How My High School Destroyed An Immigrant Kid's Life Because He Drew The School's Mascot
from the blue-devils dept
Late last year, Pro Publica and the NY Times published an incredible, long and infuriating article, mostly about how a high school in NY destroyed an immigrant student's life, due to a mixture of moral panics about "MS-13" gang activity (whipped up by the federal government), over-aggressive policing within schools, and deeply troubling decisions by ICE. The story touches on a number of things that we normally write about -- and I've been stewing over writing a post for weeks. The topics herein are most frequently covered on this site by Tim Cushing, rather than me. But I took this article, because the high school at the center of the article, Huntington High School in Suffolk County, New York, is the high school I attended. It's the high school I went to for 4 years, and it's the high school where I gave a speech at graduation on the same football field you can see in one of the photos used to illustrate the story.
Everything about the article is infuriating in so many ways, that it's been difficult to figure out where to even start, but if we have to start someplace, let's start with this: the rise of embedding police into schools -- so-called School Resource Officers (SROs), who are employed by the local police, but whose "beat" is a school. Those officers report to the local police department and not the school, and can, and frequently do, have different priorities. We've long raised concerns about the increased policing of schools. Traditionally, schools handled their own disciplinary matters directly, within the school, with a focus on what was best for the learning environment of the students. They were not always good at this, but adding in an element where the end result could be criminal charges has always seemed misguided, and never more so than in this particular story and the case of "Alex" in the news story.
As the article notes, this trend of putting police in schools came about as a result of the original "famous" school shooting, the one in Columbine, which resulted in a variety of moral panics:
CONGRESS FIRST PROVIDED funding to bring full-time police officers into schools after the 1999 Columbine shooting. The number of these resource officers has doubled in the last decade, according to the National Association of School Resource Officers. Some 80 percent of high schools with more than 1,000 students have them. Schools with large populations of black and Latino students are more likely to have a resource officer than schools that are majority white. After the school shooting this year in Parkland, Florida, Trump called for police officers on every campus.
The position of school resource officer is a hybrid of conflicting roles: counselor, teacher and cop. “You have to have a person who can be caring and loving, but on the flip of a switch, turn into a law-enforcement warrior,” said Mac Hardy, a spokesman for the resource officers association.
That was a few years after I had graduated from the school. We had security guards, but they were not actually police. They didn't carry guns. They didn't have the power to arrest people. And they certainly didn't write up secret reports and send them to ICE leading to the deportation of students. But, apparently, we live in different times.
The second disturbing moral panic in the story is around gang activity, and specifically worries about MS-13.
Huntington High administrators say there has never been any MS-13 presence at the school. Unlike a number of other Long Island high schools, Huntington High says nothing about gang activity on its website; instead it offers guidance on throwing snowballs (“dangerous”) and keeping the hallways clear (“essential”).
That sounds about right. I'm sure there is some gang activity and some violence among students at the school. There was when I was there. I don't know how accurate it is, but I do remember when I was there being told that Huntington had been selected for some study because the population there was a pretty close match to the population diversity of the entire US. You had some rich families, some poor, and plenty of middle class. You had kids of every color and nationality. There were all sorts of groupings. The first time I saw a handgun was when a student (who I barely knew) was showing it off in his locker. There were fights and localized gangs, but hardly anything that crazy. It really doesn't sound like that much has changed. But, with the President and others continually exaggerating the idea of "MS-13 gangs," some police and some schools seem to have bought into the moral panic -- including the police sent to high schools. And even though some have suggested not going overboard with these things, that kind of nuance appears to have gotten lost.
In Suffolk County, although resource officers have been in the schools for two decades, their roles are expanding. In 2017, the Police Department sent officers into Huntington High and other schools to train administrators and teachers to identify gang members. The presentations focused on items like plastic rosaries, blue bandannas, anything with horns and the numbers 504 and 503, written in notebooks or on hands. One slide, which was used in community presentations, featured a group of young men holding up the Salvadoran flag at a Central American pride parade.
