- April 20, 2024
-
-
Loading
Loading
The Flagler County NAACP believes that two white Flagler Palm Coast High School students accused of threatening to kill their language arts teacher, who is black, should face more serious charges than the ones filed by the Flagler County Sheriff's Office — and that they would have faced such charges if they'd been black.
"I should be in my classroom right now, but I'm standing here. ... Teachers deserve to teach. We deserve to teach in a safe environment. ... Unfortunately, I don't feel safe any more in my classroom."
— KIMBERLEY LEE
The teacher, Kimberley Lee, has not returned to the classroom since the Dec. 10 incident, in which the two 16-year-olds are alleged to have used their school-issued computers to engage in an internet chat with one another in which they repeatedly used a racial slur to refer to Lee and talked about killing her.
The students have been removed from the campus, but were not arrested and were not initially charged with a crime. They've since been charged with misdemeanor assault.
"I should be in my classroom right now, but I'm standing here," Lee said during a press conference about the case held by the NAACP in front of the county courthouse the afternoon of Dec. 18. "Teachers deserve to teach. We deserve to teach in a safe environment. ... Unfortunately, I don't feel safe any more in my classroom."
The incident had been "heartbreaking," she said.
"I miss my students," she added.
Her husband, Travis Lee, said his wife had been teaching for 20 years.
"She's always had a commitment to students, and provided them with a quality education," he said. "It's unfortunate the way that this situation has happened. I definitely feel for the students that are not involved in this particular case. ... But at the same time, her safety in our home, as well as our family's safety at home, we feel like has been compromised."
The press conference also served as protest: Community members held signs that read, "Teacher lives matter" and "Stand with our teachers."
Representatives of the Palm Coast Democratic Club and the Volusia/Flagler American Civil Liberties Union also attended the event and gave statements.
"The ACLU has a long history if supporting free speech. We even support the right to hate speech," Volusia/Flagler ACLU President George Griffin said. "But when hate speech turns the corner and turns into criminal activity, we must draw the line right there. We cannot allow this to continue as if it was just a childhood prank. If you read the transcript, you realize this was a viable, credible threat being made. And when you read the transcript, you see that the only reason for it was racial hatred. To brush this aside is just wrong."
Mike Cocchiola, head of the Palm Coast Democratic Club, said the club stands behind Lee and the NAACP in this case.
"There are credible threats in this community, this county, and [Sheriff Rick Staly] needs to stand up and do something about these threats," Cocchiola said. "He needs to take every one of them darn seriously, because threats encourage other threats, and finally somebody is going to get a gun or a knife or something. We must stop it here, and we must stop it now."
The Dec. 10 incident is one in a series of recent criminal cases involving local school students. All have now been charged with crimes: A Buddy Taylor Middle School boy was charged over bringing a loaded handgun to school in his backpack Dec. 7; two Indian Trails Middle School students were arrested and charged Dec. 13 over alleged threats to commit a school shooting; and an FPC student was arrested Dec. 14 after witnesses reported that he'd threatened on Dec. 7 to "shoot up the school.”
But the FCSO's deputies had found no probable cause for any charges against the two students who threatened Lee, writing in a case report that there was a "joking manner to the [students' online] conversation," and that there appeared to be no credible threat. The students told deputies that they had been "joking" in the chat.
"I believe that we've had a history here in Flagler County of disparate treatment between black children and white children in Flagler County schools. ... I believe, after reading the transcript of the transmission between the two children, that had those children been black, they would have been arrested immediately, and those charges would have been felony charges."
— LINDA SHARPE MATTHEWS, Flagler County NAACP president
Later — after speaking with Lee, who said she'd feared for her life and wanted to press charges — the FCSO charged the students with misdemeanor assault, with a recommendation to the State Attorney's Office that a hate crime enhancement be added to the charges. The FCSO stated in a news release when the misdemeanor charges were filed that the case didn't meet the criteria for felony charges.
"More serious felony charges were explored, but the facts of this case did not meet the required elements for a felony charge,” FCSO Chief Steve Brandt, Chief of Investigative Services, stated in the news release.
