EverydaySpy Podcast - Breaking Down the Georgia Shooting

Episode Date: September 8, 2024

In the last few weeks we have seen the successful accusation and prosecution of parents held criminally liable for violent behavior on the parts of their children during school shootings in the United States. This turn in the judicial process is raising questions all over the country as people ask themselves whether this is true justice or a violation of individual rights. Today we tackle this question head-on and ask ourselves not only what the purpose is, but what the future holds for this significant change in due process. Find your Spy Superpower: https://yt.everydayspy.com/3WNlWB0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The teenager accused of carrying out this week's mass shooting at a high school in Georgia made his first appearance in court this morning. We've got a set of parents in Michigan who were charged with the shooting carried out by their child from 2021. Like there are shitty parents out there, right? There are people who are not equipped to be parents. And they are. And that affects their children. But, you know, you can't criminally prosecute somebody for being a shitty parent. There was a school shooting.

in Georgia. And it's all over the headlines right now. It's bringing up some really difficult and relevant, timely questions. And I really don't know how to process it all. I mean, we homeschool our kids. Part of the reason we homeschool our kids is because we take intense responsibility for them and for their safety. But, I mean, we're, I still feel very connected to every parent out there who is

trying to keep their child safe both from shooters and trying to keep their kids from becoming shooters, which is exactly what happened in Georgia. Here we have a 14-year-old boy who went in and shot up a school, and now he and his father are facing criminal charges. Yeah, I think for me, I mean, I have the same feeling every time a school shooting happens. I'm just angry. I'm angry about so many things. But this new development of charging the parents with criminal charges, I think, is really

fascinating. and I can't say that I agree with it. Yeah, you know, it's funny because, you know, I'm having a hard time on my own trying to process through what is the role of the parents in these criminal acts like public violence. And a new precedent is kind of being set right now. We've got a set of parents in Michigan who were charged with the shooting carried out by their child from 2021.

and that ruling, that court ruling, recently came through. I mean, these were adults that were charged with manslaughter. Yeah, convicted. Right. Like the end of court case, they're going to jail for a minimum of 10 years. And then we've got this case in Georgia where once again, now the father is being charged on behalf of the son. Now, I'm torn here because it's hard to hold a child accountable to an adult statute of law. And the state of Georgia is one of those states where they have, like the court has the jurisdiction essentially to decide whether or not to charge a minor as a full-blown adult.

And that is what it sounds like Georgia will be doing. But the question still remains, what is the culpability? What is the level of responsibility for the parents in preventing their child from carrying out an act of violence? And I think there's other questions that are asked beyond that. but where I'd like to start is by thinking about what it would be like to be the parent of a child who is lost. Yeah. In a school shooting. And that's where I'm trying to put myself first is if we lost one of our children in any shooting, school shooting or otherwise, if we lost our children, would we find some kind of peace in holding the parents of the child shooter a child?

accountable? Would you sleep better at night? Would that, how much would that change the dial for you? I mean, for me, it wouldn't change the dial because the parent didn't have the direct action. And no matter how terrible the parent was or how neglectful the parent was, ultimately they weren't the ones that picked up the gun and committed the crime. For me, my anger would be really, I mean, which is it currently is directed at our leadership who have, who are complacent. They have, become complacent. The message is, this is just the way life is now. That is 100% bullshit. So you're talking about, I mean, you've skipped multiple steps already. You're talking about the politicians. You're saying that politicians have become complacent in their debate and seeking out for some sort of

policy regarding gun control. Right, because it's a multifaceted issue. So it's not like you can just ban all guns and that's going to fix it. It's not. It's not like you can just increase mental health care and that's going to fix it. It's not, right? It's a multifaceted issue, which we know isn't great for, you know, little sound bites and their political campaigns. But, you know, studies need to be done. Real policies need to be put into place to address all the different facets of what's causing this issue in the United States. I think that I respect and understand what prosecutors are trying to do by charging the parents by, because I'm certain in their mind, they think that if we start charging parents, then parents will get more serious about the weapons in their house and paying

attention to their children and locking up their guns. That's flawed thinking, yeah. It's flawed thinking, 100%. And it's a slippery slope because at what point, like, at what point are these kinds of charges going to start applying to other things that your children do? And, you know, if, like, there are shitty parents out there, right? There are people who are not equipped to be parents. And they are. And that affects their children, but you know, you can't criminally prosecute somebody for being a shitty parent. So, and let's be honest, too. Excuse all my language, everybody.

