“Accountability & the Crumbley Conviction”
/“Accountability & the Crumbley Conviction”
By Lt. Joseph Pangaro (Ret.)
There are very few times in our personal and professional lives that we see a real landmark change in how our society functions. Be that as it may, we have just seen it in the conviction of James and Jennifer Crumbley, parents of Oxford Michigan High School shooter / killer Ethan Crumbley.
James and Jennifer Crumbley are being held to account for what their son, Ethan Crumbley, did when he killed four classmates, and for what they didn’t do as parents.
This is the first time such a charge has been made and a conviction has been sought and achieved. This is groundbreaking, but is it right?
That seems to be the question at hand. Was charging the parents for what the son did the correct action in this case or was it a response to the helplessness we feel in the face of the continuing deadly trend of school shootings?
To break that question down we have to look at its constituent parts.
First, the school shooting committed by Ethan Crumbley is a tragedy, it is a homicidal criminal act, and it is something that will cause suffering for every one of the victim’s families for the rest of their lives. Their community will also suffer from this terrible event, as will the many students who were seriously injured.
In a previous article I wrote, after an earlier tragic active shooter event, titled “Can we spot violence before it erupts”, I posited that in many instances we can spot potentially dangerous people before they attack us. The key is being aware of what potentially dangerous actions look like, recognizing the signs, and then doing something about it.
This Oxford school shooting and the conviction of the parents of the shooter may finally bring this into tighter focus and create a moment of action.
Second, like all of these kinds of events, it presents us with a set of facts about how and why this attack took place. We must study these facts so we can try to understand if there are things that we can do in the future to prevent a similar incident.
The arrest and charging of the Crumbleys is a turning point. It is the act of holding people accountable for what they knew and should have acted on to prevent violence.
If this case survives the appellate division of the courts, and I have some doubts it will, but if it does it will set a precedent, change laws across the USA and change how law enforcement conducts their investigations, pre- and post- active shooter events and other violent incidents.
Some of the lesson learned must include understanding if the parents of the killer truly understood the danger their son posed, the trial results seem to indicate that the jurors believe they did. We must also understand the processes that were in place for the parents, friends, teachers, and the shooter himself to report concerns and then who was in place to investigate those concerns? And we have to understand what resources were in place, if any, to respond to these reports.
In a recent article I wrote called “The Kill list- preventing the next Columbine, Parkland, and Covenant school shooting” I discussed some of the signs we can see before someone attacks, signs we can take action on to prevent tragedy. Unfortunately, not every parent, school official, or even the police understand what signs to look for, which is why I wrote the article to begin with.
In this Oxford School shooting the trial seemed to reveal that the parents knew of their sons problems, the killer himself knew he had problems and asked his parent s for help, and it seems the school was aware of his potential problems as well. Why did no one act on it?
That leads me to the crux of this piece and the third consideration:
Besides Ethan Crumbley, the shooter, is anyone else responsible for this heinous crime? This is where this case and the convictions of Jennifer and James Crumbley is paradigm-changing and can affect all of us.
The questions I have, and I know they will cause some confusion, but I believe we must address them head-on if we are to use this tragedy to make changes that can prevent the next horrible attack.
Let me say clearly that I believe Ethan Crumbley is responsible for the carnage and death that day at Oxford High School, and he received an appropriate punishment (Life without parole), I could also make the case for the death penalty, but that is a different article. And I believe his parents may have culpability in the violence and killing that took the lives of four innocent young people and injured many more.
I say may have culpability because we all need to know more about the facts of this case. In general, the prosecutor found the parents had a vicarious liability as it relates to their sons actions and they were charged criminally.
As the prosecution tells us, the parents, with the knowledge they had, should have intervened before the violence and saved lives. Some facts we were all provided via news accounts were that, the killer was having mental problems and asked for help, but his parents ignored this request. His parents bought the killer a gun several days before the shooting and made it available to him. The gun was not secured so the troubled young man could not have access to it, and the parents knew he was dangerous.
If all of this information is correct, and the Crumbleys understood the danger, and they ignored the potential for violence, and did nothing to prevent their son from attacking his classmates, then I think a case can be made that they have some, if not a lot of responsibility.
