplished.
Has the Governor considered sending in the National Guard to Huron to help combat terrorism? They could round up all the scissors at the high school.
Making threats in school, the school does not constitute a community, even though they are called community schools?
Well, maybe this wasn’t terrorism, but it is behavior that should have gotten this kid expelled. I wouldn’t want that kid anywhere near a classroom. And I wouldn’t want that kid to have a gun either. I hope they convicted him for other felony counts.
Why would anyone be fearful of a Huron boy. I learned to play snooker at the elks club in the Marvin Hughitt Hotel, snowed in in Huron March 1966. Just train the boy in something. Now he’s learned he can be an a hole whenever he wants so he could work for Noem as a beginning trumpie.
“Officer Rodacker testified that he took I.T.B.’s threats seriously and further testified, over I.T.B.’s counsel’s objection,
that “something similar ha[d] happened just a few months prior to this. And one time, okay. But a second time, I felt, like, there was a safety risk – – potential safety risk.”” [objection premised on SDCL 19-19-404(b)(1)]
Martha Ingalls Allen Carrier, age 42, was accused of witchcraft in 1692. One of the accusers at her trial was Samuel Preston (1651-1738), my maternal 8th great grandfather. Samuel’s testimony was quite short: he had some difference with Martha. Soon thereafter one of his lusty cows fell dead with its heels up. Sometime later the two had another difference. Martha warned Samuel he would soon lose another cow. Lo and behold, one of his cows “pined & quickley lay downe as if she was asleep & dyed.” [http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/n24.html ]
Whether Samuel actually “believed” this stuff or was pressured to testify we do not know, although it makes little difference when the net effect is the same. He was but one of several including Martha’s own sons (Richard and Andrew) who testified against her. Although there are differences in the two cases, Samuel’s accusation, like Officer Christian Rodacker’s takes the form of some supposed “pattern” at work, however imaginary it might be: “something similar ha[d] happened just a few months prior to this,” ergo just imagine what will happen next! Constable John Ballard, Rev. Cotton Mather (who believed God intervened directly in the foundation of the colonies and that the New World was previously the Devil’s territory) , a smallpox epidemic, runaway imaginations, notions of religious purity..the constellation of factors and influences was a veritable hotbed ripe for all kinds of nonsense.
So, the questions arise as to whether an officer who “perceives” a pattern of behavior actually does so or only imagines s/he does, is but projecting his/her past experiences onto the specifics of a unique incident into which s/he has no true insight, is subject to a larger discourse on terrorism in society and sees his position as that of warrior on a mission (Rodacker’s Twitter account has been taken down, I find, and there is an article on his own zeal here https://coffeeordie.com/police-officers/), is caught up in a larger network which includes what Cory no doubt rightly terms an “overzealous prosecutor and an Attorney General who doesn’t really understand terrorism” . . .
Any if not all give reason to believe hysteria is alive and well today, however much some might prefer to think it’s an outmoded diagnosis relegated to the Salem witch trials.
Fortunately the SD Supreme Court cut through the bulls***: “Because the evidence in the record is insufficient to support a determination that either of I.T.B.’s statements constitute a terroristic threat, we reverse the circuit court’s adjudication of I.T.B. as a delinquent child.”
Martha Carrier was not so lucky. She was hanged as a witch 19 August 1692. In 1711, the Massachusetts Legislature passed a bill clearing her name and awarded her husband Thomas 7 pounds and 6 shillings as compensation for her conviction and death.
Listen – how does this square with the well-established legal precedent when a police officer “feels threatened” he/she is deemed authorized to shoot to kill? Why, if the officer felt the young man was a threat to the community around him – did he not simply put the bully out of his misery?
If the perp was a person of color, the story might have turned out like RS suggests.
Well..the kid was certainly obnoxious and acting out…but he was also a 15 year old boy and most will fill that bill from time to time.Schools, no matter how much they resemble them, are not jails, not lock ups. If the Principal wants to remove the kid from the “instructional setting”, which may have been a proper course of action, he must suspend the kid and go through a disciplinary hearing of some sort (not sure anymore what the process is). The kid ends up with a three day vacation. Turning the matter over to the police is the “nuclear option”. Fact is, if you can’t de escalate the situation in the principal’s office, no other options are going to be beneficial for the kid, or in the end, the school. We’ve gone from a proactive “teaching moment”to a reactive punishment mode.
Arlo – Tamir Rice was a 12 year-old, playing with a toy gun in a park – BY HIMSELF.- and an officer deemed it appropriate to kill him on sight – with no other interaction at all. NOTHING happened to that officer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tamir_Rice
“School resource officers,” as a solution to many a perceived problem, can be every much the cause of them.
The concept of a two-edged sword seems lost on vast swaths of the population.
. . . “vast swaths of the population” that are unable to entertain the many possible outcomes –including perverse consequences —of a given decision, particularly when implemented blanketed as some sort of “solution.”.
[aka “turn the crank and out pops the answer,” as per numerous rigid and alienated personages with whom I’ve worked turnout my career in SD who exemplified this strategy, being as they were too narrow in either development or education to know any better]
Clearly there were more than just 2 incidences for this kid to be 15, in high school, and still acting this way. He should have had a behavioral IEP prior to this, along with a few out of school suspensions. Time for expulsion. This type of behavior in a school setting is dangerous. Type of personality that may COME BACK WITH A GUN. What would have happened had it been a private or parochial school?
This is what I call “light the fuse” of the firecracker syndrome. Schools and all public places are settings where someone like this kid should not be. He’s a cry for HELP!
when Tim Bjorkman was running for Congress, he joined the other candidates for a forum in Sioux Falls.
When they were asked what is the number one problem in the country today, he answered “fatherlessness.”
I would bet money the whole underlying problem in this sad situation is that this kid doesn’t have a father.
The kid could have a white scumacyst, magat dad teaching him to resist authority because whites are oppressed and he must fight back.
The kid could have been a transplant from Iowa.
Leave it to Grudzilla to say something splendidly silly. His brain likely has gravy tater syphilis.
Oh Anne, I’m sure he was a motherless child.
5 – zip. Not. Even Close.
If South Dakota had an Attorney General or an Attorney General’s Office worthy it would have stopped this case before wasting court time.
It’s long past the time to remove “resource officers’ from the schools. What’s needed in schools are social workers, not beat cops. “Guidance counselors” largely failed that role because principals allowed them to fail that role.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-better-path-forward-for-criminal-justice-reconsidering-police-in-schools/
Another Iowa goat, gotten.