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Daylight Savings Time Puts Kid in Jail for 12 Days
Jherek Carnelian writes "Cody Webb was jailed for calling in a bomb threat to his Hempstead Area high school (near Pittsburgh). He spent 12 days in lockup until the authorities realized that their caller-id log was off an hour because of the new Daylight Savings Time rules and that Cody had only called one hour prior to the actual bomb threat. Perhaps it took so long because of the principal's Catch-22 attitude about Cody's guilt — she said, 'Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.'"
... wrongful imprisonment? I thought you could.
There is a war going on for your mind.
This kind of draconian, presumptive, knee-jerk response is exactly what people seem to be calling for from Virginia Tech...after all, "what if" this could have been a real bombing? Maybe even the worst school bombing in US history? They needed to react vigorously and without thinking and full consideration of the situation, right? I mean, after all, the daylight savings change is just a minor oversight. They could have been saving lives, right?
I mean, we should be able to, within less than two hours, have an overly aggressive "lock down" a 700 building, 2600 acre, 30000+ person city-like area because of an isolated domestic incident in a dorm, but we shouldn't have an overly aggressive response against this kind of possible school violence?
To anyone who thinks Virginia Tech has ANY culpability here,
1. Remember what your response would be to ridiculous "zero tolerance" tactics on any topic, and
2. Read the below first.
Commentary included from here, here, and here.
And yes, I believe this is "on topic" and highly related given the accusations that are being levied against VT.
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When what is believed to be a single, isolated shooting in a dorm happens on a 2600 acre public, open campus with hundreds of buildings, you can't assume that you're about to have the worst shooting incident (of any type) in US history.
Yet, people are already blaming Virginia Tech.
Would we close or "lock down" a city of 40000 people if there was a shooting? Because that's exactly what a campus of this size and type is (including students and faculty/staff).
No, but people are already calling for siren/PA systems in EVERY of HUNDREDS of buildings, of varying ages and constructions, centralized door locking/control and camera systems for not just outer building doors, but ALL doors.
The University reacted in a reasonable way. Yes, a shooter was "on the loose". Someone who had shot a person in a dorm, and the University immediately sent out notifications that such an event occurred; to be cautious and aware, and to report any suspicious activity to campus police. The area was "locked down", but after over two hours elapsed, there was no reason to believe that a madman was about to go on a random killing spree across campus.
This is not an elementary school. This is not a high school. This is a massive, open research campus with tens of thousands of people spreading over 2600 acres, with private, residential, and other buildings intermixed.
The only person to be blamed here is the shooter. And yes, he's dead. But Virginia Tech is not at fault.
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Colleges and universities do have the same kinds of procedures.
But a hospital is typically one building. Virginia Tech is hundreds of buildings - I believe close to 700 - of varying types, purposes, and ages. There is no central PA system or door locking system. Most of the buildings are wide open. They're intermixed with non-university lands and buildings, and span 2600 acres. Some of the buildings are over 50 and 100 years old. Do we retrofit literally tens of thousands of doors with centralized locking and cameras and install central warning/PA systems in all buildings, just because you might be the site of a madman's rampage?
There's security and prudence, and there's waste and ridiculousness.
And the area in the vicinity of the shooting was locked down and blanketed with police. It was determined to be a domestic-type, targeted incident. And by the time VT had a handle on the situation, thousands of students were already on their way to campus. Nothing happened for over two hours. Then what do you do when you have no means of directly communicating with everyone? Should the university have had a knee jerk to a shooting in one d
'Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.'
Article doesn't contain too much information, but the reg (byo grain of salt) sez:wtf? WMDs? I guess they just can't be found anywhre huh?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
The principal is an ordinary member of the public. She didn't arrest the kid or charge him. She supplied mistaken evidence that this was the culprit, which was pretty inept, but the rest of the system should have caught this.
Why wasn't he interviewed by the police in the prescence of an adult immediately? Isn't there meant to be some advocate protecting the accused rights, especially with a 15 year old?
Surely a decent investigation should have gone something like:
cop: We have this recording of the threat.
Defender: Uhm. That doesn't sound much like this kid. Are you sure you got the right guy?
Defender and cop disappear. Re-appear later.
cop: Sorry about that. You're free to go.
Last time I checked, high schools do not have jails. Maybe the principal pointed his finger at this kid, but it's the police who were dumb enough to believe him without doing the proper investigation.
For most of us who have real IT jobs, the DST update was a pain. The article is about how an online nuisance to us has caused a real-world nuisance to this kid.
A public school worker who doesn't believe in the rights that our forefathers shed blood for and died for? Anyone actually surprised by this?
The public school system is the love child of 1984 and Lord of the Flies. I would have thought that people would have learned by now that it is unfixable.
and typos are the most annoying form of spelling error :/
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
It's interesting. My son, who's eight, never lies. In fact, if I ask him if he's done something and I say I don't believe him, he gets incredibly upset. My daughter, who's three, will freely lie if it gets her out of anything. "Did you wash your hands? Did mom say it's okay?" To some degree, it's a measure of maturity. Eventually people figure out that the elusive concept of "trust" is more valuable than the short-term gains made by lying. Not everyone figures this out, and many people lie about small things ("Yes, honey, that dress looks great."). Still, I'd like to think that most kids are mostly honest.
