Brickbat: Respect My Authority!

Nedra Miller said she let officials at Florida's River Ridge High School know weeks earlier that her son would not be at school one day because of an appointment with an orthodontist. Her son, William, made the mistake of dropping a friend off at school that day. And when William tried to leave, a Pasco County Sheriff's Office deputy and Cindy Bond, a school discipline assistant, tried to block him as he drove away. The confrontation was caught on the deputy's body camera. "You're gonna get shot you come another f---ing foot closer to me," the deputy said as the boy tried to drive around them. "You run into me, you'll get f---ing shot." William wasn't shot, but he was suspended and later expelled from school. The sheriff's office is refusing to identify the deputy, saying they can't release his name while the incident is under investigation. It did confirm he's still working at the school.

Comments

[IceTrey]

Evil: profoundly immoral and wicked
Cops are evil.

[Wise Old Fool]

Nice blanket accusation you got there. Too bad it's incorrect, there are tons of good cops.

[squid_hunt]

TONS.

[Fist of Etiquette]

At least throughout he maintained professionalism and decorum in front of children.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

It's a shame his cussing was such simple-minded fixation. He could have used it as a teaching moment for new and interesting swearing a la R. Lee Ermey.

[TangoDelta]

That's a little harsh. He was flexing his mental muscle as far as it could go. Some folk simply aren't as eloquent and few are as intelligent as R. Lee was.

[Jerryskids]

I know if I were that kid I would be traumatized by that incident. I'd have nightmares and depression and sudden panic attacks and a phobic fear of not only going to school but even leaving my house. It would affect my whole life, a whole shitload of pain and suffering and mental anguish from that incident.

[Conchfritters]

I love the expression on the kids face - looks like: “OMG a cop just pulled a gun on me for going to the dentist!” Which, technically, is exactly what happened.

[icannotread]

You know that he's going to be brushing his teeth from now on.

[DatCrazyMongoose]

Umm....that was a radio in his hand.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Authority corrupts. The more that is granted, the more you will be treated like a thug for no good reason.

[lap83]

The cop would, of course, have no way of knowing that the kid had an orthodontist appointment. The problem is that society has gotten to a place where we think kids need to be forced into school at gunpoint. Yet people are surprised when stuff like this happens.

[Cyto]

The whole thing makes no sense. The kid is old enough to drive. That makes him old enough to decide if he wants to make a quick run to starbucks before school, or run back and get his homework. I have no clue what this administrator was thinking. She sets it in motion and therefore authorizes the police to enforce her orders.

And I also have not one clue what the school system and police department could be thinking. There is no scenario where threatening to shoot someone to prevent them from leaving a parking lot is OK.

The school owes him an apology, the administrator should be disciplined and the officer should never be allowed to hold a weapon again.

The kid was right. He had no right to detain him, he said he wasn't detaining him, then proceeded to detain him.

I assume he had even taken the unnecessary step of telling them that he had an appointment before the video rolls. So she knows she's being a douche and is just enjoying being a douche to prove she has power.

The whole thing is stupid. And I get that people can make mistakes in the heat of the moment. But the school system backed up the mistakes. That's what they almost always do. And that's why you should never give government 1 single iota of power they don't absolutely have to have. Because they will abuse it at any opportunity. It is simply human nature. (yes, I'm putting this stupid "truancy" dispute in the same bucket as FISA warrants)

[darkflame]

get the lawsuits ready. That's easily an illegal seizure by gov't employees... Time to get that college tuition paid off.

[squid_hunt]

I hope so. And screw the taxpayers that hired these thugs.

[Idle Hands]

The deputy and the administrator basically escalated the situation to saying they'd kill him and than trolled and tried to bait the kid into giving them an excuse to possibly assault and kill him.

[JesseAz]

How dare that kid help someone get to school. He is in no position to help someone else, that is the governments job. He should be arrested.

[Jerryskids]

Speaking of "Respect My Authority!", I'm being ordered to be outraged by the outrage manufacturers over Bloomberg talking shit about farmers and how they're all stupid morons out poking around in the dirt because they're too stupid to figure out how to turn on a computer. I've seen a hundred damn times the same little isolated clip of Bloomberg saying this, but I've only seen one expanded clip that gives a little context to what he actually said and what he meant that the outrage manufacturers accidentally let slip through.

“The agrarian society lasted 3,000 years and we could teach processes. I could teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer. It’s a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn. You could learn that. Then we had 300 years of the industrial society. You put the piece of metal on the lathe, you turn the crank in the direction of the arrow and you can have a job. And we created a lot of jobs. At one point, 98 percent of the world worked in agriculture, now it’s 2 percent in the United States.”

