A lot of misdemeanor language is intentionally vague, to allow for officer interpretation of the situation. As in every walk of life, some take that liberty further than others.
The justice system is designed to handle this sort of misapplication intelligently, it probably won't come to anything.
hardly provides any more detail. What is the basis for the disorderly conduct charge?
AFTER EDIT: Thanks for the helpful comments. It sounds like the kid in question might be able to get the charges dismissed, with help from a competent constitutional lawyer.
>What is the basis for the disorderly conduct charge?
absence of any other vaguely formulated charge that could have been stretched enough to cover this case. I mean, if the ranking list was factually incorrect, they would bring a libel.
a) A person commits disorderly conduct when he knowingly:
(1) Does any act in such unreasonable manner as to alarm or disturb another and to provoke a breach of the peace
So, instead of cracking down drug dealers and gangs they decide to arrest a minor for making a list of how hot/ugly the girls are at his school? Glad to see the police force there is hard at work.
existence of drug dealers and gangs supports and promotes the police force and power increase. Getting habit of freely expressing your non conformist opinions is a path to subversion of existing power (dis)balance.
Really? You think this is part of a careful long-term plan, motivated by a fundamental characteristic of municipal power structure?
I would lean toward 'officer applying vaguely worded rules to make the law behave as he feels it ought to', but yours is certainly easier to get behind. Fuck the man!
I'm sure many of them are. But equally many are mere functions of human nature.
The long-term impacts of individual actions on the power of the police-force as a whole are both non-obvious and very slow. In particular, I really doubt that the social pressure to empower the institution, transmitted down the chain of command, has more impact on police officers than the violence and abuse they witness first- or second-hand.
I think this is an incredibly important point. It's perfectly possible for each actor in the system to behave in the way that he believes is right and proper, yet for the overall effect of the system to be evil.
I'm sure that this is the explanation for much of the bad that we see, and as a result, those -- especially in politics -- who base their actions on demagoguery, attacking the individual parts of the system, are really doing nothing to help.
If you draw some line and say "we are only going to work on crimes more serious than this", you are in effect saying that anyone is free to do the crimes that don't make the cut.
That would be a pretty crappy society in which to live. It's much better to devote some effort to the less serious crimes too. The more serious ones should be the priority.
Reasonable point; but I think one should draw a line between things that obviously are crimes, and offenses that stretch the definition of 'crime' beyond recognition, as in this case.
No, it would be a great society in which to live because you'd have a reasonable number of crimes and you'd have a fair chance of knowing if you were committing them. As it stands now there are an indeterminate amount of crimes specified in such a way that if you upset someone representing the state they will find one to apply to you.
When the contestants are entered against their will and described using racial slurs?
The charge in this case was unreasonable, but on the other hand so was the kid's behaviour. If a TV show did pick on fifty random women from the street and start pointing out the flaws in their appearances then people would be rightfully upset about that too...
Offensive and illegal are distinct concepts. Being offensive isn't against the law - if it were, there are plenty of racial supremacists who are far higher priority arrests than some kid playing Facemash.
I don't see how you and the comment your are responding to are in disagreement.
Edit: Since people feel the need to downvote, I'll go into detail...
> The charge in this case was unreasonable, but on the other hand so was the
> kid's behaviour.
Translation: The kid shouldn't have been arrested, but it's also not like he was minding his own business when a bunch of government goons just decided to randomly pick on him either.
> If a TV show did pick on fifty random women from the street and start
> pointing out the flaws in their appearances then people would be rightfully
> upset about that too...
Translation: There is a difference between people volunteering themselves to be
judged (and possibly trashed) in public, and someone who has not volunteered
(and would rather not participate in such a thing).
Note that none of these things promotes the idea that offensive and illegal are
married concepts.
I don't disagree with you at all about the kid's behaviour. I just feel that it's odd to be surprised when kids do things like this, given the example provided by us adults.
