A New York school district and sheriff’s department are under fire after allegedly failing to respond adequately to white students using social media, artificial intelligence, and live footage to threaten to intimidate or kill Black and Brown students.
Parents assert Putnam County School District’s first response to the bigoted TikTok videos downplayed the seriousness of the threats, which included coming to one of the schools with a machine gun to shoot African Americans. They also wonder why students who made the videos aren’t facing hate crime charges.
In the middle of 2023’s Black History Month commemoration, several Carmel High School students impersonated officials within the school district’s administration and the Putnam County Sheriff’s Department, dubbing them to say “abhorrent” racist remarks, according to The Journal News/lohud.com. The youth then took the videos and posted them on social media.
One of two videos posted by Carmel High School students shows a fictional school shooting at Carmel Middle School. It also includes threats directly targeted at Black students.
An overdubbed voice is heard, fixed to look as though George Fischer Middle School principal John Piscitella was speaking.
The video had a 37-second rant calling the Black students monkeys and the N-word. The voice also suggested the Black students go back to Africa and pointed out that there are people in the community that hate them because of their race.
At the end of the video, a voice says, “I am going to bring my machine gun to school.”
The second video, created the same way, has the overdubbed voice saying, I’ll hang you like the KKK. The KKK legacy will return.”
The clips hit the radar of the Carmel Central School District Board of Education around Sunday, Feb. 12, and on Wednesday, Feb. 15, officials released a statement.
It said, “As an organization committed to diversity and inclusion, the Carmel Central School District Board of Education is appalled at, and condemns, these recent videos, along with the blatant racism, hatred and disregard for humanity displayed in some of them.”