No, no, but we're not, and we're not, I appreciate where you're coming from, and this is part of why I love you, because you just get raw sometimes. Our heart just explodes. And sometimes it's kind of hard to keep up with what you're saying. But for all the husbands out there who know what that feels like, you're not alone. But my point here is this. you're using the term shitty parents, which I understand,

I understand what you're trying to say. What you're trying to say is parents who are overwhelmed and under-resourced for the challenges of parenthood because they themselves may want to be good parents. They may be fun and playful and loving, right? But let's just compare these two instances, right? The Michigan shooting where the parents were successfully convicted of manslaughter and the Georgia shooting

that is currently in the process of going to trial now. In the Michigan shooting, the father specifically was he didn't graduate college or didn't graduate high school. He maxed out in 11th grade. He took a high school equivalency exam. And he went on to carry on a job, not a career. He was basically a door dash driver. And his son went to school and his son drew some kind of.

of really upsetting picture on math homework, the guidance counselor and the principal immediately called in both parents to have a conversation about this drawing that the child made. The parents were working parents, right? The guidance counselor, the principal, the parents, they all sat down. They reviewed the difficult circumstances that the child was dealing with, right? He had difficulty at home, difficulty at school, all the same things that you would expect from any kid between the age of like 13 and 17 in terms of, normal challenges plus additional challenges on top of that.

Well, I guess the teacher, the principal, wanted the child to go home, but mom and dad said they couldn't take him home because they had to go back to work. Yep. Right? So mom and dad go back to work. The principal allows the child to stay in school. A few hours later, the child pulls out a 9mm handgun and shoots up the school. Yeah.

The principal is not the one that's being convicted or held accountable. the guidance counselor is not the one being held accountable, even though both of these people are wards of the state who are responsible for protecting the welfare of all the students in the school. Instead, it's the parents who have been successfully criminally tried because the jury in Michigan decided that they were culpable for not taking a different course of action

with their child. Like, I can't, my heart goes out to those parents because what are they going to do? Are they going to miss a day of work to take their child home? They had no reason. Nobody expected the child to shoot the school up that day. Nobody knew that they had a gun on them. And there was a gun in the house that was relatively new.

I think it was like four or five days old when the husband bought it. But he himself clearly didn't know how to take care of a weapon properly, which is why it was in a case, but the case wasn't properly locked. He was completely unaware that his child even knew where the case was or how to gain access to the gun. But all of that has kind of amounted in the eyes of the Michigan court system to manslaughter. And that's, I don't know what to do with that. I don't know that I agree with that. And I don't know that anyone's finding comfort in knowing that now a truly innocent, like legally, legal following

obedient father is now going to jail. And oh, by the way, the taxpayer is paying for him to be in jail. So the taxpayer is paying to put people in jail who have not committed crimes, but who have been found guilty of their child's crimes. So now we're taking a contributing member out of society and putting them into a federal penitentiary to rehabilitate them. Is that what the goal is? hours. So, I mean, from my understanding of our, you know, our penal system, like, it's not for rehabilitation. We do not. It would be great. But I believe our society has chosen that when we put you in jail, the purpose isn't really to rehabilitate you. It's to punish you. And the punishment is supposed to deter you from committing further crimes. But in this scenario, how is this going to be a deterrent? How is this going to be a true deterrent? And, you know, Anybody who's a parent, just like we are, knows that you really need support. And there are so many parents in this day and age in the United States because of how our culture has progressed that do not have the support that they need to properly raise children. So just like you said, the guidance counselor, the principal, extended family members, like have some kind of organization.

I mean, that's part of what we are lacking is a support system for parents. And when they don't have that, how can you blame them for missing something? When they're trying to be responsible, right? They're trying to carry out a job. They're trying to meet the requirements of contributing. Because they have to. Because they have to. Yeah.

But you bring up a great point. If we completely take the parenting, like my heart is in, is in like knots because I'm seeing this as a parent. So I'm somehow relating to the children that were killed, the parents of the children that were killed, the parent of the child who was the child. who was the killer. Yeah. And then the child who was the killer.

I can see all four points of view, and it's heart-wrenching no matter how you cut it. Yeah. So if we take all the parenting piece out of it, you brought up a fantastic point. What is the point of our judicial system? What is the point of the prison system, of the legal system?

Is it to simply punish people who have broken a law is it to rehabilitate people who have broken a law to convert them back into contributing members of society or is it a mix of punishing them in order to prevent them or deter them from breaking a similar or another law in the future? Because in this case, the parent, they didn't even know a law was being broken and they themselves were not breaking a law. Having a weapon is not against the law. Correct. Having a weapon and hiding it from your kids or keeping it from your kids is not against the law. Having a weapon and telling your children they're not allowed to use it is not against the law.