> If a TV show did pick on fifty random women from the street and start pointing out the flaws in their appearances then people would be rightfully upset about that too...
Isn't this exactly what entertainment shows do? I suppose they're not random women, but celebrities, but...
> If a TV show did pick on fifty random women from the street and start pointing out the flaws in their appearances then people would be rightfully upset about that too...
So?
Do you really think that it should be illegal for me to pick 50 random people and say "I think that they're ugly because {reason}"? Should it be illegal for me to pick 10 people I don't like and say the same?
Opinons are like assholes. Everyone's got them. How about not worrying about other people's assholes?
I've got to assume that the headline is wrong; it's not the Facebook page that got him into trouble, but that he passed his list around while at school.
I think there's no question that comments on a Facebook page are protected speech.
>The list ranked 50 female students and in describing them, rated their body parts and used racial slurs. The teen also is being accused of printing out the list and passing it around during lunch periods at the high school on Jan. 14, the Tribune reported.
ie, creating and distributing what amounts to hate-speech. This goes much further than a hot-or-not list, rather definitively landing on the abuse side of the line. Not completely definitively, as I don't know the contents, nor the culture of the area, but it seems to be pretty clear from a legal perspective.
I was a judicial clerk on the Minnesota Supreme Court when it ruled on that case. If I remember correctly [checking references, I see I do], the United States Supreme Court reversed the Minnesota Supreme Court in that case, being especially zealous to guard federally guaranteed individual rights.
The St. Paul Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance was struck down both because it was overbroad, proscribing both "fighting words" and protected speech, and because the regulation was "content-based," proscribing only activities which conveyed messages concerning particular topics. Judgment of the Supreme Court of Minnesota reversed.
Well yeah. "protected speech" and "[specific] content-based" are good reasons to strike it down. Only defining certain things as offensive enough is just asking to become obsolete and have people toe the line. But note that "fighting words" are specifically not protected, not that it particularly applies to the OP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaplinsky_v._New_Hampshire
Meanwhile, we have successful cases for harassment. Are you arguing that verbal harassment is constitutionally protected?
Are you arguing that verbal harassment is constitutionally protected?
No, but hot-or-not with a little bit of racial innuendo doesn't sound like harassment to me. It just sounds offensive.
The comment I was replying to took the position that it "makes sense" to arrest American citizens for "disorderly conduct" simply because they engaged in offensive hate speech.
People have been doing this since the beginning of time. There was a south park episode about "the girls" having a list like this. There was a "Recess" (another cartoon, this one geared towards adolescents) with the same plot.
It's a common theme because exactly this behavior has been happening forever.
This type of thing is part of childhood. It sucks, and the kid should be ostracized by his peers for it, not locked in a cage. You're not going to be able to legislate social interactions between kids, and you shouldn't be trying.
/I was teased relentlessly as a kid. It sucked, but nobody was arrested for it, thank god; we were kids.
Mark Zuckerberg: I need you.
Eduardo Saverin: I'm here for you.
Mark Zuckerberg: No, I need the algorithm you used to rank chess players.
Eduardo Saverin: Are you OK?
Mark Zuckerberg: We're ranking girls.
Some get billions while others get arrested... yeah, I'm being cheeky.
44 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 70.7 ms ] threadThe justice system is designed to handle this sort of misapplication intelligently, it probably won't come to anything.
http://triblocal.com/oak-park-river-forest/2011/05/10/studen...
hardly provides any more detail. What is the basis for the disorderly conduct charge?
AFTER EDIT: Thanks for the helpful comments. It sounds like the kid in question might be able to get the charges dismissed, with help from a competent constitutional lawyer.
absence of any other vaguely formulated charge that could have been stretched enough to cover this case. I mean, if the ranking list was factually incorrect, they would bring a libel.
http://www.chieftain.com/news/local/article_5eb6b458-f637-52...
