“Are we safe enough? That is the priority, much more than the rights and liberties of students.” BILL HIRSCHEN, STATE EDUCATION DEPEARTMENT
A 13-year-old Long Island boy was arrested for spray-painting a bomb threat on the side of an elementary school and signing it “T.C.M.” – for Trench Coat Mafia, police said yesterday.
The vandalism in Smithtown and the suspension of a 14-year-old Rockville Centre student for “frightening students” with an essay are the latest incidents following the school shootings in Littleton, Colo., and Conyers, Ga.
In the Smithtown incident, a former student used black spray paint to scrawl the message on the Pines Elementary School at 10:25 Tuesday night. The message read:
“Everyone out on 5-28-99 school go kaboom at noon.”
The boy, whose identity was withheld, told investigators the graffiti was only a prank.
But he was arrested because “a great deal of anxiety was felt by school officials, parents and students as a result of this act,” said a police statement.
He was charged with juvenile delinquency and released to the custody of his mother.
In Rockville Centre, eighth-grader Jonathan Mahbir was suspended from South Side Middle School for the year on Tuesday after writing a first-person essay based on the horror movie “Spawn” for a TV-video production class, his father said.
The grounds for the eighth-grader’s suspension: “Intentionally frightening students.”
School officials were alerted to the creative-writing project by Mahbir’s classmates, but have not read the assignment because the boy never turned it in.
Mahbir will have to study 10 hours a week with a school-issued tutor until final examinations begin on June 18, but his parents must foot the bill for any additional instruction, said Christian Mahbir, Jonathan’s father.
“He’s been traumatized and tortured by this. It is ridiculous,” said Mahbir.
Efforts to reach school officials were unsuccessful. A lawyer for the school refused comment.
The heightened security concerns have worried some civil libertarians.
“We are in the post-Littleton hysteria phase,” said Barbara Bernstein, executive director of the Civil Liberties Union in Nassau County. “Some of the complaints seem preposterous to us.”
But state Education Department spokesman Bill Hirschen and other school officials argue that the fears of another Littleton or Conyers justify placing security above civil rights.
“Are we safe enough? That is the priority, much more than the rights and liberties of students,” said Hirschen.