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WCSC reported that a South Carolina High School student was arrested and suspended after writing about killing a dinosaur using a gun in a class assignment. Attorney David Aylor, who is representing 16-year-old Alex Stone, said his client's arrest over a creative writing assignment was "completely absurd," and is seeking to appeal the suspension. "Students were asked to write about themselves and a creative Facebook status update – just days into the new school year – and my client was arrested and suspended after a school assignment."
Stone said he and his classmates were told in class to write a few sentences about themselves, and a "status" as if it was a Facebook page. Stone said in his "status" he wrote a fictional story that involved the words "gun" and "take care of business."
"I killed my neighbor's pet dinosaur, and, then, in the next status I said I bought the gun to take care of the business"
“I could understand if they made him rewrite it because he did have ‘gun’ in it. But a pet dinosaur?” said his mother Karen Gray. “I mean first of all, we don’t have dinosaurs anymore. Second of all, he’s not even old enough to buy a gun.”
Additional coverage here.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aclarke on Friday August 29 2014, @12:53PM
According to the police, something very different happened:
Translation: Everything spun ridicoulously out of control due to some keywords in an assignment. Apparently the 16 year old was the only one smart enough to realize this, and he got (justifiably, IMHO) irate. He refused to back down in front of authority figures, and since the police took that as a pissing match and they're the ones with the guns and handcuffs, they arrested him.
Maybe the school wasn't being disturbed until the police showed up and started searching the kid's locker for a gun after he said he'd killed his pet dinosaur? Did they search is back yard for the 100m wide hole where he stashed the body?
As a teenager I got SO SICK of arbitrary shows of authority. It's a wonder any of us turn out as well as we do, and it's a wonder that so many of us then go on to behave like asshole gods as adults.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Friday August 29 2014, @01:00PM
That sounds like exactly what happened,
The cops who decided to arrest a sixteen-year-old for giving them attitude are a complete waste of air.
I wish the kid's lawyer all the best in showing the cops' superiors that hiring punks and giving them free rein is a costly mistake.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Silentknyght on Friday August 29 2014, @01:13PM
Agreed.
Disorderly conduct seems like such bullshit. If you don't do exactly what the officer says---no matter what they say or ask you to do---they charge you with that. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the police force, in general, know & understand it's complete bullshit but use teach other officers to use it anyhow because it offers them such wide latitude to deal with virtually anything.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheGratefulNet on Friday August 29 2014, @02:12PM
'you can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride'.
you can't fight cops. they always will have the upper hand. fighting with them is futile.
what you CAN and SHOULD do is avoid giving them more room to fuck with you and take the fight to court where you DO have a chance to win. slim, but at least its in semi public view and you can't get broken bones while defending your position in court.
now, you need money to go to court and that's the failure of our system. if you can afford it, you have a chance to teach the bad cop a lesson; but you have to have quite a bit of money saved up to afford lawyer fees.
if there was a paypal fund, i'd donate to this kid's cause. this shit pisses me off. cops are now the bad guys in our society and that's such a damned shame ;( if I encounter a random 'scary guy' in the street, I don't worry so much. otoh, if I see a cop, I do worry; they have the ability to cause great harm to any of us and they so often do, these days, it seems.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Friday August 29 2014, @02:38PM
cops are now the bad guys in our society and that's such a damned shame ;( if I encounter a random 'scary guy' in the street, I don't worry so much. otoh, if I see a cop, I do worry; they have the ability to cause great harm to any of us and they so often do, these days, it seems.
See that bad guy has something to lose. If he mugs you, he might be shot, stabbed, or beat up. It's at least a possibility. He also might get caught and go to jail.
While cops do have to worry about being shot, stabbed, or beat up, they do not have to worry about going to jail. So, if they take the time to determine you are not a lethal threat, they know they no longer have anything to fear from that encounter. This is what we must change. There should be a disorderly conduct for LEO, and it should be a criminal record and not just a suspension and not just documented in his employment file.
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mcgrew on Friday August 29 2014, @01:45PM
As a teenager I got SO SICK of arbitrary shows of authority.
