- April 25, 2024
-
-
Loading
Loading
A mug shot was illegally published. Four years of tuition are at stake.
Like any parent of a high school senior, Cynthia Burnett hopes her son will earn a scholarship to help pay for college. But because of an arrest and a computer glitch four years ago, what appeared to be a promising scholarship application is now in jeopardy.
Burnett’s 17-year-old son, Vaughn, was arrested as a 13-year-old, when his friends were caught with marijuana in the bathroom at Indian Trails Middle School. He was observed on video entering the same bathroom around that time, so he was arrested, but he was never charged with a crime, Burnett said.
However, because of a glitch in the computer system at the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Vaughn’s mug shot was released to the public. It’s against state statute to release mug shots of minors unless they are charged with a felony or have been convicted of at least three misdemeanors, which Vaughn was not.
According to an email Burnett received from the Sheriff’s Office, the glitch was fixed — but not before a third-party website published the mug shot, along with a map showing where the family lived.
Burnett asked for help, but the Sheriff’s Office said it was not responsible after it fixed the glitch. The Sheriff’s Office declined to comment for this story.
“My concern is once (the Sheriff’s Office) realized that happened, they should have let people know and helped them to deal with the consequences,” Burnett said. Instead, she had to contact the website herself multiple times and threatened legal action before the website responded and removed the mug shot.
The ROTC scholarship application asked whether the applicant had ever done anything in the public venue that would reflect poorly on the U.S. Army if he were to become an officer.
“We discussed it,” Burnett said. “We knew this was out there on Google.” In the end, Vaughn Burnett told the truth and revealed the incident.
As a result, his application was declined on the first round of review. It’s not over yet, though, Cynthia Burnett said. She recently sent in documentation showing her son was not charged.
“I’m still very hopeful,” she said. “I think this is a kid who deserves it. But we missed the first run.”
She said this is a cautionary tale. “(The initial arrest) was appropriate, but the consequences in this day and age, when everyone is Googling each other, can be detrimental,” she said.
“(The Sheriff’s Office) said for the two-week period, their system was not secure,” she added. “How many are out there, we don’t know. We Googled several kids we know got in trouble, and we found five. … My concern is all these people who may not know it’s out there — what do they do when they send out a college application?”