Having a weapon and telling your child they can use it is state dependent. In some states, that's totally legal. In other states, it's age dependent, right? So wrapping up the conversation about what's happening in Michigan, the court ruling in Michigan, where there is a husband and a wife going to jail for the actions that their child took in a school. Yeah. I don't it's hard to understand how we as a country are benefiting ourselves by holding these two innocent people in my opinion innocent people guilty of a crime that they were not aware was going to happen we're not aware was being planned and we're not contributing to themselves they had a

traumatized child in middle school yeah which I mean I even if it was high school right 14 13, 13 years old. We are all going through very difficult years in those years. And any parent of a child in middle school or high school knows how hard it is to connect to and reach and be with your child, which is why you trust them to have support at school. You trust them to have principals, teachers, guidance counselors. You trust them to have additional resources at school. So if you're going to hold the parents accountable, I have to ask the question,

what's the role that the school is being held accountable? Right. But then separate to that, I'm not sure that we as a society are going to benefit from putting those two people in jail. I agree. Now, Georgia, because Georgia's happening right now. The shooting just happened a few days ago. There are children dead. There are families in grieving.

There's terrible things happening. And the Georgia court system is deciding what to do with these parents now. A little bit different case. In this case, the dad. did not graduate, did not graduate high school. He basically capped out in 11th grade. And he and his son were very active users of firearms for hunting specifically. Yeah.

Which in Georgia is advocated and supported, right? So his son was very well versed in using rifles. His son was very well versed in using hunting weapons. They had a long history of father-son bond over weapons, right? A year ago, the child came under investigation by local investigators in Georgia because of a series of back and forth conversations on a social media platform called Discord that brought into question whether or not the kid was a threat. The official investigation did not press charges. The official investigation said that the child showed no signs of threat threatening behavior that would warrant prosecution. Right. And I believe they couldn't confirm that he was.

sending the messages that he was accused of sending. Right. And there were back and forth messages and multiple people were chiming in, right? So the state investigative board determined a year ago that the kid was not an active threat or else they would have taken action on it.

The current investigation has questions about whether or not the father purchased an automatic rifle or an assault rifle for the child in Christmas of 2023 as a gift. One of the things that's very frustrating to me about media is that you see official

statements coming from the investigative group of Georgia saying that the father allowed his son to possess an assault rifle. But the actual investigation says that the investigation is pending in terms of its results of whether or not the child possessed a firearm of his own or whether he simply had access to his parents. That's a big deal. In the eyes of the law, it's a big deal between knowingly letting a 14-year-old possess an assault rifle, which I think is actually legal in Georgia. Yeah. Versus, unwittingly

for creating the opportunity for your child to gain access to your assault rifle. So those are two very different, very big things, right? But regardless, here we have, yet again, the parent being held accountable in the eyes of the law, going, I mean, he's in jail right now without bail, right? Yeah. And his son is in the state of Georgia

for the crime that he committed, being held and sentence as an adult, that 14-year-old boy will never, ever leave jail, right? He's going to be, he's in jail without the chance of parole for the rest of his life, most likely. Going back to the question of what is the purpose

of our prison system, what is this father doing? Like, he's, what are we doing with him? What are we trying to gain from sending him to jail? Right. He's not going to change behaviors. He's not,

He's not ever going to have a son again. Right. He followed all the laws. He legally controlled and managed and responsibly maintained his weapons. Even if he did give his son a birthday or Christmas gift of an assault rifle, even if that is what the investigation discovers, the same investigative counsel had said a year before your son's not a threat. Yeah. We don't have enough grounds to say he's a threat. He just has this incident on record because of social media, which is not valid evidence of anything, which is a big important.

thing to understand too in the eyes of the law. And I mean, how many parents are in the same, how many families right now are in this same scenario where regardless of educational background, regardless of, you know, how many jobs you're working at the same time or what your family support network looks like are in the scenario where you have a child who is upset and you know they're upset. But does it ever cross your mind that they are actually going to kill somebody else, going to kill themselves, right? Like, nobody ever thinks that their child is going to tip, right? You might worry about it.