“Now comes the information economy and the information economy is fundamentally different because it’s built around replacing people with technology and the skill sets that you have to learn are how to think and analyze, and that is a whole degree level different. You have to have a different skill set, you have to have a lot more gray matter. It’s not clear the teachers can teach or the students can learn, and so the challenge of society of finding jobs for these people, who we can take care of giving them a roof over their head and a meal in their stomach and a cell phone and a car and that sort of thing. But the thing that is the most important, that will stop them from setting up a guillotine someday, is the dignity of a job.”

I'm certainly no fan of Bloomberg, but I'm no fan of Fake News either and this is pure Fake News. You can quibble with Bloomberg over how long ago human beings switched from a hunter/gatherer society to an agrarian society and what percentage of Americans were ever farmers, but he wasn't claiming farmers were stupid morons. He was pointing out that once upon a time stupid morons could be farmers but that now they can't because you need skills to be a farmer these days - the exact opposite of what the Fake News is saying he said. And then he went on to say that once upon a time stupid morons could be factory workers but that now they can't because you need skills to operate the complicated computerized machinery we're now using these days in manufacturing. And if stupid morons can't get jobs as farmers or factory workers, they sure as hell aren't going to get jobs in the knowledge industry - and that's a big fucking problem because we absolutely need to find jobs for stupid morons because they tend to get poky and stabby when they get frustrated and angry over the lack of opportunity to do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay.

Is he wrong? Should I be outraged over what he said? Or does he not have a good point?

[Jerryskids]

And I would add that this is the problem with the idea of free shit for everybody - it's welfare. Most people don't like the idea of welfare, it's degrading and dehumanizing to be treated as a helpless charity case because you're incapable of taking care of yourself. Most people need a sense of self-worth, of being a contributing member of society, of pulling their own weight. They don't want charity, they want an opportunity to be self-reliant. "A hand up, not a hand-out" as they say - the difference between giving a man a fish and teaching him how to fish. There's not a big demand for fishermen these days, but you'd better find something these people can be taught to do because otherwise they start acting less like people and more like animals.

[Cyto]

Yeah, it is a tough problem. Because he is right about one thing... if you have a mass of unemployable people, you are gonna get crime and violence. So how do you mitigate that?

Well, the west has decided that giving them a handout works. And in many situations that probably works. We use unemployment insurance like that - a bridge to tide you over.

But if the safety net is too cushy - a certain percentage will just stay in the net. And they'll resent it the entire time.

[Rich]

if you have a mass of unemployable people, you are gonna get crime and violence. So how do you mitigate that?

Corvid-19?

[ElvisIsReal]

Well, the thing is because of this technology, it should be getting easier and easier to get by. Instead we have the Fed ruining the value of our dollar (meaning also your labor and savings) and making it harder and harder to get by. It's no wonder that working people are falling behind when we're printing money and handing it to the well-connected.

[Cyto]

Agrarian society did not last 3000 years. Agriculture dates back 12,000 years.

No, that's not my only quibble.

[Cyto]

yes, he was wrong.

Agriculture is not "put a seed in the hole". There is a lot of knowledge that goes into running a farm - and that was true 3,000 years ago. It would be very easy to starve to death as a farmer at any point in human history.

[GroundTruth]

This!

Apparently the good mayor of Gotham isn't even a gardener. Anyone who has tried to do anything involving plants knows there are many more ways to do things wrong than to do them right. I've been at it for many years, and I have yet to get a garden that looks like a seed catalog.

I get his point ( that we need new skills) (in addition to the old, I would add) but it seems that Blumchen has a pretty severe case of foot-in-mouth disease.

[mad.casual]

It would be very easy to starve to death as a farmer at any point in human history.

Also, much to Bloomberg's oblivious idiocy, it's easy to starve to death as a machinist or any one of a dozen IT specialties. Some buggy whip manufacturers learned to make brake pads, some COBOL programmers learned to be salesmen, some didn't.

[Jerryskids]

Yes, which is why it took over half the population to feed everybody, because farming was so incredibly efficient back in the old days. To be a good farmer you had to be able to analyze the soil to know the proper mix of fertilizers to apply, analyze the crops to know the proper mix of herbicides and pesticides to apply, you had to be able to service and maintain your tractors and combines and crop dusters and irrigators and all that shit, plus the basics of understanding crop rotation and soil preservation and the futures markets on corn and wheat and soybeans.

Or you could just go get a shitload of peasants to poke at the dirt with sticks and rocks and hope for the best until somebody showed up to invent the moldboard plow and the traction engine and the sciences of genetics and plant biology and the mechanics of soil depletion.

Jesus Christ, are you seriously arguing that the average feudal serf knew a damn thing about agriculture compared to what your average farmer knows today? Why do you think there were frequent famines and it took the majority of the population working in the fields to produce enough surplus food to feed the minority who weren't?

