A Community Tragedy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently our small community of Albany experienced a string of tragic events which have shaken our town to its core.

• 9/24 AUSD learns of allegations of inappropriate actions between teacher and student. Places teacher on leave
• 9/26 morning APD arrests teacher
• 9/26 AUSD notifies parents about classroom shuffling and announces parent-only meeting
• 9/26 8:17p Teacher formerly booked into Custody
• 9/27 morning Teacher released on bail
• 9/27 5pm  AUSD parent meeting addressing events
• 9/28  Teacher's 2pm hearing  postponed until 10/24
• 10/1 10:30a Sheriff receives call about teacher's death; body discovered along road in San Lorenzo
• 10/1 3:14p AUSD notifies parents of death, indicating would not inform students till next day
• 10/2 8:30a AUSD holds press conference regarding teacher's death

James Izumizaki, 28, was a teacher and counselor at Albany Middle School. Judging by the many comments left on Albany Patch articles by students and parents he was well liked and admired.

Interspersed with those positive comments were others vilifying the school district, police and Albany Patch - who was the news outlet which initially broke the story.

Many comments suggested AUSD was at fault for not investigating further before reporting to the police. It is NOT the responsibility of the school district to decide if police notification is warranted.

California Penal code places teachers and administrators among professionals REQUIRED to report such allegations to the police. (Penal Code § 11165.7). Furthermore, they could be held liable for not reporting (Penal Code §§ 11166(c); 11166.01).

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Many comments suggested APD hastily arrested Izumizaki and that the plea for others to come forward was nothing more than efforts to fabricate a case.

At this point the public does not know what information police had prior to arresting Izumizaki. What should be assumed is there WAS enough Probable Cause to bring charges. Probable Cause does NOT equate guilt. It only means the police have something needing further investigation.

Izumizaki was obviously not considered a flight risk, or else bail would have been higher than the statutory minimum. Or a judge could have denied bail outright.

In fact, Izumizaki was released by the next morning, with notice to appear Friday. That hearing was then delayed three weeks. Having formal charges brought within seven days would have been unusual without damning evidence so a delay was not surprising.

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Comments have suggested that by Albany Patch providing ANY coverage at all it ruined Izumizaki's life. That this private matter was none of our business.

Arrest records ARE a matter of public record.

For right or wrong, teachers are held to a higher standard because of their contact with children. They are placed in a position of trust.

The mere reporting of a public arrest in no way takes a side, guilty or innocent. Are there news outlets which purposely drive an agenda? Absolutely. Do I believe Albany Patch was guilty of that? No. It ONLY reported what HAD happened, without editorial comment.

To see what reporting with editorial comment looks like, check out footage of Nancy Grace's coverage of the Casey Anthony Trial. For me she clearly biased even before formal charges were filed.

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Might Izumizaki's tragic end been prevented if things had been handled differently by Patch, AUSD or APD? Possibly. It's currently impossible for the public to say what Izumizaki's final act was motivated by. But, that does not make them libel for that act either.

Was the Albany Patch headline referring to "Lewd Acts" really necessary? Patch did not come up with that legal definition. It was merely citing the official wording used by the government. (At no time has Patch written a headline about Izumizaki with the word "molestation" as one commentator stated).

Was that a charged-sounding headline to use? Yes.
Was it deliberately used to imply Guilt? No.
Could the headline have been reworded to not include "lewd?" Perhaps.

However, the fact remains those were publicly available charges which any responsible reporter would have included, at the very least, in the body of the article.

Should commenting have been turned off on articles? Hind sight is 20/20.

I can understand the rationale on why public comments were allowed - To allow people an outlet to express feelings on a very serious situation.

In retrospect, comments seem to have accomplished nothing more than vilifying Patch, APD, AUSD, or the person alleging the improper relationship.

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I've personally known two people who have committed suicide. One was because they were in the final stages of terminal cancer. That reason, though extreme, could be comprehended.

The other had been fighting an ongoing battle with mental illness. From what I understand intimate friends saw no outside appearances treatment wasn't working. Then one morning they simply found them dead. Two weeks before that I'd seen them smiling and happily dancing around.

No matter what drove him, the ultimate responsibility for the decision to take his life lies with Izumizaki.

One commenter would have liked to have heard Izumizaki's side of the allegations. By taking his own life, Izumizaki chose to remain silent, except for any parting comments he put in the note found inside his car.

It now rests with the Alameda County judicial system on whether they will release any contents from that note. Doing so could provide some closure to everyone involved, and it would be coming from Izumizaki.

My heart goes out to Izumizaki's family and co-workers. They will have to live with the knowledge of these events for the rest of their lives.

My heart also goes out the student who brought the allegation to light, as well as the students who are now confused after having nothing but good memories of the man.

I'm afraid this chain of incidents will be with us for weeks to come.

Sometimes it takes a Child to raise a Village

Non-violence (Håkan Dahlström) / CC BY 2.0

As have many many Americans, I've seen the news coverage of the horrific events in Aurora, Colorado. I think pretty most everyone are asking many of the same questions

• How could it happen?
• Why did it happen?
• What could be done differently to prevent it?

The very first question is clearly the easiest to answer of the three. We know someone walked into a theater, threw some smoke grenades and then opened fire, killing at least 12 people and injuring 59 others.

The second question does not have an answer right now. So far the authorities have said that the shooter was not crazed. He left no manifesto with reasons on his action. He did not have a vendetta against the theater chain. He did not personally know any of the victims. Had any of those been true, it would have been far easier to rationalize his irrational actions for general consumption.

