A 15-year-old who threatened to commit a shooting at a high school football game in Washington was arrested before kickoff last Friday, but was quickly released when the Thurston County Youth Services facility declined to book him.
Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders says a Rochester District School Resource Officer started investigating the threat on Friday afternoon, but was hindered by a lack of cooperation from individuals who were questioned. Still, the sheriff says that there was probable cause to arrest the teen on a misdemeanor charge of disturbing school activities, and the teen was taken into custody by the Washington State Patrol during a traffic stop.
That charge wasn't serious enough for Youth Services to hold the teen, however, so he ended up being released a short time later. Sanders says there was a "breakdown of communication internally at the sheriff’s office" which led to the department not "pressing the issue with juvenile detention staff."
According to Sanders, juveniles are generally not booked for any misdemeanor, but he says this was an "obvious exception and a clear need to deviate from that practice."
Sanders says he didn't discover that the teen had been turned away from Youth Services and released until late Saturday night. He ended up calling Youth Services and convinced them to accept the juvenile "so long as the extenuating circumstances were documented on the booking form."
The sheriff says Thurston County generally doesn't book juveniles for misdemeanor offenses, but Washington law classifies fourth-degree assault, harassment involving threats of bodily injury, and reckless endangerment as gross misdemeanors. Does that mean a teenager who punches another student, threatens to injure a classmate, or recklessly endangers someone else's life will ordinarily be turned away from juvenile detention as well? State law allows detention when a juvenile poses a threat to community safety, so where exactly does Thurston County draw the line?
I suspect that Thurston County also isn't the only jurisdiction in Washington with this kind of policy in place. And even when juveniles are booked into custody, they're often not behind bars for long. A Seattle teen arrested earlier this summer on a variety of charges, for instance, had somehow managed to rack up an extensive criminal history in a short period of time.
Those convictions included car theft, two robberies, "vehicle prowling," and obstructing a law enforcement officer. He was also accused of three armed robberies when he was arrested in August after he was busted for driving a stolen car and possessing a firearm as a juvenile.
When serious violent offenders like that are still basically caught and released, I'm not all that surprised that someone suspected of planning a shooting at a high school football game wasn't even booked into juvenile detention until a sheriff intervened. The Democrats in control of Washington's legislature seem to be much more concerned about lawful gun owners than juvenile offenders, since those peaceable citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights are the subject of new gun control laws every year while Democrats do next to nothing to ensure that underage criminals face serious consequences for their violent behavior.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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