Early Time Change Costs Kid 12 Days In Jail
from the daylight-stupid-time dept
The early start on daylight savings time passed last month with little impact, both in terms of the predicted aclockalypse as well as the energy savings it was supposed to generate. However, the shift did have some severe consequences for one Pennsylvania 15-year-old: 12 days in the slammer. The kid made a call in to his school's recorded information line in the early hours of March 11, just a few minutes before the hot line supposedly received a bomb threat. School officials, in their haste to find the caller, matched his cell phone number to a list of callers to the hotline that morning, and immediately pointed the finger at him. His phone correctly recorded the call time as 3:12 am, which was apparently close enough for them to the 3:17 am entry in the system's call logs for the bomb threat. However, the officials hadn't set the clock in their call system properly, meaning the bomb threat came in more than an hour after the kid's innocent call, and it took nearly two weeks of the kid sitting in juvenile detention for somebody to figure it out. The real culprit here is somebody's stupidity -- because even if the time change hadn't occurred, the call times still didn't match up by five minutes.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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I smell lawsuit
Find the nameless "school officials" name them publicly have them explain their stupidity, demand an apology and them fire their sorry asses for incompetence. Of course, sue the school district as it has deep pockets.
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For the rest of his life - someone can Google him
12 days in detention! Was he being held without bail - or was his parents unable to afford bail?
Did they ever find the caller who made that bomb threat one hour later?
Why did it take the D.A. so long to get that cell phone's records, almost two weeks?
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Re: For the rest of his life - someone can Google
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Hope he wins in civil court
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Post 9/11 they are treating bomb threats as terroirsm.
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My Lawyer would have a field day
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The Cup is Half Full
This is a lesson this young man will never forget!
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Re: The Cup is Half Full
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Re: Re: The Cup is Half Full
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Re: The Cup is Half Full
Another crime?? He hasn't commited a crime in the first place! Your last name wouldn't happen to be O'Reilly would it?
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Re: The Cup is Half Full
And, which criminal justice system are you referring to? The one I'm familiar with certainly does not discourage recidivism.
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Re: The Cup is Half Full
"another" crime? What crime did he commit?
That's like asking "When did you stop beating your wife?" to someone who never did.
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Re: The Cup is Half Full
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Is 3.12am the time from his phone or from the log?
If it's only the latter, mr. Webb has a valid case against these so-called investigators.
Because they clearly didn't do their job at all (which is to investigate)
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Re: Is 3.12am the time from his phone or from the
2:12am - The (wrong) time logged by the school phone system..
3:12am - the (correct) time when he called.
3:17am - the (wrong) time logged by the school phone system..
4:17am - the (correct) time the bomb threat call was actually made.
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Times
I'm not excusing the investigators for screwing up like this, but I doubt I'd balk at a 5 minute difference, either. Of course, I wouldn't stop investigating at that point, I'd verify whether the damn thing was right before I trusted the records.
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3:12 am!
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Re: 3:12 am!
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Another crime? He didn't commit a crime in the first place!
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School Night
I assume it was not a malicious reason, but I also wonder though, why would he call the school info line at 3:00 AM on a Saturday night (early Sunday morning for purists). He must be a real nerd.
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Re: School Night
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Heil Bush!
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They are so...
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Kafka meets Orwell
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Kafka meets Orwell
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juvinalhall
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