Some police officers cautioned that these symbols could also mean a student was being pressured to join or just trying to look cool, and that symbols can have multiple meanings. The same way metal-heads might draw a pentagram, or wannabe punks might draw the anarchy sign (a letter A inside a circle), some students might draw MS-13 symbols, unaware that adults could take those doodles as proof of membership. One law-enforcement officer told me about being called in by a Long Island school after a student drew the signs for both MS-13 and a rival Mexican gang in his notebook. The officer explained that a real gang member would not draw signs of a gang he wasn’t a member of — the drawings were not incriminating, just dumb. But not all officers were as clear about these nuances.
In the case of Alex, in this story, these kinds of warnings apparently created the problem. His problems started... because he wore some blue sneakers and a security guard thought it was a gang symbol:
Alex knew that MS-13 claimed Nike Cortez shoes and blue bandannas, so he made sure to avoid them. In the spring of 2017, school security guards stopped him as he walked down the hall wearing bright blue sneakers that his mother picked out for him as a gift for accompanying her to an immigration appointment in Queens. They said the blue of the shoes was the color of MS-13. They also searched Alex’s bag, on which he had written “504,” and found that he had doodled the name of his Honduran hometown and a devil with horns. Without explaining why, the security guards photographed the drawings before giving Alex his books back. When Alex got home that day, he buried the shoes in a closet and didn’t wear them again, even on weekends.
Even trying not to wear anything that looked like a gang member was interpreted... as being a gang member:
He stopped wearing his Honduran sports jerseys and his bracelet with the colors of the flag. He avoided talking to anyone he didn’t already know well. He and his two best friends decided it was safest to wear all black to school to avoid being tagged as gang members. But when they showed up in their matching outfits, the security guards said they couldn’t dress like that because it looked as if they were trying to start a gang.
Oh, and about that "devil" drawing mentioned above. That apparently was a key part of where everything went wrong for Alex. Except... the freaking school mascot is the "Blue Devil" and has been since at least well before I went to the school. And that's what the drawing was:
A few weeks later, on May 4, 2017, Alex was daydreaming as his algebra teacher introduced yet another indecipherable math operation. Without thinking, he began doodling in pencil on the school calculator he was using. When the bell rang, he handed it back in. That afternoon, security staff pulled Alex out of English class and took him to the office of Brenden Cusack, the principal. When Alex walked in, he saw the calculator on Cusack’s desk. Through an interpreter, Cusack asked Alex if he had drawn the number 504 on the case, and Alex said he had. Then Cusack produced the security guard’s photos of Alex’s drawing of devil horns and told him that the doodles signified MS-13.
Alex told me he would never have written on a wall or desk in this American school, and he knew it was wrong to draw on the school-issued calculator, but he was surprised to be taken to the principal for something he saw as a form of fidgeting. He tried to defend himself; the devil was the school mascot, after all, and 504 was the Honduras country code. “For the police, it’s a gang thing, but for us, it’s about being proud of your country,” he later told me. To Cusack, Alex’s distinctions didn’t seem to matter. The principal signed an incident report that said Alex had been caught in possession of “gang paraphernalia” and had been “defacing school property with gang signs.” Alex said that Cusack told him that he would be suspended for three days and that the doodles would be reported to Fiorillo.
Indeed, Alex appears to have been proud to show off his school spirit:
When his parents had extra money, he asked for a T-shirt, sweatshirt or backpack emblazoned with Huntington High’s name and its mascot, the blue devil with horns.
But combine all of this and you end up with him being deported as a supposed MS-13 member. First, as mentioned above, he was suspended for three days over this moral panic concerning his doodling of the school mascot. Then, apparently, the local school police officer, Andrew Fiorillo, was given the "incident report" about this, leading him to share that with his police department... which later (of course) shared the information with ICE.
