At the end of January, a Big Sky High School student was cited with misdemeanor theft and deceptive practices after a conflict involving credit card fraud.
According to Big Sky’s SRO, Christian Cameron, during an after school sports practice, the student went into a locker room and stole other student athletes’ credit cards. The student then attempted to use them at three local businesses. One of these transactions was successful, Cameron said, while the other two were declined. Based on Montana law, the student must have spent under $1,500 to be charged with a misdemeanor.
After these transactions, Cameron said the owner of the credit card was alerted from their bank about suspicious activity with their card. After this notification, the student checked for their physical card and it was in fact missing. Following these events, this student reported this situation to Cameron.
When asked how he conducted this investigation, Cameron said, “A lot of these businesses have surveillance video, kind of like we have here in the school. When I was alerted to the student having his credit card stolen, the bank can give him information on where that credit card was used, which, in turn, can tell me the date and time and the location that the card was used.”
He continued.
“We can go to that business and say, hey, we’re the police department. We’d like to look at surveillance video for that date and time when that card was used. And then we can potentially identify a suspect on video,” Cameron explained.
Big Sky’s assistant principal and athletic director, Jack Young, says school policies will not be changed despite this incident, but the administrators do work with coaches to try to prevent situations like this.
“I always talk to the coaches preseason about the importance of locking things up. We assign locker rooms to all teams that request it. We even go as far as rent out locks,” Young said. “So, if a kid says I can’t afford to get a lock, we have locks available.”
The student’s consequences could include restitution, community service, probation, or counseling, aiming for rehabilitation rather than detention, according to both the Missoula Youth Court and Montana Legislature websites.