What's frustrating to me is when school officials "play detective" when they're so clearly untrained to do so. I've had to play detective at work, tracking down people doing bad things electronically. While it was interesting, I had absolutely no interest on doing anything other than gathering information to present to someone else. Jumping up and down and yelling "We got him!" sounds like poor deductive reasoning.
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My actions at work would never result in a minor's civil rights being trampled on. Apples & oranges. People who we basically put in charge of raising our kids should have at least a grain of foresight & should be held to higher standards. Also, in general, they should be paid a lot more.
There is a war going on for your mind.
How is this different from the way we treat any of our terrorism suspects? It was a bomb threat. He should be happy he was only in jail 12 days and not 5 years.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
He should, and I hope he does.
I'm about as anti-lawsuit as you can get, but the kid was in jail for 12 days because someone screwed up royally. Jail. An innocent kid. For no reason whatsoever. I hope he gets so much money from them that the school is absolutely freaking paranoid about ever accusing someone again in the future.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
After reading the more detailed article, I was even more upset that after the kid had been cleared the authorities still insisted on keeping him jailed in order to perform a mental health evaluation because he wouldn't admit to making the call. I hope that the kids parents decide to sue. I doubt that they will because they sound like they have no backbone. The principal should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
In hindsight, maybe evacuating campus immediately after the first shootings (when there was no reason to believe they were anything other than an isolated incident) MIGHT have saved lives. But think about it--as far as I'm aware, they don't really know what the shooter was doing in the two hours between incidents. For all we know he was hanging around on the drill field, waiting for an evacuation to send hundreds of panicked students out into the open. Or maybe he was in one of the buildings, hoping a lockdown would give him plenty of time to do his work while preventing his victims from making a run for it (from what I've read, he attempted to do just this on his own by chaining a door shut). Keep in mind, we're not just talking about evacuating a dorm here, but an entire campus. How do you move that many people quickly? Where do they go? Or do you lock them down in place without having any idea of where the killer might have gone? Givn that the first killings were in a dorm, do you ask everybody who lives in that hall to rush back there and lock themselves in? MAYBE evacuation/lockdown would have saved some lives. Maybe it wouldn't have. But to suggest that the VT cops should have made that call with little or no information to justify it is nothing more than Monday-morning quarterbacking.
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The Real WTF (tm) is that they would jail a student for making a bomb threat, even if a hoax. What ever happened to just a week of detention? If we are that paranoid, then the Terrorists Have Already Won (tm).
And if there's anything a minor needs more of, it's more reasons to have a nice, healthy hatred for the system and the "Man". Shit like this for minors just makes more anarchists as adults. What do you do? Shoot them all? Congratulations: you are now a fascist government.
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
Leave it to the lawyers and courts, because that's what the they did before they put the kid in the slammer.
:(){
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Seems like it applies just fine.
Here's an example from the article you linked: "[O]ne cannot get a job without work experience, but one cannot gain experience without a job."
Here's the current situation: One cannot prove one's innocence to the principal without giving trusted evidence, but one cannot give trusted evidence without being considered innocent by the principal.
It's parallel to th example I always think of for Catch-22: you need a permit to get into a secure building, but the only office where you can apply to receive the permit is inside the building.
"The Slashdot effect" is bad enough. We can all individually look this information up, but when people start posting it with requisite "tee-hee, let THIS guy know" comments, it's an attempt to incite an electronic flashmobs and that is totally irresponsible, abusive and in the end pointless.
yeah! That's what we want. Our educational system mired in paranoid legalistic butt covering. The kid was in juvey for 12 days. Yes it's horrible and was handled terribly, but why do we have to sue the school district back to the stone age? Typical American response.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
"If you have kids and don't have even $500-1000 in funds of some sort for any emergency, you are not being a good, responsible parent."
Yeah, well, that's what happens when you work for Wal-Mart. You get no health care insurance, and just enough money to pay for rent and food.
Selfish parents, spending that money on food.
Seriously, what world do you live in that working poor people have $1,000 set aside to pay for an attorney?
It's my belief they should sue, not for damages, but to punish the idiots who can't actually do their job.
> I'm tired of the illegal justice system in the US.
...as you seem to be stuck in 1969.
> The one that lets the rich go free and throws the poor in jail
Please correct that to:
> throws the middle class in jail
The 'poor' of today, who get free legal assistance, free health care and free university education, can afford to jaunt about in SUVs whilst blabbering into a cell phone. The middle class have to pay the taxes to support this; whilst paying out-of-pocket for university and marginal health insurance, and struggling to make ends meet. No wonder the middle class vote Republican so often... the Dems with their endless social programs ensure this.
I sincerely doubt that this kid was 'poor'. There would be an army of lawyers who couldn't wait to get their names in the newspapers, if it were so.
(But the Dems are rich too. Living in a gated community, one may actually think that the 'poor' need more help, at the expense of the middle class of course.)