It is most likely that as Alex sat at home during his suspension, Fiorillo received word of the doodling incident. While Fiorillo told me he didn’t remember details about Alex’s case, Huntington High has a policy of calling him in as soon as a staff member sees something that could be gang-related, according to a former principal, Carmela Leonardi, who retired in 2015. “The minute you see a gang sign, you need to intervene,” she said. “First, we’d try to get Drew involved, and say, ‘Have you seen this kid outside of the school talking to people?’ Because sometimes you do that in your notebook because you’re trying to seem cool, or because you’re a little idiot.”
Once Fiorillo knew about Alex’s drawings, he would have had to fill out a form and send the information on to the department’s criminal-intelligence unit. Although Suffolk County school resource officers are allowed to use their judgment about reporting infractions like marijuana possession or writing on school walls, their 2017 handbook requires them to write up gang activity, no matter how trivial. School resource officers are not detectives, and they don’t generally go further than passing on what they are told and observe themselves, according to Gerard Gigante, Suffolk County’s chief of detectives.
There's a lot more in the story, but a few months later, out of the blue, ICE showed up at his house and detained him. He had no idea why, but that was the last time he saw his home in Huntington.
... when the ICE agents came to Alex’s house on June 14, 2017, he was shocked into silence. It was only when they were far from Huntington, passing through unfamiliar, rundown Long Island towns, that he was able to get out the words to ask why he was being arrested. Alex says the agent first asked him to guess, and then told him, “We received a report a while ago from the school that you were a gang member, and that’s why.” Behind the tinted windows, his confusion resolved into fear for himself and his parents. “I felt so bad,” he said, “because I was thinking that my mom and dad were going to suffer.”
The article details how everyone just kept passing the buck, rather than taking responsibility for this weird game of disciplinary telephone, where a doodle of the school mascot eventually leads to deportation:
When I asked Fiorillo if he had known that his information was shared with ICE, he demurred. “I can’t speak to what they do, they being a federal government agency,” he said. “I don’t work with them.” Testimony at an immigration hearing by another Suffolk County school resource officer, George Politis of Brentwood High, whose information collected in school was found in ICE memos, shed some light on the process. Asked what happened after he wrote a report, he said: “It’s submitted, and then I don’t know how it’s disseminated from there. We enter it on a computer, and then it goes to whoever wants to read it within the department.”
Meanwhile, the high school -- my freaking high school -- did nothing to help. In fact, they appeared to actively block any attempt to help, with the school principal claiming they couldn't help for privacy reasons:
Palacios asked his client’s teachers for letters of support. But the teachers refused, saying the administration wouldn’t allow it. Alex’s father and the parents of many of the other detained Huntington students also approached their children’s teachers for letters and were also turned down. Cusack, the principal, told me he had been caught off guard by the requests and worried that having staff write about students to third parties would violate students’ privacy rights.
The article notes that the ACLU sued over a large number of similar situations (though, because Alex had just turned 19, and was no longer considered a minor, his case was not included). The result of that lawsuit showed that this combination of moral panics, school police officers, and ICE gone nuts, meant a bunch of kids being detained (and some deported) over little more than random accusations that some of them might have done something vaguely gang like.
The lead case involved a Brentwood High student, Noel (his middle name), who ICE said was dangerous because he had been seen with suspected MS-13 members and had written the number 503 in a school notebook. ICE labeled Noel a “gang member” when he was detained, then downgraded him to a “probable member” and finally, on the day of his hearing, settled on calling him a person identified by a school resource officer as “associated” with the gang. In an immigration courthouse in lower Manhattan, Judge Aviva Poczter ordered Noel’s immediate release, noting that 503 is a country code. “I think this is slim, slim evidence on which to base the continuing detention of an unaccompanied child,” Poczter said.
In other hearings, ICE presented evidence pulled from the Suffolk Police Department’s gang database. Again and again, judges found that the material — a student cited for a gang tattoo who didn’t have a tattoo; a photo of a group of suspected gang members that did not include the student in question — was far too weak or inaccurate to detain the students. In the cases involving Huntington students, the “Huntington High resource officer” kept coming up. In one case, he reported that one student was “found to be in possession of MS-13 drawings in his school work.” In another, he reported that a student had written “MS13” on his arm. Ultimately, 30 of the 32 teenagers in the ACLU lawsuit were freed, including Palacios’ client, who returned to school.