You may be concerned about your child, but, I mean, at what point does it occur to you that, oh, my gosh, I think my child would actually do this? I'm sure some parent, I mean, I'm sure there's a few parents out there who have had that moment and have maybe saved something horrible. from happening. But the majority of us are like, they're a teenager. I grew up. I remember being 13 and being horribly depressed for an entire year. And my parents chalked it up to, you're a teenager. And I did grow out of it. I did. I turned 14 and suddenly I was, I was better. And, you know, so I agree. Like, how can you, how can this be a deterrent? How can charging these parents when their child commits a crime be a deterrent it's like charging a parent when you let your 16 year old borrow your car and they're driving too fast and they kill somebody on the road right it's like charging a

parent when your child gets depressed and they take their own life right because they have access to your weapon how can you do that how how is that a deterrent how does that policy how does that prosecution make things better for the rest of society and there's a precedent there's a precedent being set, just like you said, because if a parent can be held criminally culpable for the act of their child in school violence, how long before that parent is going to be held criminally culpable in a traffic incident or criminally culpable in a suicide, criminally culpable if your kids selling drugs, criminally culpable if your child is accused of sexual harassment or even sexual assault. At what point do we have to accept that

children, even though they are not defined by the law as adults, they still carry a level of personal decision making. Yes. And yes, it's their decision making can be flawed because of the environment that they're raised in, but that doesn't make the environment that they were raised in criminal. Right. I mean, the reason the juvenile justice system exists is because we recognize that children are not adult. They are not capable. It's not developmentally appropriate for them to make the kind of decisions that an adult can make, right?

It's why these school shootings are done by children. Even the shooters that are 19 and 20, those are still children. Their brains have not fully developed. So, you know, they cannot be held culpable in the same way than an adult can, but they still made that decision on their own. And what they really need is help.

And they need assistance. When I, you know, I think the, I'm struggling for words. You can see how emotional this is for me, right? You mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, how it makes you angry. Super angry. Which is funny because your kind of core emotion is not anger. Your core emotion is like sadness or pity, right? My core emotion is anger.

Most things piss me off. Yeah. But school shootings make me sad. Like they make me really, really sad. Because being the father of two children, I know how magical childhood is. And I know how magical it is to watch your kids grow up. Yeah. And I know, I mean, I can only imagine the kind of pain that a parent must feel when they kiss their seven-year-old in the morning.

Yeah. And they never see them again. Yeah. Right. and the shooting in Texas in Avaldi, Texas is what changed everything for me because when Avaldi happened, our son was nine years old.

And the majority of the children that were killed were between seven and nine years old. So I could immediately relate to the parents. Whereas the big shootings before that happened before we were parents, really. There were shootings, but they weren't as... Yeah, impactful for you. Well, they weren't on the same scale.

But Avaldi was a lot of dead elementary schools. kids. It's just insane. I mean, for me, it was Sandy Hook, and that was the year before we got pregnant. Right. But once that happened, I thought, and once that happened, and I saw the kerfuffle that was our political system trying to figure out, you know, what to do about it. Who to hold responsible? Everybody was upset.

How do we prevent this? And then nothing. And then the message over the years has gone from no action to there's nothing we can do about it, guys. This is just life, which I think is just complete malarkey personally. I think the reason that I wanted to talk about this with you, not only because we are parents, was because I really, I see school shootings as an intelligence challenge. I don't see it as a law enforcement issue. And any professional first responder out there will understand exactly why it's not a law enforcement issue. Because by the time the shooting happened,

by the time a law is broken, that a law enforcement officer has jurisdiction to take action, by the time that happens, the damage has already been done. Right. Preventing a school shooting requires an intelligence discipline, not a law enforcement discipline. But the problem is that intelligence disciplines make people very uncomfortable.

Right. Because it's about collecting data, collecting information, creating a case, monitoring, you know, what's it called? I just lost it, surveilling, right, digital or in person. It's about building a profile of predictive outcomes. And that makes people, especially Americans, very, very nervous. Yeah. And that's why I think when we continue to see these violent actions happen,

nobody talks about the fact that this is an intelligence problem. because to even mention collecting intelligence on a shooter, to even mention the idea of red flagging a child, right, giving them a rap sheet that follows them from school to school or state to state, imagine how uncomfortable that would make people feel. So it's so much easier to just say, let's blame the school, let's blame the police officers

because they didn't get there fast enough. Yeah. Let's blame the system, right? Right. It's an easier thing to do to just blame someone else, rather than call attention to the real problem. Because the real problem is not guns. The real problem is not broken families.

There is a challenge with mental health, but how do you separate mental health from developmental challenges that just exist in that age range? Right. Right. The challenge is not just any one of those. It's a piece of all of those. And when you have something that comprehensive, what you have is an intelligence challenge. Yeah. And it's a really interesting concept that you're bringing up because on an international government level, right, intelligence is knowing the plans and intentions of your allies and your enemies, right?

