Student Records Kids Who Bully Him, Then Gets Threatened With Wiretapping Charge

An anonymous reader tips news of an incident in a Pennsylvania high school in which a student, Christian Stanfield, was being bullied on a regular basis. He used a tablet to make an audio recording of the bullies for the purpose of showing his mother how bad it was. She was shocked, and she called school officials to tell them what was going on. The officials brought in a police lieutenant — but not to deal with the bullies. Instead, the officer interrogated Stanfield and made him delete the recording. The officer then threatened to charge him with felony wiretapping. The charges were later reduced to disorderly conduct, and Stanfield was forced to testify before a magistrate, who found him guilty. Stanfield's mother said, "Christian's willingness to advocate in a non-violent manner should be championed as a turning point. If Mr. Milburn and the South Fayette school district really want to do the right thing, they would recognized that their zero-tolerance policies and overemphasis on academics and athletics have practically eliminated social and emotional functioning from school culture."

Update: 04/17 04:36 GMT by T : The attention this case has gotten may have something to do with the later-announced decision by the Allegheny County District Attorney's office to withdraw the charges against Stanfield.

Comments

Rewarding the bullies...

[killfixx]

This is why people don't like going to the authorities...

Not only was his problem not taken care of, but he was actually punished for trying to protect himself non-violently!

Fucking ignorant fucks!

I usually don't feel this way, but as a person who was endlessly bullied, I hope they eat a bag of diseased dicks.

Another person who will be afraid of authority.

And, what if this kid commits a Columbine-esque revenge scenario? They'll blame it on some other bullshit, not their own lack of souls...

FUCK!

Re:Rewarding the bullies...

[NotDrWho]

The problem wasn't taken care of because the first priority of schools officials isn't to protect the students, it's to protect the school (and their jobs). They wanted the recording deleted before it could get out and embarrass them. The police just helped them.

Re:Rewarding the bullies...

[rmdingler]

Here's the thing: Everyone has been bullied at some point in their life. Not all children are prone to it, but there is always a bigger kid prone to intimidation tactics when growing up.

Kids live by the law of the playground jungle when adult supervision and rules are absent from the equation. It is ingrained into us as some form of social stepping stone, the animal in each of us at work, attempting dominance and security for an insecure bully.

There is a time honored civil process in which we attempt to retrain our young into civilized little pricks. Picking on the weak is wrong, and you don't get to take advantage of a fellow human because you're physically or mentally able to do so.

Everyone is small and helpless early, and many are old and helpless late in life. These rules benefit us all, and what happened here sends precisely the wrong message.

Re:Rewarding the bullies...

[hattig]

Most likely the bullies are members of the school's football team, hence the protection afforded to them.

So option three, but targeting the Achilles heel tendon or other sport-critical tendon/muscle, is a great option, in my opinion.

Clearly the school has a bullying problem, and a control problem. It's a sick, diseased school run by weak people, and teachers too afraid to do their job to protect students from bullies who are on the school football team. This is something that requires state intervention, I presume the state has school inspection bodies, and the ability to enact punishments? I would suggest a ban in intra-school sporting competition for a couple of years until the school's curriculum has moved back towards education.

Indeed, I think that US school sports is really weirdly venerated. I'd split the two up, schools can have basic sport, but clubs, etc, should be run outside of the school, maybe with loose affiliation, but having no influence on the school's central reason for existence - education.

Re:Rewarding the bullies...

[LifesABeach]

I believe you are describing the current post authoritarian decade that finds its declining numbers of leaders faced with the issue of self survival. The easiest way for them to do this is to point a finger at the weakest person they can quickly identify; then say that person is the problem to be solved.

Re:Rewarding the bullies...

[stdarg]

I think the reason is probably that common bullying doesn't look that bad when it's not happening to you. Verbal bullying is often quite funny to onlookers. Minor physical bullying looks like no big deal.. almost on the level of a prank.

Probably another factor with administrators is that, as adults, the kids all look like kids to them. The difference between a bully and a victim to an adult is much less than to the bully and the victim themselves.

That said, it's incomprehensible to me how a kid gets in trouble for standing up for himself to a bully. I just don't understand what's going through the administrators' minds. They are probably horrible people.

Felony vs terrorism deterence

[OffTheLip]

Ordinary citizens face felony convictions for this while the feds do something similar and are combatting terromism to keep us safe.

WTF??

[gstoddart]

So, kid gathers evidence of bullying by other kids, gets charged?

That is insane.