The article goes on and on with much more detail, and background about Alex and his family -- and how a judge in his asylum case ignored the (lack of) evidence and ordered him deported. And then, the government kept pressuring him not to fight deportation, basically making his life a living hell until he felt he had no choice but to accept deportation.
All because he'd drawn the freaking school mascot. And because we've put police where they don't belong. And because of moral panics over "gang violence" that is not nearly as big a problem as gets hyped up by the media... and the President of the United States (for a good backgrounder on the actual threats of MS-13, I recommend the thorough This American Life episode, which shows (1) that MS-13 is much smaller than people claim, (2) that the violence is mostly directed at other immigrant kids, (3) that the police who claim to be so concerned about MS-13 seem to mostly ignore or deny actual reports of MS-13 violence when it involves immigrant kids, and (4) that the police only really care in the rare instances when it impacts white, American-born people).
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is celebrating this program of detaining and deporting kids who probably haven't done anything wrong as they continue to expand it:
But across Long Island, immigrant students who get in trouble for minor offenses still risk the same chain of overreactions that led to Alex’s deportation. In August 2018, the school district for Bellport High banned students from drawing devil horns and the numbers 503 and 504, or posting them on their private social-media pages. By December, the ACLU identified about 20 new minors around the country arrested by ICE on shaky gang claims, and it sued to force ICE to reveal the total number of minors who have been detained. ICE now says Operation Matador will be permanent on Long Island. This fall, the initiative won an annual award from the Department of Homeland Security for best new ICE program.
After the article came out, the school district posted a letter in response, which calls the details of the article "upsetting," but hardly seems to suggest that the school is going through any serious self-reflection of its role in all of this:
While it would be simple to argue statements and context in numerous places within the article, it does not change the fact that the events, as presented, are beyond upsetting. We deeply regret the harm faced by any family in our community who has been separated from a child. In that light, systems and processes at the high school will be reviewed thoroughly in an effort to maintain a safe haven, as well as the happiness and well-being of all students. We could not ask for a more caring and compassionate group of school staff members, who routinely place the needs of children before their own.
And while it says that it will do this "thorough" review, the letter, at the same time, suggests only minor modifications to having a police officer in the school:
We have enjoyed a productive working relationship with the area’s SRO through the years. He has helped and guided numerous students and families in our district and others. In light of current national and local concerns, however, we believe that we must advocate for an additional layer of organization addressing the relationship between schools districts and the Police Department. This can be accomplished through formulation of a Memorandum of Understanding. It is our firm belief that such an agreement would establish formal procedural guidelines associated with the SRO position, as well as with information flow and restrictions. It is our additional belief that this would not only provide guidance and protection for schools, school staff and students, but for the SRO’s and Department as well.
That seems like too little too late.
Honestly, so much of the article is a demonstration of how little things snowball and overreactions create horrific situations. Putting police in schools was never a good idea -- but extra fear about high profile school shootings encouraged doing that as a "solution" that isn't much of a solution (how often have you heard about SROs stopping a school shooting?). The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" has resulted in people freaking out over anything they perceive as a gang indicator. In many ways, it actually reminds me of the "Satanic Panic" from back in the 1980s, where adults were freaking out about "the kids" somehow being evil, and freaking out over even the slightest "evidence" to support their own delusions.
It is deeply disturbing that this happens anywhere, but the fact that I'm so familiar with this particular school makes it that much more painful to me, personally. That school, its teachers and other students, are certainly a big part of who I am today. And today I'm ashamed that that very same school had any role in this travesty, completely ruining a kid's life because he had a little school spirit (likely much more school spirit than I ever had).
