Matthew Shaer, The New York Times Magazine; He Tried to Protect His Son From Bullies. He Didn’t Know How Far They Would Go.
"Then came the incident that would connect Tristan’s case to a larger epidemic of bullying in the East Valley. In late October, news broke of the fatal assault on 16-year-old Preston Lord, who was attacked by several peers outside a Halloween party in the desert town of Queen Creek. Preston was knocked down, kicked and punched repeatedly in the head. After his assailants fled, other partygoers attempted to perform C.P.R.; approximately 48 hours later, doctors at a nearby hospital pronounced him dead.
“I remember we published something on the Lord death, and right away we got an absolute flood of community tips — people across the East Valley coming out of the woodwork to say that they had info to share,” Ashley Holden, a television reporter with an ABC affiliate, told me. “And a lot of the rumblings had to do with a group that called itself the Gilbert Goons.”
Many of the teenagers reportedly came from wealthy families, dealt drugs and carried guns. Anyone could label themselves a member, or, with equal facility, disavow their association — there was no official swearing in, no hierarchy, no leaders...
As is increasingly common in cases involving bullying or teen violence, many of the incidents subsequently attributed to the Goons involved exchanges that took place via text, social media platforms or video game chat logs visible only to the participants. Even when investigators were able to obtain a warrant for the information, says Jim Bisceglie, an assistant chief for the Gilbert police, “sometimes the data is already gone from Company A or B or C by the time it’s sent over to us. It’s piecemeal, and you’ve got the complexity of reading through all the messages, trying to understand the order."...
Rick later met with the parents of Connor Jarnagan and Preston Lord, who gave him the validation he had been seeking for more than two years. He wasn’t alone — he hadn’t lost his mind. In extensive interviews with reporters across the East Valley, Rick took to railing loudly against the police for ignoring a clear and present danger in their midst. “They could have had all this stuff done months ago,” he said in one exchange with a reporter from The Arizona Republic. Had the authorities done so, he went on, his son would still be home, and Preston Lord would still be alive. He made a point of attending school board meetings, community rallies...
To Rick, the underlying issue was one of “reactivity versus proactivity” — a phrase I heard him use often. “You had the city and the schools essentially sweeping this stuff under the rug,” he said. “Hoping it would go away. Hoping it was just kids being kids.”"