So, if I take a video of someone stealing my car, would I get arrested? Under what circumstances could I do that and not be charged? WTF doesn't gathering evidence of bullying get an exemption from wiretap laws?

Whatever law enforcement and officers of the court were involved in this are total morons. This makes no sense at all.

Re:WTF??

[Opportunist]

Reason enough to end the life of bullies early on. Killing a policeman can really get you into trouble.

Re:WTF??

[gstoddart]

Yes, the kid got charged because he violated Pennsylvania's wiretapping and recording laws. Pennsylvania is a two-party consent state so both parties to the conversation must consent before a recording can be made.

Yeah, and supposedly this school has a zero tolerance policy towards bullying.

And according to TFA, the bullying was happening in the class room, with a teacher present. Which means the school had more or less abandoned their role in policing this, and the kid was left with no other recourse.

Shortly thereafter, a loud noise is heard on the recording, which her son explained was a book being slammed down next to him after a student pretended to hit him in the head with it. When the teacher yells, the student exclaims, "What? I was just trying to scare him!" A group of boys are heard laughing.

What teacher can't be watching this in their own classroom and NOT understand that bullying was happening?

If the teacher who was physically in the room wasn't doing anything, WTF good is telling the school about it? Because the school is either indifferent, clueless, or incompetent to address the issue.

And the officer involved?? I would also say was incompetent or indifferent:

He later answered as to why he thought the disorderly conduct charge applied to this case by saying, "Because his (the student's) actions - he engaged in actions which served no legitimate purpose." He then read the statute as, "Creates a hazardous or physically offensive condition by acts which serve no legitimate purpose."

I would say the legitimate purpose was to demonstrate that the bullying was, in fact happening, was happening while there was a teacher present, and that nothing at all was being done about it. He certainly didn't create a "hazardous or physically offensive condition". Sorry, but I think the cop was a fucking idiot.

I'm inclined to agree with the lawyer on this one. The police misapplied the statute here, forced the kid to destroy the evidence, and then didn't do a single thing about the problem.

And people wonder why kids go into school with guns? I can't even believe the story has a link to a contest to win an AR-15.

I read this whole story as a complete failure of the police and school to understand and deal with the actual issue here.

Charge the officer

[Anonymous Coward]

Tampering with evidence, intimidating a witness, and dereliction of duty. Under no circumstances should he have ordered the child to delete the recording. If there was a felony charge to be made, it was his duty to make it. Ordering and then overseeing the destruction of evidence to that effect is actionable.

Same old, same old.

[SlurpingGreen]

I was assaulted once by a kid twice my size in middle school. He was harassing a group of 5 girls, taking their bags and throwing them on the ground. I asked him, "Why are you being such an asshole? Why don't you just leave them alone?" He punched me in the back of the head when I turned to walk away, then took about 12 swings at my face while sitting on top of me. I never hit him at all, just deflected most of his attacks.

The next day, the school administrator gave both of us detention for a week. He said I shouldn't have used foul language.

I think there's a kind of deep inability on the part of adults to distinguish between rough play that got a little out of hand and a bully who's completely out of control. I can't see any school policy fixing that.

you want school shootings?

[nimbius]

because this is how you get school shootings. Or in Pennsylvanias recent case, school stabbings. When you strip a person of their safety, and offer them no recourse, they become hard. They become determined with nothing to lose. They adopt these horriffic scorched earth tactics because nothing you say or do is consistent or fair, so the outcome and result of their actions is no longer relevant. And the saddest part is in the aftermath.

people will wonder how they could have helped, what caused it, and why this happened. Gun nuts will bark about bullet proof blackboards and guns for teachers. Parents will entirely miss the point and call for tougher gun laws. No one will stop to consider students or kids for that matter as real people.

How icky.

[thesandtiger]

Is anyone else creeped out by how hopeful some of the posters here seem to be about the possibility of the kid "going Columbine"?

I get it that many slashdotters feel they were abused by bullies when they were kids, but the fact is pretty much every kid ever has been picked on (and has bullied another kid) at some time in their childhood. Yeah, it sucks, and yeah, the authorities here should absolutely be taken out of positions where they can commit future injustices like this, but in no way, shape or form should revenge fantasies like "going Columbine" be casually thrown about as if yeah, that's something reasonable.

Yeah, it sucks that some of you were horribly treated when you were young, but get the fuck over it already. If you still get overwraught to the point where you fantasize about killing people at shit that happened 10 years ago on a playground, you have problems and you need to address them.