While writing this, I was trying to recall the details of the graduation speech I gave 25 years ago at Huntington High School. It's possible that the printed out text is in a box somewhere at my parents' house -- which is still mere blocks away from the school. I don't remember it exactly, but I do recall, with tremendous clarity, that the key theme was about learning how to keep things in perspective, and about not getting carried away, especially based on trends or peer pressure. It probably was not a very good speech (a friend at the time noted that the other speaker that day gave a "reach for the clouds" message, while mine was a "but keep your feet planted on the ground" kind of speech). However, it certainly seems that many, many people these days could gain from internalizing that message -- including at the very high school I went to.
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Filed Under: blue devil, gangs, high school, ice, immigration, mascot, moral panic, ms-13, police, refugees, school resource officers, sro, suffolk county police, suspension
Companies: huntington high school
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...and you compare this to the very real phenomenon of school violence? For shame, Mike.
Do you know what it's like to be in a restaurant, see the TV news that they have on talking about a breaking story of Yet Another School Shooting going on at some random school somewhere in the USA, and then you see the name and you have a feeling of horror break over you as you realize "hey, wait a second, my brother is in that school"? Because I do, and it's quite offensive to see people talking about stuff like this as if it's not a real, serious problem.
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That IS NOT a kid. He is legally of age to join the military.
The fact that the author lied about the kid part invalidates the whole argument.
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Re:
Let's start the discussion here with a simple question: are the school shootings actually demonstrably tied to gang activity?
And here's a second question: Do the school shootings justify the sequence of events that led to a kid being deported because he drew his school's mascot, and happened to not be white?
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He was deported because he drew a picture of the school mascot, and wore some blue sneakers once. I eagerly await your justification of _that_.
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You mean, like, the overreaction from school officials to an immigrant from Honduras wearing clothes that coincidentally match the colors of a gang (despite the immigrant’s admission that he had been trying to avoid wearing clothes directly associated with the gang) and drawing the school’s “blue devil” mascot? Is that the moral panic to which you are referring — the one where the immigrant was deported not because anyone had any proof that he was in MS-13, but because they felt that he was?
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To me it reads as claiming that the justification for SROs in schools--which is violence, not gang activity specifically--is invalid because the whole thing is silly and overblown, like the Satanic Panic.
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The fact that the author lied about the kid part invalidates the whole argument.
LOL. Wut?
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Because I do, and it's quite offensive to see people talking about stuff like this as if it's not a real, serious problem.
Is there any evidence that having cops in schools has ever stopped a single school shooting?
School shootings are a real problem. Sticking cops in schools to deal with everyday problems is not a solution to that problem.
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Re: Re: Re:
Are the school shootings actually demonstrably tied to gang activity?
Do the school shootings justify the sequence of events that led to a kid being deported because he drew his school's mascot, and happened to not be white?
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You use the term "moral panic" multiple times when referring to policing in schools, dood.
Yes. Yes I did.
A moral panic is an unjustified overreaction to a minor or nonexistent threat.
Yup.
But with the USA averaging something like a school shooting every day recently, is it really unjustified?
Again, what cop in a school has stopped a school shooting? And yes, even though school shootings are a problem, they are still NOT a "common" occurrence and the likelihood of it happening in any particular school is as close to zero as possible. Either way, the moral panic I was talking about was these claims about "MS-13" and now cops in schools feel they need to overrreact to every little thing -- because they don't want to get blamed if there ever is a school shooting. It's a complete overreaction to a tiny probability event.
In other words: it's a total moral panic.
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size of MS-13
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No, he compared it to "the panic over MS-13 and 'gangs'. You can tell this by reading the preceding sentence along with your quoted sentence:
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Re: size of MS-13
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Re: size of MS-13
Question 1: Are the school shootings actually demonstrably tied to gang activity?
Question 2: Do the school shootings justify the sequence of events that led to a kid being deported because he drew his school's mascot, and happened to not be white?
The size of MS-13 is less relevant to their actual activity and link to school shootings - and it's also irrelevant to this kid's deportation, because he wasn't a gang member.
