The Center for Public Integrity

The suspect in Monday’s horrific Ohio school shooting has been variously described as a quiet loner who was bullied to a boy who actually seemed quite normal to classmates.

So far, much of what’s out there is speculation. But there is one solid piece of original reporting from the Cleveland Plain Dealer that’s worth reading. “It appears that T.J. Lane had violence in his life from the beginning,” begins the report, which offers a glimpse into some of this teenager's life.

The Plain Deader story continues: “Geauga County court records show the father of the teen who authorities say shot five students at Chardon High School on Monday had been arrested many times for violent crimes against women in his life, including Lane's mother. More than once, police or courts warned him to stay away from the boy and his mother.”

It’s no surprise that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services warns that children who witness domestic violence can suffer severe behavioral, social and learning problems.

A 2009 department bulletin spells this out: “Children's risk levels and reactions to domestic violence exist on a continuum where some children demonstrate enormous resiliency while others show signs of significant maladaptive adjustment.”

The bulletin’s content isn’t armchair psychiatry, and doesn’t pretend to have all the answers for what’s the best approach to help children who have witnessed domestic violence. Nor does it leave you with the impression that all kids who suffer during their childhoods are doomed to become violent themselves.

New York City police data released this month shows that officers arrested about five students per day last fall, and ticketed about nine. That’s excessive, and a sign that too many students, especially ethnic minority males, are getting pulled into the criminal justice system, civil rights groups are saying.

A disproportionate number of the 279 students arrested between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31 were black or Latino, and “disorderly conduct” accounted for 63 percent of the 532 court summons officers issued during this period, according to an analysis of the data by the New York office of the American Civil Liberties Union.

About 20 percent of students arrested were between 11 and 14 years old.

Police in New York are required under a new city law to release this type of data. The requirement stems from concerns that law enforcement has become too involved in school discipline in New York’s public school system, which serves 1.1 million students. This is the first quarterly release of data from a period when school was fully in session.

In response to the findings, New York ACLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman called on authorities to commission an independent audit of the incidents “to assess whether these situations would be better handled by educators. And to find out what the impact has been on children who misbehaved and, as a result, were sent into the criminal justice system.”

In collaboration with the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News, KQED Public Radio’s California Report has taken a look at the debate over a daytime curfew law before the Los Angeles City Council today, Wednesday, Feb. 22. 

Our reports include interviews with participants in a movement opposing curfew enforcement that has resulted in mostly low-income and black and Latino students receiving $250-plus tickets in Los Angeles.  Ironically, kids who were ticketed for arriving just minutes late to school — sometimes because their city buses were late — have had to miss more school to answer to accusations in court.  

Santa Monica-based KCRW public radio host Warren Olney also took an interest in the daytime curfew along with KQED, which is based in San Francisco. Olney interviewed me about the daytime curfew controversy on Feb. 14 on his “Which Way, L.A.?” show.  

Los Angeles City Council members are considering adopting proposed reforms that would limit when and how police can ticket kids, and drastically lower — if not eliminate — monetary fines in favor of mandatory counseling.

Would you pay $5 as a penalty for your kid neglecting to have shoelaces tied at school?

Chicago is buzzing over a controversial practice aimed at forcing inner-city school kids to follow rules. The Noble Network of Charter Schools, which has received high praise from Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is charging its mostly low-income students five bucks for violating certain rules, which reportedly include bringing “flaming hot” potato chips to school, chewing gum and falling asleep in class.

A group of parents whose kids attend Noble’s 10 Chicago charter high schools rose up this month to publicly object to the practice, which they are denouncing as both overkill and a cynical way for the company to collect extra money, according to reports in the Chicago Tribune and other media outlets.

Some parents also allege the practice is used to push out kids the schools would rather not have. The Tribune has a chart showing the charter’s graduation rates but also its high rate of non-returning students.

At news conferences, parents and a group called Parents United for Responsible Education said they obtained documents showing that Noble has collected almost $400,000 in fines from families since the 2008-2009 academic year. Noble calls the charges “fees,” not fines. Last year, the charter company raked in almost $190,000 in fines for infractions and $140 fees for summer behavior classes some repeat offenders are required to take.

Try accused kids as adults?

That’s what some are calling for in response to news that three black Florida teens have been charged with beating up an autistic white classmate at a bus stop.

While two of the accused assailants in Brevard County allegedly slapped, kicked and called the 13-year-old autistic boy a “cracker,” another filmed the attack and cheered,  according to police, the autistic boy’s mother and others quoted in a report by Orlando’s WESH.com.  Photos and names of the accused attackers are posted on some media websites and were broadcast, while other outlets chose not to disclose them.   

