Hamilton County Charter School Settles With Family Of Autistic Boy Who Was Arrested For “Mass Threat”

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The Tennessee Conservative [By Paula Gomes] –

Chattanooga Preparatory School in Hamilton County, Tennessee, has settled with the family of an 11-year-old autistic boy who was arrested last year in a restaurant parking lot and separated from his parents.

The school has agreed to pay $100,000 to the family, and will also implement training for staff on how to handle threats of mass violence.

The training will cover how to identify valid threats, and how to differentiate between “clearly innocuous statements” and those that threaten “imminent violence” while also taking into consideration students with various disabilities. 

Three of the boy’s classmates allegedly made a false report to a teacher. According to the school’s SRO, the autistic boy explained that he had heard students talking about a shooting but had not made any threats himself. Nevertheless, law enforcement tracked down the family one night at Longhorn Steakhouse, handcuffed the boy, and took him into custody.

According to court documents, no-one was able to verify that the 11-year-old had said anything threatening. He had simply agreed with another student by saying “yeah” when asked if he was going to “shoot up” the school. 

“The zero-tolerance policy for even uttering the words ‘shoot’ or ‘gun’ is an unconstitutional knee jerk reaction by the legislature, and has led school administrators to make rash decisions concerning student discipline,” stated the lawsuit. 

To make matters worse, the school was well aware of the student’s intellectual and emotional impairments as he received special education services (SPED) and other support. 

The juvenile court case against the student was dismissed in December. He has since been allowed to return to school following a brief expulsion. A footnote in the court documents states that Chattanooga Preparatory’s principal was “apoplectic” and “cussed [the SRO’ up and down” for arresting the student, but the damage had already been done.

Justin Gilbert, who legally represented the family in the suit, is hopeful that the settlement will alert lawmakers that changes to the law are needed.

A different lawsuit filed against the Hamilton County Department of Education following the arrest of another autistic student, a 13-year-old boy, is ongoing.

The student was handcuffed for telling a teacher the school would “blow up” if she looked inside his backpack, which contained only a stuffed animal.

School administrators erroneously deemed this to be a “mass threat” and reported the incident to the school’s SRO. The child was then taken into custody and suspended.

The Tennessee General Assembly changed the offense of threatening mass violence toward a school from a misdemeanor to a felony last year. While it was widely reported that these offenses require a full one calendar year expulsion, two loopholes give school systems the option of not suspending the offender for a full year, and even, not suspending them at all.

About the Author: Paula Gomes is a Tennessee resident and reporter for The Tennessee Conservative. You can reach Paula at paula@tennesseeconservativenews.com.