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/fulltext.asp?DocName=07...
a) A person commits disorderly conduct when he knowingly: (1) Does any act in such unreasonable manner as to alarm or disturb another and to provoke a breach of the peace
I would lean toward 'officer applying vaguely worded rules to make the law behave as he feels it ought to', but yours is certainly easier to get behind. Fuck the man!
The long-term impacts of individual actions on the power of the police-force as a whole are both non-obvious and very slow. In particular, I really doubt that the social pressure to empower the institution, transmitted down the chain of command, has more impact on police officers than the violence and abuse they witness first- or second-hand.
I'm sure that this is the explanation for much of the bad that we see, and as a result, those -- especially in politics -- who base their actions on demagoguery, attacking the individual parts of the system, are really doing nothing to help.
That would be a pretty crappy society in which to live. It's much better to devote some effort to the less serious crimes too. The more serious ones should be the priority.
The charge in this case was unreasonable, but on the other hand so was the kid's behaviour. If a TV show did pick on fifty random women from the street and start pointing out the flaws in their appearances then people would be rightfully upset about that too...
Edit: Since people feel the need to downvote, I'll go into detail...
Translation: The kid shouldn't have been arrested, but it's also not like he was minding his own business when a bunch of government goons just decided to randomly pick on him either. Translation: There is a difference between people volunteering themselves to be judged (and possibly trashed) in public, and someone who has not volunteered (and would rather not participate in such a thing).Note that none of these things promotes the idea that offensive and illegal are married concepts.
Grandparent said:
>So, when are they going to arrest the makers of America's Next Top Model?
Parent said:
>When the contestants are entered against their will and described using racial slurs?
Isn't this exactly what entertainment shows do? I suppose they're not random women, but celebrities, but...
So?
Do you really think that it should be illegal for me to pick 50 random people and say "I think that they're ugly because {reason}"? Should it be illegal for me to pick 10 people I don't like and say the same?
Opinons are like assholes. Everyone's got them. How about not worrying about other people's assholes?
I think there's no question that comments on a Facebook page are protected speech.
>The list ranked 50 female students and in describing them, rated their body parts and used racial slurs. The teen also is being accused of printing out the list and passing it around during lunch periods at the high school on Jan. 14, the Tribune reported.
ie, creating and distributing what amounts to hate-speech. This goes much further than a hot-or-not list, rather definitively landing on the abuse side of the line. Not completely definitively, as I don't know the contents, nor the culture of the area, but it seems to be pretty clear from a legal perspective.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._A._V._v._City_of_St._Paul
The St. Paul Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance was struck down both because it was overbroad, proscribing both "fighting words" and protected speech, and because the regulation was "content-based," proscribing only activities which conveyed messages concerning particular topics. Judgment of the Supreme Court of Minnesota reversed.
Well yeah. "protected speech" and "[specific] content-based" are good reasons to strike it down. Only defining certain things as offensive enough is just asking to become obsolete and have people toe the line. But note that "fighting words" are specifically not protected, not that it particularly applies to the OP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaplinsky_v._New_Hampshire
Meanwhile, we have successful cases for harassment. Are you arguing that verbal harassment is constitutionally protected?
No, but hot-or-not with a little bit of racial innuendo doesn't sound like harassment to me. It just sounds offensive.
The comment I was replying to took the position that it "makes sense" to arrest American citizens for "disorderly conduct" simply because they engaged in offensive hate speech.
People have been doing this since the beginning of time. There was a south park episode about "the girls" having a list like this. There was a "Recess" (another cartoon, this one geared towards adolescents) with the same plot.
It's a common theme because exactly this behavior has been happening forever.
This type of thing is part of childhood. It sucks, and the kid should be ostracized by his peers for it, not locked in a cage. You're not going to be able to legislate social interactions between kids, and you shouldn't be trying.
/I was teased relentlessly as a kid. It sucked, but nobody was arrested for it, thank god; we were kids.