And while the facts in this particular incident make a case for responsibility on the part of the parents, we must ask if the laws in place were specific to this kind of event, or were the laws interpreted to fit around the facts of this case in order to pursue the parents because of their parenting style, mindset, and their intentions and inaction based on their knowledge which was shocking to the conscience in light of the crime that was committed by their son.
In other words, we’re using the concept of vicarious liability, that a person who has charge over another person and therefore responsibility for their actions, such as supervisor over an employee or in this case a parent over a minor child is responsible for the child’s actions.
While vicarious liability it is an accepted concept in the workplace, does that concept hold the same power in relation to the parent/ child dynamic?
The vicarious liability concept works with a bartender and an over-served customer because the bartender is making on-scene observations of the patron and is directly involved in the intoxication of a person who eventually goes down the road and kills a family in a car accident. The idea is “If not for the actions of the bar tender, the patron would not be intoxicated and would not have caused a deadly accident.”There’s a clear and straight line between the events and people involved.
The problem we have as a society is that this case, including the arrest and convictions of the parents is potentially opening a whole new area of vicarious liability. It is an area that may have more consequences than intended. It can lead to prosecutions that may be unwarranted, or even unjust, as the potential to pursue suspects can be governed by emotion, or other nefarious motives.
And in either of those cases while we may be assuaged and comforted by the pursuit and conviction of people based on a vicarious liability concept, we may also be creating an injustice.
In any event, the facts of the Crumbley case will work their way through the courts and the arrest and convictions convictions may be upheld or the case can be rejected. If upheld all the way to the Supreme Court, then new laws will be established in many, if not all the 50 states of America. A new era of responsibility will dawn.
While on its face that might seem like a good idea, let’s consider these points.
Where else will vicarious liability be established? If a husband has too much alcohol to drink and decides to run to the store for milk and bread in an intoxicated state, is his wife now responsible to call the police to report his driving while intoxicated? If he has a car crash on the way and people are killed, is the wife then responsible and can be arrested, tried, and convicted?
What if a teenager is a known gang member and his/her parents know this to be true, and they also know that this gang deals in drugs and is violent, involved in turf wars, shootings, and murders. Then one night this teenager is involved in an altercation or a robbery and an innocent person is killed, will the parents then be liable to prosecution?
What about parents of an intellectually disabled child and suppose that child injures or kills another young person, are the parents liable to prosecution because they did not secure this child in the home?
As you can imagine, this “what if” questioning can go on all day, the possible scenarios are endless for the ways people can be held liable for the actions of another if we want it to be so. What must be done is as a society is we need to decide the value of opening the door and increasing the kinds of events that can determine responsibility for those not directly involved in the crime, and we have to determine how we are going to make it known to everyone what their culpability is.
We must decide how to deal with poor parenting, how to help parents with limited ability to comprehend the signs of potential problems, train our school officials to recognize the signs of potential violence and how to act, we must train our police officers to properly investigate any and all threats.
Some of the things I suggest are very difficult. How do we legislate poor parenting, or the inability to comprehend a danger, or to see our child’s actions as potentially deadly? And what kind of events do we designate as worthy of assigning vicarious liability to the point of prosecution?
In conclusion, the tragedy of the Oxford school shooting has destroyed many innocent families. Nothing will bring back the precious lives of the four students killed in their high school, the others who were seriously injured; nothing will fully comfort the grieving families who told us directly of their pain and suffering. But that does not mean we don’t have to do more to prevent the next Oxford school shooting.
Ethan Crumbley will spend his entire life in prison, as is just. James and Jennifer Crumbley will spend 10-15 years in prison. And all of us can look for and learn the lessons this incident offers and make the changes we need to make to make our schools safer for our children.
Our state governments need to create specific laws to address this kind of liability, define it, and ensure it is fair and applied equally. And we all need to hope that whatever is created has value for our society and does not go too far with good intentions.
There are many things to consider.
Joseph Pangaro is a 27-year veteran of law enforcement. He retired in 2013 at the rank of Lieutenant and currently serves as the Director of School Safety and Security for a large school district in NJ. He is also the owner of Pangaro Training and Management, a company that provides training to the public and private sector on a host of topics. Email: JPangaro@Yahoo.com
