Editor's Note: Reading Between the Lines

Yesterday I wrote about community reactions to a recent incident that took place in Lewisboro. Four young people in our community of spray-painting anti-Semitic messages on a home in South Salem. All face serious charges, including second-degree criminal mischief as a hate crime, a felony.

As the editor of a local news and information website, I received a number of emails from local residents who were concerned about what had happened and wanted to talk about it. As a follow up to the police report, I visited or phoned members of the local community to ask what they thought about what had happened. Searching out more to the story than the initial police narrative is not only solid journalism, it can provide critical context to the conversations that almost inevitably follow such highly charged issues.

One of those individuals I sought out was Tom Gossett, owner of Gossett Brothers Nursery in South Salem. Gossett employed one of the individuals charged. I asked him about what kind of person Cris Grispin was. Our conversations ranged from what the symbols meant to how he’d tried to help Grispin to what might happen next.

As it happens when writing a story, full conversations are had but only parts are printed. I quoted Tom Gossett as saying he did not believe Grispin was an anti-Semitic kid, nor did he think it was an anti-Jewish incident. He did not say this incident should not be taken seriously nor did he say anti-semitism should be tolerated. His comments were about Grispin’s individual character, not about the overall crime.

This quote was part of a larger conversation during which Gossett also explained how he had tried to work with the young man and steer him on a better path. Gossett also explained that he thought it was a terrible thing to have happened and was a difficult situation for all involved.

Unfortunately, some commenters on this story have misinterpreted this quote as Tom Gosset not knowing right from wrong. I have even heard of an email campaign designed to boycott Gosset Nursery, a businesses that has served the town of Lewisboro and its schools for many years. Because Tom Gossett shared concern about the welfare of one individual, others concluded he dismissed the incident lightly.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

At Patch, we strive to bring communities together in an online digital community. We don’t talk at readers, we talk with them. Which is why this conversation should keep going, not get shut down by what can be taken away from one person's quote.

It's not my job to tell anyone what to believe, just to provide facts and relevant context.

So here's what we know: Some person or group of people spray-painted swastikas on a home in a neighborhood probably no different than the one you or I live in. And now four young members of our community are accused of the crime.

If it wasn't out of malice, then there are certainly people in our community who may not understand what a swastika means or that this particular act of vandalism carries an enormous amount of historical significance and pain. 

If it was, then perhaps the tolerance we all hope to instill in our children isn't getting through.

And those represent far larger — and perhaps more difficult — conversations to have than about one man trying to make sense in a few sentences of how one young person may have gone astray.