You cannot hide behind a keyboard.
Tell me about it.
That message was delivered loud and clear by Delaware County District Attorney Jack Whelan yesterday. He was in Chester responding to the second incident involving an online threat in two days.
A 17-year-old female student at Chester High School was tracked down and arrested just hours after she posted a nasty racial message on Instagram threatening to shoot up all schools in the Chester Upland School District, the two Chester Community Charter Schools, and Chichester High School. She ended her message with this: "All blacks must die."
Less than 24 hours later, apparently in response to the girl's arrest, a Media man went online and threatened violence against Chester police officers and their families.
In the instance of the teen girl, Whelan said she was taken aback when police showed up at the door of the home in Chester Township where she was staying for a sleepover. She tearfully admitted posting the message while talking to investigators at the police station, saying it was part of a dare.
Whelan wanted to stress that such incidents are no longer considered harmless pranks. And he made it very clear people should not be under the delusion that the Internet offers them a place to hide while posting such dangerous thoughts.
"That is not the case," Whelan said of anonymity. It only took a few hours to track down both of the suspects in this case. "We are coming with out team of investigators."
I know a little something about this notion of hiding behind a keyboard.
On our website, readers can post comments on every story, for the most part without putting their real name next to their comments. I'm always amazed at what people are willing to say when their name does not sit beside it.
We run a column in the paper every day called Sound Off. It is insanely popular. It also is ridiculed by people who believe we should not be offering a forum for people to spout off about anything they want anonymously.
There is a part of me that agrees with them. Everything I write for this newspaper has my name behind it. Everything I tweet, post on Facebook and blog about clearly is directly connected to me.
With one exception.
In general our editorials are not signed. They are the collaborative work of our editorial board. But they are usually actually written by one person.
Me.
Yesterday no shortage of people called, emailed and posted online that something fairly important was missing from the editorial on the ugly new twist that came with the treat against local schools.
The editorial lamented that race was now brought into the picture. With the threat specifically targeting black students.
I am an early-morning person. It is generally when I do the bulk of my writing for the day. Right now I am putting together my blog. It is not yet 7 a.m.
Yesterday when I wrote that editorial, the race of the suspect had not yet been released.
In my later blogs as well as our updated news stories, we pointed out the irony that the young female high school student in this incident also was black.
That fact did not make it into the editorial. It should have, and several readers told me exactly that. They were right.
So is Whelan.
You can't hide behind the keyboard.
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