The bad news is it seems to be worse now than it was when i was a teen. If something like this [slashdot.org] happened today they'd send a SWAT team. I was able to talk my way out of punishment.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday August 29 2014, @03:37PM
Heh, I liked the story.
Although I'm not sure whether I'd use the word "incompetent" to describe the teachers (maybe "close-minded"?) I'll admit it definitely sounds plausible.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Friday August 29 2014, @02:34PM
You seem to be reading a lot into "continued to be disruptive" - i.e., that he was only reasonably disruptive under the circumstances and that handcuffing him and arresting him wasn't warranted.
How do we know he didn't start physically pushing people around, or throwing chairs around the room?
There's a wide range of possible levels of doucebaggery from both the cops and the kid here.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by aclarke on Friday August 29 2014, @03:44PM
Throwing chairs around? The guy should be promoted to management!
You're right that I was reading a lot into it. It's conjecture, but it's the most reasonable explanation I personally have after reading the two articles. Doesn't make it true though.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Friday August 29 2014, @04:07PM
We can make a good guess that if he had actually pushed anyone or thrown a chair the police would have tried to call it assault. Also, the press would have gleefully detailed it.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday August 29 2014, @04:14PM
There's no story in "kid gets arrested for perfectly clear reason."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Friday August 29 2014, @02:58PM
"Very irate"? Is it possible to become slightly irate? People always try to make everything sound as dramatic as possible :P
It's news like this that pushes me towards the Aneristic Delusion. While the act itself is done by the authorities (arresting him), and thus "orderful," it's an arbitrary-sounding decision to get all butthurt about it in the first place. And coming in, confronting him, and then arresting him on the justification of his reaction is dishonest.
Finally, as has been pointed out before, when there's enough rules that you're functionally always breaking at least one, they can arrest you for a "legitimate" purpose whenever they want.
Hail Eris
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday August 29 2014, @03:02PM
*And coming in, confronting him, and then arresting him on the justification of his reaction (if they didn't have a valid reason to arrest him in mind when they got there) is dishonest.
Don't our police forces have anything less pointless to waste our tax dollars on than arresting schoolkids who pose no threat to anyone? I'm recalling that article not overly long ago about the girl who got pressured into violating her constitutional rights by a police officer in the principal's office without them even notifying her parents.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday August 29 2014, @06:21PM
It is akin to saying "very dead".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Friday August 29 2014, @10:46PM
The latter part of that isn't a surprise: bullies will be bullies, and a lot of the same people that were assholes as kids grow up to be assholes as adults. You also get people that were bullied as kids growing into spiteful adults that get a kick out of "getting even", too. Unfortunately, positions like law enforcement attract people like that, because it gives them power they wouldn't have otherwise, so things like this aren't as surprising as they should be.
I'm not saying that every cop is bad, there are some awesome ones out there that do it because they still care about the "protect and serve" part, but there are just as many bullies that get into the work because they get a kick out of the power they have over others. You also see this to some extent with security guards, which sometimes attracts the bullies that can't cut it in law enforcement.
For example, at a job I had years ago, there was this one older, ex-cop security guard that I had a rather unpleasant encounter with once. I kept seeing him hanging out by a dumpster smoking, rather than walking the property like he was supposed to be. Didn't know the guy, so I didn't say anything, but after about an hour or so another guard joined him. I knew this guard well enough that we would tease each other for stuff, so when I saw him, I made a bit of a joke about it. "Great job," I told him, "nobody's going to be stealing that trash bin while you guys are on the job. Shame about the rest of the property, though."
The guard I knew laughed, able to appreciate a bit of ribbing. He knew they were slacking off. The other one, though, wasn't amused. It turn out that, due to being an ex-cop, he was the only one of the guards that was allowed to carry a firearm, and when I made my joke, his response was to reach for it.
That's right, this ex-cop security guard's reaction to a joke I made to another person was to pull a gun on me. The other guard stopped him, so I didn't get to find out if he was actually going to act on that instinct, but it was pretty telling of his nature, regardless. I found out later that he was trigger-happy and it wasn't the first incident, which is probably why he was an ex-cop in the first place.