[mad.casual]

Jesus Christ, are you seriously arguing that the average feudal serf knew a damn thing about agriculture compared to what your average farmer knows today?

No. The argument is that the average feudal serf and feudal lord were no more disparate with regard to planting, farming, and genetics than Bloomberg's moron poking the dirt with a stick today and Bloomberg.

The moron with the stick has the good sense to know what he can control and accept the things he can't, Bloomberg doesn't appear to have such low-level common sense.

[Cyto]

And there isn't actually a huge percentage of the population that is stupid morons and cannot be educated.

Maybe only top 20% can be successful software engineers. But somebody's gotta build reports (inside dig).

There's still trash collectors, janitors, scut work at the construction site....

And if you can't cut it there, there's always working for a government agency.

[lap83]

Is he wrong?
Yes, fuck him.

He was pointing out that once upon a time stupid morons could be farmers

Do coastal elites take classes to be that combination of breathtaking stupidity and arrogance or is it genetic?

Morons can't cultivate crops unless they're assisting someone smarter and more capable. This idea that everyone was a moron until smarter people ( like Bloomberg? lol) came along and showed everyone a better way is one of the biggest myths the intelligentsia loves to push.

I'm not upset by his comment, though. It will be entertaining to watch him get eviscerated.

[Jerryskids]

Did you actually read Bloomberg's comments? He never said these people were stupid morons, it's the Fake News Outrage Peddlers that are claiming he called them stupid morons. It's the "let's you and him fight" stirring up shit because that's what sells, and the stupid morons are the ones who can't see that the people telling them they should be outraged are the ones you should actually be outraged about.

[mad.casual]

Is he wrong? Should I be outraged over what he said? Or does he not have a good point?

Yes. Wrong and stupid.

"And then, for no particular reason at all, the French peasantry set up the guillotine..."

[Brandybuck]

When I was in high school we had an open campus. It was closed a few years later, walled in with a seven foot fence, but when I was there it was open. Leaving campus was no big deal. You needed a hall pass (or a scholastic card) but it was no big deal. Cop could give you a ticket if you didn't have one, but that was it. And even then they didn't, I don't think.

People worked off campus, during school hours. Work study programs. Or heading to the public library. Hell, half the school left campus for lunch! Two drive-ins off campus were packed during lunch. The cops didn't care. It was lunch!

And gettng that hall pass was simplicity. "I need to go to the dentist". Bam, pass was written.

Fast forward six years and I'm a substitute teacher at my alma mater. Closed campus. There's a seven foot fence around the place. Nice looking fence, not chainlink, but still a fence. A ban against wearing rock t-shirts, or Jesus t-shirts. They were once step shy of actual school uniforms. Work/study programs still existing, but you had to check in and out at the main gate. Which had a metal detector in a school that had NEVER had any weapon incidents.

Why the majority of parents haven't pulled their students out of public schools is beyond me.

[mad.casual]

The confrontation was caught on the deputy's body camera. "You're gonna get shot you come another f—ing foot closer to me," the deputy said as the boy tried to drive around them. "You run into me, you'll get f—ing shot."

Uh... School Shooter! Right there! Everybody else is seeing this right? The guy is unequivocally behaving as a school shooter.

The sheriff's office is refusing to identify the deputy, saying they can't release his name while the incident is under investigation. It did confirm he's still working at the school.

Remember the last kid to threaten to shoot one of his fellow classmates? He stayed in class in relative anonymity until they fully investigated whether his comments were an actual threat or just a joke; that's how it turned out right?

FFS - How this officer's head isn't on a pike is beyond belief.

[squid_hunt]

The kid and his parents should have no problem identifying the ass. You know, if there are any real journalists around, maybe give them a call.

[TrickyVic (old school)]

""The sheriff's office is refusing to identify the deputy,"'

I'm going with Deputy Bag O'Dicks.

[Colossal Douchebag]

This is all well and good, but what does the union say?

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[Unicorn Abattoir]

Pasco County. This isn't the first time they've appeared on the webpages of Reason.

[crufus]

I looked at the linked article and I couldn't believe all the comments from the cop sucking assholes.

I wonder if the sheriff has someone assigned to spin cop positive comments on social media.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Lots of departments have a narcotics squad and a vice squad, so why not have a CYA squad?

[ElvisIsReal]

I read yesterday that soccer teams do that, it wouldn't surprise me at all to think government agencies do it.

[squid_hunt]

Usually when you have a negative article on cops the union shows up to spin. It's pretty obvious because there's about 4-5 brand new faces yelling about the nobility of cops and name-calling everyone else with an assumed authority in their 'voice'.

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