Did This Teacher’s Novel Cause Craziest Police Overreaction Ever?

A Dorchester County, Maryland, teacher was
taken in for an “emergency medical evaluation,” suspended from his
job, and barred from setting foot on another public school.
Authorities searched his school, Mace’s Lane Middle School in
Cambridge, for weapons. As classes resumed, parents worried that
their children were in danger, so police decided to remain on the
premises to watch over them.

What happened? The teacher, Patrick McLaw, published a fiction
novel. Under a pen name. About a made-up school shooting. Set in
the year 2902.

If you’re having trouble figuring out which part of that was
criminal, or negligent, or even inappropriate, you’re not alone.

From WBOC:

Early last week the school board was alerted that one of its
eighth grade language arts teachers at Mace’s Lane Middle School
had several aliases.  Police said that under those names, he
wrote two fictional books about the largest school shooting in the
country’s history set in the future.  Now, Patrick McLaw is
placed on leave.

Dr. K.S. Voltaer is better known by some in Dorchester County as
Patrick McLaw, or even Patrick Beale.  Not only was he a
teacher at Mace’s Lane Middle School in Cambridge, but according to
Dorchester Sheriff James Phillips, McLaw is also the author of two
books: “The Insurrectionist” and its sequel, “Lillith’s Heir.”

Those books are what caught the attention of police and school
board officials in Dorchester County.  “The Insurrectionist”
is about two school shootings set in the future, the largest in the
country’s history.

Phillips said McLaw was taken in for an emergency medical
evaluation. The sheriff would not disclose where McLaw is now, but
he did say that he is not on the Eastern Shore. The same day that
McLaw was taken in for an evaluation, police swept Mace’s Lane
Middle School for bombs and guns, coming up empty.

But coming up empty did not stop the authorities from punishing
McLaw:

Dorchester County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Henry Wagner
said the Dorchester County Board of Education has taken its own
action.

“We have advised our community that the gentleman has been
placed on administrative leave, and has been prohibited from
entering any Dorchester County public school property,” Wagner
said.

Since using a pen name and publishing a novel are not even
remotely sinister actions, it seems the trouble must center around
his depiction of a school shooting 900 years from now. But that’s
not really grounds for dismissal or a police investigation, either.
Plenty of writers use what they know as a jumping off point, and
McLaw landed very far from anything resembling real-life intention.
Authorities also searched his home and found nothing. They haven’t
charged him or booked him—for now, they won’t even divulge his
current location.

This is a weird story, and we don’t know everything; perhaps the
police are withholding a crucial detail that would justify the

extreme measures taken against a 23-year-old
teacher for writing a book. If the local reporters

in this video know what’s really going on, they certainly
aren’t sharing, though they seem mildly relieved that this threat
was taken care of—if you can even call an obviously imaginary
occurence 888 years in the future a threat.

I’m reaching out to the school district and sheriff’s department
for more information and will post an update when I know more. But
for now, neither the district nor the sheriff’s department have
released any evidence that McLaw did anything wrong at all.

For those who are curious, a link to one of McLaw’s two books
can be found
here. This book, The Insurrectionist, features a
school shooting. As one Reddit user
writes: “It isn’t what I’d call good, but
it is a novel. I hope they needed more than bad
writing to get a warrant.”