One of the things they've said is he had been planning this for months. And if his actions at the movie theater weren't bad enough, he booby trapped his apartment so that anyone coming in would get a big, and fateful, surprise.

Hopefully, some explanation will eventually became known so we can get a better understanding on what, if anything, makes this different than any of the previous rampages by gunmen in the United States.

The third question is the most contentious of the three; and one of the most fiery issues in this country.
On one side is the pro-gun lobby which makes the basic argument that if we make owning a gun illegal, only criminals will own guns. On the other side you've got the anti-gun lobby which says we should make it a crime to own any type of fire arm because limiting their availability will cut down on crime.

I will agree with organizations, such as the National Rifle Association, that making gun ownership illegal for law abiding Americans won't do anything to take guns away from the criminals. Anyone arguing against that basic statement is misguided. With that said, that's about as far as I'm willing to publicly agree with their gun control stances.

The basic thorny issue is the meaning of Amendment II of the Constitution.
In 2008 the United States Supreme Court ruled 5-4, in District of Columbia vs. Heller, that citizens CAN own guns regardless of whether they're in the National Guard (i.e.: militia), or not. Obviously, this was a very close decision, and one vote the other way would have changed gun laws in a major way.

if you want to really get a handle on what the original intent of the 2nd Amendment was, you need to look at what the Founding Fathers wrote.
There should be NO question what James Madison intended when you read his original wording:

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person."

The placement of that semi-colon is important as it, grammatically, separates gun ownership from the militia membership. That semi-colon got changed to a comma along the way by a Congressional typesetter, NOT by Madison, or the Congress. When the Bills of Rights were ratified, the semi-colon was not returned.

Getting past the intent of ownership issue, the next subject is regulation. It would take a novel the size of War and Peace to summarize all the court cases on whether there should be any, what type.
With all that said, I ask you to consider something. When the Founding Fathers were around, the leading edge technology was the Flintlock Musket. It could be fired at an Earth shattering rate of four shots a minute if you were using premade cartridges! It would be around 100 years after the Revolutionary War before the first fully automatic rifle was developed by the Mexican military.
In the next 100 years we have seen semi and fully automatic rifle and pistol manufacturing made common.

Beyond the question of how fast a bullet can be delivered, there's also the advancement in quality of the projectile. During the Revolutionary War, mini balls were individually cast by hand. No two were alike, and by 1800 standards they were expensive. Today, bullets are stamped out by machines thousands at a time allowing people to access a virtually unlimited supply with a simple phone call.
In fact, the Aurora assailant purchased 6000 rounds over the past few months. What justification can there be for an individual to buy that many rounds during that short a period of time?

Anti-gun control proponents say there should be no limit on gun types or ammunition purchases. Do people really need to the ability to buy a 50 caliber rifle capable of blowing a hole through 2+ inches of bullet-proof glass just because they might want to go moose hunting?

A Facebook friend recently commented on how people should be allowed to openly carry guns wherever they want to, and about how it would be a deterrent to anyone that might want to go on a shooting spree.

Had that been the case I can only imagine many of those 59 others wounded would have ended up at the morgue instead of the hospital, due to crossfire amongst the clouds of smoke and darkness; and that doesn't even take into account it was a fully packed theater for a hugely popular film.

I'm not asking for an outright prohibition on gun ownership. I think people should have the right to have firearms if they wish to enjoy hunting, or for protection in certain circumstances. However, it's time for a more robust regulation on some types of weaponry, such as assault rifles; and some type of system to track ammunition.

To be most effective this control needs to start at the time of manufacturing, not the sales. Some guns just don't need to end up in the hands of the general public.
Additionally, registration should be considered for anything more than the basic rifle/pistol that uses something above the smallest of calibers. The argument is that this violates a person's right to privacy. But, I suggest your right to privacy is already abrogated when you filled out that form to buy that firearm. If you didn't, you've ALREADY violated the law.

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Some will find the title I chose offensive, suggesting I was sensationalizing the death of a young girl just to attract more readers.

Quite the contrary. I used it to illustrate the need to do something to turn the growing violence, and the availability of far more dangerous weapons that are being mass manufactured.

As of when I'm writing this blog,  12 people have lost their lives in the Aurora theater shooting. Fifty-nine others have been injured, so that first number might go up.

With the exception of her family and friends, Veronica Moser-Sullivan may not be any more, or less, important than any of the other people cut down that day. To me, I look at a photo of a smiling six-year-old girl and I cry a bit inside. In the first decade of her life, she was enjoying life. In fact, she just learned how to swim.

I can think back to when I was six-years-old. My cares in life would have been watching baseball or going camping with my family. One of the first grade art projects I had that year in Mrs. McQueon's class, was to make a drawing of what I wanted to do when I grew up.

With the typical vision of a six-year old it didn't stay the same for long. At that point I wanted to grow up and be a park ranger. A few months later it would to be a police officer, which was followed a short time later by something else. Obviously, I didn't know what I wanted to be at that tender age, but I had a vision.

I wonder what Veronica wanted to grow up to be? It's a shame that she wasn't given that opportunity to fulfill whatever her dreams might have been.

And I ask shouldn't society do SOMETHING to make sure other Veronicas (…and Tommys and Glens and Patricias, etc.),  have every opportunity to live a long life and find out if they reached their dreams?