Fire Dept "Apology" for DUI Hits Wrong Notes

The Madison Police Department is maintaining an official "No comment" stance on the September 4 DUI arrest of volunteer fireman Scott Johnson, but the Madison Fire Department is not. Here is their Letter to the Editor from Tuesday's MDL:

We as the Madison Fire Department are writing this letter to express our concerns on the Sept. 4 issue with one of our fellow firefighters.

The city of Madison and surrounding area have received volunteer fire protection for at least 126 years at very little cost. We as firefighters are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We do not get weekends or holidays (Labor Day) off. We do not receive overtime pay or a paycheck for what we do.

In the early morning hours of Sept. 4, the madison Volunteer Fire Department was dispatched to a fire call. Also dispatched was the Madison Police Department. While on the fire scene, a Madison police officer suspected one of our truck drivers had been drinking. Fire Department officers and fellow volunteers did not notice any unusual actions from this individual which would lead to the suspicion of alcohol.

The fire was determined to be a false alarm and all firemen and trucks were returned to the fire station.

After the fire truck was backed into the Fire Hall, two Madison police officers entered the building and arrested one of our fellow firefighters.

We, as concerned firefighters are asking: If this police officer suspected liquor or a substance abuse, why was this firefighter not confronted at the scene? Why was he (the fireman) allowed to drive the truck back to the Fire Hall?

We as firefighters have been instructed not to respond to a fire call if under the unfluence of liquor or other substances. Our Fire Department Constitution and Bylaws deal harshly with this circumstance.

But as volunteer firefighters, we make mistakes like everyone else. Being volunteer firemen, we are on call 24/7, but we still like to have our free time to relax and do what we like to do.

In this particular, unfortunate incident, this firefighter thought his fun time has depleted and felt he was capable of responding to the fire call. As the state of South Dakota now knows, a mistake in judgment was made on his part in the early morning hours of Sept. 4. We, as his fellow firefighters, have learned from his mistake and will monitor our free time more closely.

The Madison Volunteer Fire Department wants to apologize to the citizens of Madison and the surrounding area for any concerns this incident may have caused. We also want to assure our community that we are still the same dedicated, trained and ready to serve fire department that we have always been.

Members of Madison Volunteer Fire Dept.
Madison, Sept. 10
[published as a Letter to the Editor, Madison Daily Leader, 2010.09.14, p. 3]

I'll say this: apologies generally go over better if you just say, "I'm sorry," without shifting blame to others or making excuses for mistakes. Keep paragraphs 7, 9, and 10, and you've got a decent apology. Throw in the rest, and you have problems.

This letter is a remarkable breach of public protocol here, with one city department questioning the actions of another city department in the press. I'm trying to think of a good analogy... hmm... imagine what would happen if the English Department at MHS wrote a letter questioning the professionalism of the science department... or the football team.

The letter also presents an amusing legal conundrum. Through attorney Dan Brown, Scott Johnson pled not guilty yesterday, setting up a preliminary court hearing September 30. That plea might make us wonder just what "mistake in judgment" Johnson's letter-writing colleagues are talking about.

But the core issue here is Madison's wrong, wrong, wrong attitude toward alcohol and drunkenness. In this letter, our firefighters, rightful role models for our kids, perpetuate the all-too-Madison message that drunkenness is good fun to which everyone is entitled. And too many other Madisonites are backing that message in their excuses and blame-shifting.

I'm not asking you, Madison neighbors, to abstain completely. (Well, actually, I wouldn't mind if you did, but I know that's about as likely as my doing shots at Teezers Friday night.) Enjoy a good stout ale, a glass of decent wine. But help me tell our kids that drinking to intoxication is never, ever justifiable. Help me tell them that neither the most stressful day nor the dullest Friday night in Madison is good reason to get drunk.

Is that so much to ask?

SD Youth Risk Survey: Sex, Drugs... But No Questions about Rock and Roll

Well, at least the kids are wearing both straps on their backpacks, like the covergirl from the new South Dakota 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey Report. We all know single-strapping is a youth health menace.

2170 high schoolers responded to the survey and told us some other unhealthy activities they are involved in:

• 22% rode in a car with a drunk driver in the last month.
• 27% were in a physical fight in the last year.
• 52% were bullied.
• 7% attempted suicide in the last year.
• 9% were forced to have sex.
• 26% had five alcoholic drinks in a row in the past month. That's 65% of the kids who report drinking any alcohol during the past month. In other words, 2 out of three kids drinking are drinking for the clear purpose of getting schnockered.
  
• 36% had sex during the past three months (I know, sex isn't inherently an unhealthy activity...)
• ...24% of those sexually active students drank or did drugs before doing the deed, and 38% didn't use a condom (o.k., that's unhealthy).
• 49% skipped breakfast three or more times in the past week.

On the good side:

• 77% didn't smoke during the past month.
• 58% of those who have smoked recently have tried to quit.
• 64% played some team sport during the past year.
• 77% watched less than three hours of TV a day.
• 80% were on the computer or the XBox for less than three hours a day.
• The percentage riding with drunk drivers (22%) has gone down every survey year since 2003, when the percentage was 37%. The state is apparently getting the message across to some kids and parents.
• Smoking has been trending downward, too.