So plans and intentions are at the core of it. And when it's government to government, there's, you know, arguably there's less data you're collecting, right? You just need a few key people who are the decision makers to know what their plans and intentions are. And just like you said, we don't wait until a missile's coming through space at us and then blame, you know, blame the military for not shooting it down fast enough, right? That's not what we do. We gather intelligence so that that missile never gets shot, right? Like nothing ever comes toward us. We never get to that point.

So doing it on this level is a fascinating idea. I agree that, you know, the American public is very wary of, you know, what they consider to be surveillance and data collection, even though, you know, to be fair, our data is collected constantly. We constantly give permission to our apps to do that. Yes. And so we allow our data to be collected as consumers so people can sell us things, but we're very reluctant to have our data collected to save a life potential. or to have help, you know,

have scenarios identified where we might be able to get the kind of support and help that we need. So I see so much value in what you're saying. And I think it's an interesting, you know, how would we implement it?

How would you sell it to the American public? Here's what I will say, as we kind of come to the end of this conversation, is as a parent, if I were to lose one of or both of our children, it would destroy me. and there wouldn't be anything that could fill that hole. And watching other people suffer, along with my suffering, that is not justice, right?

Yeah. That wouldn't make me feel better. And, you know, some depressed 13-year-old kid who got access to a gun, there's no justice to be had there. That's just sad, like, mental health challenges. is like I would have to turn to my faith. I would have to turn to my family. I would have to turn to something else

to bring me some kind of closure. Yeah. But putting that traumatized child's parent in jail also wouldn't bring me closure. Right. Right? It just, I don't think that would happen for me. If my son or my daughter,

our son, our daughter, were to shoot other children, my life would be, I mean, Prison would be a small burden on top of the already existing burden that I would carry forever. Right. How did I fail my child to that level? Yes.

And then how did I let my child lose their life, their chance at livelihood, right? What could I have done differently? That's what would rack. That would rack me for the rest of my life. Yes. Right? So at the end of the day, when I try to put myself in those shoes, I just don't see the benefit of us spending time and money and effort.

trying to prosecute parents and hold them criminally liable for the actions of their child. Right. And I also don't see that it's bringing closure to the families out there who are in pain. And I'm not one of those family members in pain. I don't know what they must feel like. And by all means, if somebody listening right now has lost a child in a shooting and it did bring you comfort to watch the parent go to jail, please leave it in the comments because I want to hear your voice.

Yeah. Because it's hard for me to wrap my mind around it. But what I can see is the very dangerous future of what happens if our court system starts to hold a second person accountable for a first person's actions. Yeah. Whether it's child to parent, child to step parent, child to legal guardian, spouse to spouse, spouse to brother to sister, what happens if we set this precedent and we make it so that when you. break a law, I'm culpable. And when our son breaks a law, his sister might be culpable. Or if my grandparents are watching our children on a day of the week, are they going to

be held culpable? Like what happens? What happens when my 18-year-old says something that's inappropriate in a party and he's slapped with sexual harassment and then does that fall back on my record? How do we handle that moving forward? And how long before that sets a very dangerous precedent that just wastes all of our money collectively, but also infringes on our freedoms as individuals. Right. There's a better way in this.

And I think this new tactic is distracting from methods that could actually work. And, you know, what needs to be done is money needs to be put into really studying what's happening, really studying all the causes that go into these events. Finding the patterns? Finding the patterns. Finding the patterns, exactly. Fighting the breadcrumbs, the telltale signs. Exactly. You're talking about intelligence, babes.

And then addressing those, you know, it's not one thing. It's multiple things. Folks, thank you very much for joining us. This was a challenging conversation for us, but one that I really was excited to have with you. I know you have an opinion, and I want to hear your opinion, leave it in the comments below. Whether you're just as torn as I am and you don't really know how to process the death of innocent children at the hands of other children who are in some kind of pain, whether you're also seeing the slippage of our judicial system in trying to find some way of holding people accountable for these just tragic acts,

or maybe whether you think our justice system is going in the right direction, holding parents accountable for the behaviors and for the actions of their teen and high school age and middle school age children. Whatever your thoughts are, leave it in the comments. We want to hear what you have to say. And as always, if you want to get a better idea, of what it's like to see the world, the way Ji and I see the world through the eyes of a spy. If you want some insight into how we process information and how we think through challenges like this, by all means, click on the description in the link below and join us at Everyday Spy and get a chance to learn and train like we did.