"I believe that we've had a history here in Flagler County of disparate treatment between black children and white children in Flagler County schools," Flagler County NAACP President Linda Sharpe Matthews said at the press conference. "I believe, after reading the transcript of the transmission between the two children, that had those children been black, they would have been arrested immediately, and those charges would have been felony charges."
She added that the Souther Poverty Law Center had intervened over disciplinary disparities between black and white Flagler County students in the school system.
Flagler County NAACP Legal Redress Chairman Eric Josey said that Sheriff Rick Staly had only "relented" and filed misdemeanor charges against the students after public pressure over the fact that they had not been charged at all.
"That is unacceptable, and flat out it's very insulting and it's not going to be accepted," Josey said.
Josey added that the NAACP branch has emailed the State Attorney's Office to make its feeling about the case known, and that the NAACP will be filing a records request to the State Attorney's Office seeking statistical data on past arrests for aggravated assault and assault on school officials, categorized by race.
In a press release issued Dec. 15, the local NAACP branch had written that Staly "initially sought to bury" the Dec. 10 incident, and that the NAACP "will be calling for State Attorney R.J. Larizza, 7th Judicial Circuit, to investigate and properly charge the students with Aggravated Assault with an intent to commit a felony, F.S., 784.021(b), Assault on a School District Employee, F.S. 784.081(2) and Evidencing Prejudice while committing offense, F.S. 775.085 within 10 days."
The FCSO, in response to the allegations in the Flagler County NAACP's press release, has stated that the case is still under investigation, that further charges are still possible, and that the agency must ensure that the facts of the case meets statutory requirements for any charges the agency files. It also stated that the initial investigation and case report "included opinion and conclusions to some aspects of the investigation that were flawed."
"To make sure everyone’s rights are not being violated and to ensure that all aspects of the case are accounted for, we cannot and will not be rushed to conclude this investigation. This investigation will be based on evidence, not opinion and rhetoric.”
— STEVE BRANDT, FCSO Investigative Services chief
“The sheriff and the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office have no intent to do anything other than to conduct a full and appropriate investigation, where race plays no role,” Chief Steve Brandt said in an FCSO news release issued Dec. 17. “It is unfortunate that a community organization chose to intervene during an active investigation and start throwing unsupported and false allegations. To make sure everyone’s rights are not being violated and to ensure that all aspects of the case are accounted for, we cannot and will not be rushed to conclude this investigation. This investigation will be based on evidence, not opinion and rhetoric.”
The FCSO news release states, "Despite the allegations in the [Flagler County NAACP] letter, Sheriff Rick Staly and the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office never sought 'to bury the case.' The Sheriff’s Office conducts thorough, color-blind investigations on all cases until completion, without setting time constraints on the process."
The case, "as with all Sheriff’s Office investigations," according to the Sheriff's Office's news release, was reviewed and assigned to the FCSO's the Investigative Services Division "well before any organization raised a concern," and the FCSO then filed charges for misdemeanor assault with a hate crime enhancement under F.S. 775.085.
Detectives are still investigating other aspects of the case, and are seeking search warrants to check the computers seized during the investigation, according to the news release.
"This part of the investigation takes time to obtain search warrants and to conduct a forensic analysis of the computers," the news release states.
An FCSO document sent out to the press along with the FCSO's Dec. 17 new release lays out the statutory requirements for various potential charges alongside the FCSO's determination of whether the case met the individual required elements of the charge.
For example: An aggravated assault charge — a third-degree felony — would require that the assault "was made either with a deadly weapon or with a fully formed conscious intent to commit a felony," and the document lists that aspect of the Dec. 10 case as still under investigation.
A felony charge of written threats to kill would require that the threat "was to the recipient of the communication or a member of his or her family," and, in this case, it was not, according to the document. Whether the case meets all of the elements of the charge of assaulting a school employee, a misdemeanor, is also pending the outcome of the investigation.
Sharpe Matthews said she was satisfied with the FCSO's acknowledgment that there had been errors in the initial handling of the case.
"We're waiting to see what [the sheriff] is going to do, but we wanted the community to know that we are not sleeping on this," she said.