Read the full PDF-format report here. Then tell your kids no beer for graduation.

Dakota Middle School Principal Drops Hammer on Food-Fighting Seventh Graders

The whole middle school concept is predicated around the idea of building kids' self-esteem. But when the kids act like animals, they deserve a good chewing out. Fortunately for the students and parents at Dakota Middle School in Rapid City, principal Brad Tucker appears to get that:

Five students were injured by thrown plates and one required medical attention in a student-organized food fight at Dakota Middle School Friday.

Principal Brad Tucker told seventh-grade students Monday afternoon that he was angry and embarrassed by the incident and several students will be arrested and suspended.

“In my 27 years, I’ve never been so angry at a group of students; it makes me sick to my stomach.”

“ … You guys have a great responsibility here not to keep your mouths shut, but to take care of each other. Silverware was flying; somebody could have been impaled or lost an eye.”

The entire class has lost privileges, he added, including no end-of school dance and possibly no eighth-grade graduation. A letter will be sent to parents about the incident.

...Tucker told the students the only way to dig out is to “behave their way out of it” and they would have to grow up.

“In my 20-some years as a school administrator, I have never been as embarrassed by a group of students,” he said [Kayla Gahagan, "Five Students Injured in Raucous Food Fight at Dakota Middle School," Rapid City Journal, 2010.03.01].

I've caught grief in my classroom for being rough on kids, but when kids commit shameful and humiliating acts, shame and humiliation is exactly the right response from teachers and administrators. (Taking away the cell phones they used to organize the food fight might not be a bad idea, either.)

State One-Act Play Festival: Love from Stage and Seats

Our hosts, the Brandon Valley HS Theatre Company, look for love under the Northern lights in Almost, Maine by John Cariani.
Photo Credit: SDPB

I'm in Brandon this weekend, judging the State High School One-Act Play Festival. Aside from at home with my loves, there's no place I'd rather be this weekend.

I've judged twelve Class AA shows so far, four to go today. I've also managed to catch some Class B comedy, including a peppy performance from the Montrose cast and a quirky, crisp, absurdist show from Philip. I'd catch Anne Elisa Hanson Brown's first Madison one-act this noon, but we Class AA judges give critiques while Class A shows happen (alas!).

I've participated in ten State One-Act Festivals: three as an actor under James "Doc" Miller, one as his tech assistant, and five as director at Montrose. My first turn at the State One-Act judges' table is a thrill, a joy, and an honor.

I'm spending the weekend with hundreds of kids performing 45 shows in arguably South Dakota's finest performing arts facility. Some shows are the best theater you will ever see in South Dakota. Some shows are just a bunch of jittery kids doing the best they can with what they have and trying not to fall off the edge of the stage. Some are both. All are treasures.

The State One-Act Festival surrounds us with gifts and giving. The gifts are not just inside the students, the talents and the skills hard-won through practice, practice, practice. The gifts are the shows, the love the performers give to their audience. The gifts are the attention, the witness the kids give as an audience to their peers on the stage. The gift is their desire to come to Brandon this snowy weekend for no nobler purpose (and maybe there is no nobler purpose) than to create art.

Theater is love. Come see some today.

New Madison School Policy on Cyber-Bullying Picks on Blogs?

The Madison Central School Board approved some new anti-bullying policies at its Monday night meeting. I lost a job once trying to stop a bully's behavior, and I hear bullying is as problematic as ever in our school district, so I'm glad to see some action to better protect the kids.

The new policies—JFCD, JFCE, and JFCE-R in the district policy manual—bring specific language on cyber-bullying into the rules. Cyber-bullying is still not the most prevalent form of bullying—this Pew Internet presentation says that kids still experience far more bullying offline at school than they do online. Still, it's good that we update our policies to recognize that kids can use new tools for ill as well as good.

Interestingly, the anti-bullying policies appear to apply equally to students and staff, on or off school grounds, at any time. JCFD calls on students and staff to "refrain from using communication devices... to harass or stalk another." The policy then offers this definition of cyber-bullying:

Hate mail, harassment, discriminatory remarks, or other anti social behaviors are expressly prohibited. Cyber bullying includes, but is not limited to the following misuses of technology: harassing, teasing, intimidating, threatening, or terrorizing another person by sending or posting inappropriate and hurtful e-mail messages, instant messages, text messages, digital pictures or images, or web site postings, including blogs [Madison Central School District Policy Manual, File JCFD, Adopted 2009.07.20].

Including blogs... how'd that get in there? I may not have my finger perfectly on the pulse of our Web-hip youth, but my impression is that most of the online action our kids enjoy takes place on Facebook, MySpace, and gaming sites. Another Pew Internet presentation backs my supposition: 65% of teens use online social networking sites, while only 27% keep a blog or online journal. (Teens also have the lowest adoption rate for Twitter.)

