Harford County Sheriff tears into state lawmakers over juvenile justice law

[Music] 7:31 a local deadly school shooting raises frustrations over Maryland State Law investigators are not allowed to speak with the 16-year-old suspect because they say the child interrogation protection act keeps them from doing their job well joining us live Harford County Sheriff Jeff gayer good morning Sheriff good morning thanks for having me on this morning yeah sure uh real quick here though we're talking about japat town High School school shooting and they were talking about a 16-year-old who shot a fellow student in a bathroom on school property where have you been able to speak with the 16-year-old as of this morning no of course not our as I said the other day on Friday our criminal friendly legislature has made sure that um police aren't allowed to talk to juvenile offenders they changed the name of the bill to child to make it more palatable U but as Governor Hogan vetoed this back two years ago um for the same reasons uh it hinders investigations often parents want these young people to talk and often these young people are advised of their rights and they want talk and uh in this instance um that could have been the case we'll never know because the law now requires us um to go to uh them to have the the attorney first and no attorney is going to tell them to talk to the police and sadly as you're aware this gun is still missing and that that leaves a big ho in our investigation up to this point we're still working all the leads we can but some of the the possible leads are taken away from us uh that's one of the biggest issues here is that the gun's still out there and you can't even go to the person that you suspect is the shooter here the one that you caught off uh school grounds after hearing about it can't question them so what does this do for your investigation though I mean you train for school shootings you you go through a lot of different um uh trainings with your whole staff here and then to be able to capture the love gun ledge gunmen but yet not be able to talk to them how does that change your entire investigation then well we're going to put together a quality investigation we have the evidence that or you know we wouldn't have placed these charges um as fast as we did against the suspect we have we have the case that we need to put him to the state attorney to put him in jail and sadly this is a 16year old man who made a terrible decision to bring a gun to school and then use it for a frivolous what we believe to be a pretty frivolous reason um so he he'll pay uh over the course of his lifetime so it doesn't hinder that part of the investigation but certainly we want that gun that gun poses a threat to other people young people old people out in in our community or elsewhere uh until we get it off the street so we want that we want that weapon recovered uh we want to put all the pieces together um so it's frustrating it's severely FR frustrating Sheriff Gaylor you would said that this uh 16-year-old would be tried as an adult you also said that it was his first day going to school and he brought a gun with him so this is premeditated but if you don't have that gun or can't find that gun does that change the way that you then will go after the um and tell the prosecutors no no we have we have the evidence that we need um that he perpet this individual perpetrated this crime um so it's not going to hinder that part of the prosecution ution of the case um but again it's certainly concerning because it's in the hands of somebody out there we you know we suspect um and because we're limited on um with with some of the handcuffing that the legislature has done we're limited on what information we're free to recover last question for you then Sheriff gayer you've had uh your basically your sheriff's department has had 10 interactions with this suspect suspect before there's been communication then with them have any of them been uh including violence or weapons um they've been Criminal there have been some that have been criminal none that I'm familiar with and and um I'm not that close to that part of the investigation but we had 10 interactions since 2022 where he was either the victim the witness or the suspect uh in an incident involving just the Harford County Sheriff's Office and you know he we have other Municipal agencies we have the State Police in the county and we know that you know they they don't say you know criminals don't tend to stay within county lines so um who knows how many interactions this this young individual had with the police and did this law hinder his interaction with the Criminal Justice System earlier those questions are yet to be answered but maybe somebody could have in the criminal justice system interacted had uh they not been handcuffed and put this kid on a different path to he's not now an accused murderer Harford County sheriff and Jeff Gaylor thank you so much we appreciate it giving us a few minutes of your time sure thank you 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