Beaufort County deputy who pulled a gun on three teens should be fired | Opinion

The off-duty Beaufort County Sheriff’s deputy who stuck a gun in the face of three teenage boys on Hilton Head Island early Sunday evening should not have been suspended without pay.

He should have been fired immediately. That there’s even any question is the real shame.

This incident that became national news began when a man on an ATV approached three 14-year-olds as they walked through the Squiresgate neighborhood where he lives. An initially friendly interaction turned tense when the man asked why they were there and followed them.

The boys got angry and cursed him, and he left. Then an off-duty deputy confronted the boys, telling them to relax, saying, “The best thing is for you guys to leave,” and adding, “You guys don’t live here.”

When the boys asked him why they had to leave, the off-duty deputy, who was driving a white truck and wearing khaki shorts, asked if they wanted to get arrested. The boys had no reason to believe he was a sheriff’s deputy. One of the boy’s aunts said he never identified himself as an officer of the law. Before the deputy left, one of the boys even said, “Call the police.”

The deputy drove to his home and returned, pointing a gun at the boys and wearing a sheriff’s vest but still wearing khaki shorts. He commanded them to get on the ground. We know this from a 1-minute and 27-second video clip that has gone viral on social media as well as from extensive reporting by the Hilton Head Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.

Just think about this series of events. Teenage boys are walking through a neighborhood next to one where one of them lived. They are confronted by a man who made it clear he didn’t want them there. Then they are confronted by another man telling them to leave… just because.

A resident claimed one of the teens had a gun — a rumor for which there is no evidence.

For the sin of walking through a neighborhood, the three teens had to stare down the barrel of a gun and listen to a man in khakis and slip-on shoes threaten to shoot them. The man on the ATV helped hold one of the teens face down on the pavement. Another man allegedly held a gun to the head of one of the teens after forcing him to the ground.

There’s apparently a mixed neighborhood reaction to how the off-duty officer handled the situation because there have been complaints about rowdy teenagers walking through the neighborhood and teenagers stealing bicycles and using someone’s yard as “an escape route.”

I’ve heard those types of complaints about teenagers before.

I’ve spent years listening to some of my neighbors in our Myrtle Beach community make similar proclamations. I’ve had my kids’ bikes stolen. I’ve had teenagers walk through my side yard on their way to school or home, which bothered my neighbor more than it bothered me.

I get that teenagers can be rowdy or annoying. I get why people believe they have the right to police their tight-knit community and question every stranger, even though they don’t have that right when the streets running through their neighborhoods are public and open to everyone.

But there’s nothing in the Hilton Head Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette’s reporting that suggests it was appropriate for a deputy to go home for his service weapon on a day off, stick it in the face of teenagers who had done nothing wrong and say he would shoot them if they didn’t comply. By all indications, those teenagers weren’t even suspected of having done anything illegal or violent, aside from the evidence-less rumor about a seemingly nonexistent gun.

It matters little if the deputy is a “good man.” He decided to turn a non-violent incident into one in which one or more teenagers could have been killed for the sin of being in the wrong neighborhood like Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012 or Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia in 2020.

Fortunately, that deputy didn’t pull the trigger. That’s his one saving grace. And it might be the decision that keeps him out of prison. But that he was a split-second away from shooting not one, not two, but three teenagers is reason enough to forever strip him of his gun and badge.

Issac J. Bailey is a McClatchy opinion writer in North Carolina and South Carolina