The Florida Today website says the three have been charged with aggravated stalking with a hate crime enhancement.  One of the accused is identified as 15 and two are 16. The teens were reportedly attending an alternative school where students facing expulsion or other problems are sent.

Comments on the Florida Today website show some readers took pleasure in the fact that African American teens were charged with a hate crime. And some of the comments demonstrate how public sentiment has helped push nearly every state in the nation into making it easier to try minors as adults. 

In Florida, the state attorney will decide whether that’s what these three teens will face after they initially go to juvenile court.

In a policy debate watched nationally, the city of Los Angeles came closer Monday to getting rid of most — but not all — controversial monetary fines for students who are tardy or truant from school.

For several years, students in Los Angeles have complained about hefty $250-plus fines for being tardy, and about police officers who staked out schools to catch students sometimes only minutes late. The ticketing also requires students to go to court, with parents, during school hours, so they miss more class time and parents miss work.

On Monday, the Los Angeles City Council’s Public Safety Committee voted to set limits on how police enforce the city’s 1995 daytime curfew law and to stop imposing the $250 fines, which, once fees and court costs are added on, can rise to $400 or more for one violation.  

The curfew amendments — if they get full city council approval on Feb. 22 — would replace the $250 fines with graduated penalties emphasizing counseling. Students ticketed once or twice would be required to participate in an attendance-improvement plan or in counseling or community service. If ticketed a third time, the ordinance would call for a possible monetary fine whose amount is still being negotiated, said Michael de la Rocha, legislative deputy to Los Angeles City Council member Tony Cardenas, who sponsored the amendments.

Cardenas wanted to end all fines, and would prefer capping a third-strike fine at $20, which in reality would end up costing students more, given extra fees that get tacked on, de la Rocha said.

Shrewsbury teen Valerie N. Hall pushed her mother down a flight of stairs in 2000, smashed her head in with a hammer and left Kathleen Thompsen Hall to die while she went for a ride with her boyfriend. For her mother's murder, Hall, a depressed and suicidal 16-year-old at the time, served nine years in prison. 

Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School student John Odgren, who suffers from depression and other mental ailments, fatally stabbed schoolmate James Alenson in the boy's bathroom in 2007 when he was 16, and after realizing what he had done, tried to get help. Odgren is serving life without the possibility of parole at Bridgewater State Hospital. 

Both crimes were ghastly. Both teens suffered from mental illness. Both were charged with first-degree murder. 

But their punishments could not have been more different. 

The dispositions of the Hall and Odgren cases illustrate the profound inequities that have grown up in the Massachusetts juvenile justice system since the passage of a tough sentencing law enacted 15 years ago and designed to punish the most depraved “super-predators” among teen killers. 

An investigation by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting reveals, for the first time, that that law is not being applied consistently to the most horrific juvenile murder cases, as it was intended. The findings come as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares this spring to tackle whether it is “cruel and unusual” punishment to sentence juveniles 14 and under to life without parole for murder. 

New data analysis by investigative reporters in Florida shows a huge jump in children’s poverty in a state hard hit by foreclosures and unemployment.  

According to our colleagues at the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, “homelessness among school-age children soared from 30,878 in the 2006-07 school year to 56,680 in 2010-11. Homelessness for children of all ages, including those too young for public school, was 83,957 in 2010-11, up from 49,886 in 2006-07.”

The math is pretty stark: Between 2007 and 2011, the number of homeless school-age kids in Florida leaped 84 percent. 

The Center's thoughtful story on the impact of the Great Recession charts the rise of children’s poverty, county by county in Florida. Ellen L. Bassuk, president of the National Center on Family Homelessness, based in Massachusetts, is quoted making a disturbing observation.

“I think that we are growing a Third World in our own back yard,” Bassuk says. “We look at developing countries, but we don’t look at our own country."

It’s made national headlines, and now the sordid story of alleged lewd and bizarre conduct by a Los Angeles teacher includes another sensitive dimension: immigration status.

A number of parents of students at Miramonte Elementary School are apparently admitting they are undocumented immigrants and fear coming forward to talk with law enforcement about allegations against teacher Mark Berndt. Most students are Latino at the school where the suspect has taught for more than 30 years. And many parents are immigrants, some legal residents, some not.   

Los Angeles’ La Opinion, one of the nation’s largest Spanish-language newspapers, has a piece today quoting undocumented parents who say they have information to share about Berndt but are afraid they could be deported if they speak to investigators. 

One of the parents has a daughter who received a post card from the accused teacher, and words of encouragement from him about how smart she was. He wrote “college girl” on a photo he gave her that the family has kept, La Opinion reports.  The paper says eight families have retained a lawyer and have information about Berndt, who is accused of 23 counts of lewd behavior toward students.  He remains in jail and has not entered a plea in court.