Blogs are not the prevalent medium of communication for the cyber-bullying crowd. So how on Earth could blogs have earned this specific policy shout-out from the school district? Could there be some reason that blogs are prominently on the radar of high school principal Sharon Knowlton superintendent Vince Schaefer, and other school policy crafters?

Surely not.

Tell Me Again Why 19-Year-Olds and Guns Are a Good Combination

Big funeral in Madison today. Police are planning on 1000, maybe 1500 people coming to the Dakota Prairie Playhouse (ugh, there's an awkward name for a funeral site) to pay their respects to Deputy Chad Mechels.

That my wife wants to be a pastor defies and shames my understanding. Tomorrow a pastor has to find the right words for a grieving wife and two bewildered children... and do it in front of a big audience. Not a job I could do...

...and not a job I'll pretend to do. If you're looking for such words here, read no further.

Deputy Mechels was killed Sunday in the line of duty. He was responding to a call about a young man who was threatening to kill himself after a fight with his girlfriend. That young man, 19-year-old Ethan Johns, apparently shot Deputy Mechels. At least that's what Johns appears to have told a 911 dispatcher immediately after the shooting.

Investigators and the court have no pleasant task ahead sorting out what happened. I can find no good side to it. A senseless death. A widow, two kids with no dad. One young man (the classic profile: never saw it coming... wouldn't hurt anyone... good, dependable friend...), one weekend gone bad, now going to prison, forever.

The story will evolve, but for now, let's take it as we have it: a 19-year-old, emotionally upset, has easy access to a gun. He kills a trained, experienced policeman... over what? a fight with his girlfriend? anger at a cop coming to his door?

I'm not going to make excuses: if Johns did what he said he did, he's guilty, and deserves the full punishment of the law. But I am going to state a biological/psychological fact, based on my experience as a teacher and as a one-time teenager: even good kids do stupid things. Even at 19, their brains haven't matured. They'll take some perceived slight or momentary setback and turn it into a personal catastrophe, a desperate cosmic battle of good and evil, cause for some grand melodramatic gesture.

Or they just won't think. They fail to think past the moment, past themselves. Consequences don't register in their hormone-addled, still-forming brains. They just act. And if the wrong thing is close at hand—a razor blade, a gas pedal, a gun—someone ends up dead.

I'm not going for a big gun control argument here. There is no gun law I'd support that would have stopped what happened Sunday.

But the next time a legislator makes the argument that we ought to give emotional, impulsive 19-year-olds even easier access to firearms in public places, expect me to mention Ethan Johns and Deputy Chad Mechels.

South Dakota: Great Place for Kids... to Go to Jail?

KJAM reports a puzzling statistic this morning: South Dakota's juvenile incarceration rate is triple the national average. Data from the Kids Count project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows that in 2006, the state of South Dakota had custody of 373 out of 100,000 kids aged 10–15. Looking at all youth, SD's incarceration rate is 672 per 100,000. We don't just beat the national averages (125 per 100K for ages 10-15; 295 per 100K for all youth): our juvenile incarceration rates are the highest rates in the nation:

Six Highest Juvenile Incarceration Rates (per 100,000)
State	Ages 10-15	State	All Youth
SD	373	SD	672
WY	334	DC	671
DC	294	WY	559
AL	201	AK	430
SC	185	CO	397
IN	183	FL	397
Six Lowest Juvenile Incarceration Rates
IL	62	ME	152
NJ	50	NH	148
VT	50	NC	144
NM	47	MS	128
HI	36	HI	92
ME	33	VT	81

SD Department of Corrections Director of Juvenile Services Doug Herrman says he's not surprised, but I am. The only place close to us on any of the numbers is the District of Columbia, the very sort of metropolitan madhouse we country folks like to think we are nothing like. Otherwise, there's a big gap between our numbers and those of any other state.

Explanations, anyone? I think I can hear some readers wondering about "those darn Indians" skewing our numbers, but New Mexico is Indian Country, too, and they're down at the bottom of the list. Low-scoring Hawaii, too, has a large native population... although when it's 80 degrees and you can go surfing every day, why would anyone commit crime?

Is juvenile crime really that bad in South Dakota, or do we just have a uniquely tough "cuff 'em and stuff 'em" philosophy toward our kids? Sioux Falls Juvenile Detention Center Director Todd Cheever suggests in that Sioux Falls paper that our high numbers might be a result of a focus on deterrence. Go after the kids now, give them a taste of life in a cage, and maybe they stay out of trouble later.

Maybe that philosophy is working: these Bureau of Justice statistics (see page 17—PDF alert!) show South Dakota's overall incarceration rate is 432 per 100K, below the national rate of 509 per 100K. We're below the national rate for males (767/100K here, 957/100K nationally), but above the national rate for female prisoners (99/100K here, 69/100K nationally). Hmm... perhaps the DoC's motto is "Women and Children First!"

I have no problem with holding miscreants of any age accountable. Crime shold come with time of some sort. But with youth incarceration rates this much higher than the rest of the country, South Dakota (not just the nanny state, but every one of us) needs to take a serious look at what's pushing so many kids into the correctional system. Maybe we can figure out how to keep them from going there in the first place.