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The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and unlimited immigration.
Wow. You're really downplaying real ORGANIZED dangers to fit this into your advocacy of unlimited immigration.
Just one of DOZENS that have been on Drudge Report:
Boston breathing easier after major raid on MS-13 gang
Results of 2016 crackdown attributed to Barack Obama:
https://apnews.com/37da29cc77f64bbd9d52fbebcc603766
But there's no reason to worry today because... Masnick wasn't hacked to pieces 25 years ago.
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Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and unlimited immigration.
Please also advise what the justification is for deporting Alex because he drew the school mascot.
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What about the white kids
And why aren't the police intervening with white boys since they seem to be ones who tend to be school shooters?
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OH, I SEE. It's Trump's fault.
You are simply delusional about MS-13. It is a real organized gang of criminals, trafficking drugs and persons.
Now, if you were going to separate MS-13 from this, as you attempt in comments, then you should have separated it from start, not bloviate on how real dangers are only the fevered imagination of those who oppose unlimited immigration. But YOU put MS-13 in front, then screech and preach at us with sympathy ploy for honest immigrants.
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Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and unlimited immigration.
Wow. You're really downplaying real ORGANIZED dangers to fit this into your advocacy of unlimited immigration.
First, the school admits there was no gang activity at the school, no MS-13 activity at the school and the kid was not a member of MS-13. So what does any of that have to do with anything other than you repeating the moral panic talking points (quoting Drudge, naturally).
Second, where have I advocated for unlimited immigration?
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Re: Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and unlimited
See my comment at Masnick. HE mixed it in, not me.
This whole piece is just more of his advocacy for unlimited immigration, doing away with ICE, and other schemes guaranteed to destroy the US of A.
And NO, I don't care about the problems of the newly arriving when vastly larger problems are tearing the country apart. -- This IS an anomaly, by the way, with which Masnick attacks the whole country.
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Graduation Speech
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Re: Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and unlimited
Again, as commented above, YOU are the one who set the topic points. Your emphasis on "moral panics" is solely to downplay the actual dangers.
So do you agree that MS-13 is a danger? Caused by lack of border control? And that we need anti-gang task forces, more security on the border, not less?
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Yes. I don't have it at hand, but your friend Google may, unless it's been excised to promote its loony liberal unlimited immigration agenda.
But surely over course of last 20 years, at least ONE school shooting has been stopped, and unknown number of others prevented by simple presence of police.
Similarly, by your notion, fighting "anti-Semites" won't prevent another Hitler. -- All is futile, EXCEPT when helps YOUR arguments, right?
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Re: Re: Re: size of MS-13
No one is denying that MS-13 exists. What we are questioning is the size of MS-13 and whether the school mentioned in this article has ever had any issues with an MS-13 presence in said school (which, by its own admission, it has not).
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So do you agree that MS-13 is a danger?
As I made clear earlier, MS-13 itself is real, though the "problem" of MS-13 is mostly limited and has been blown WAY out of proportion (which, in turn, has actually helped the gang grow by drawing more attention/prestige to it). The "problem" of MS-13 also has little to do with border control.
But that overreaction to a specific and narrow issue is what created the moral panic that resulted in this kid -- who has no connection to MS-13 -- being deported.
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Re: Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and unlimited
That brought him to attention: the justification for it is because he's here ILLEGALLY.
This is going to dissolve into useless back and forth, which I've gladly done my share to help, but I'm bailing out from more because the whole piece is just VEHICLE for Masnick and minions to promote unlimited immigration with sympathy for one perhaps non-criminal. Masnick doesn't care beans about the "kid" who's apparently legally an adult, he just wants to do away with ICE and let in unlimited numbers from the third world.
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The school admitted MS-13 has no presence at the school. The immigrant talked about in this article was not a member of MS-13, nor was there any evidence that he was an “actual danger” to the safety of the school and its students. What “actual dangers” are you talking about here that are directly connected to that immigrant and the MS-13 non-presence at that school?
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Speaking of which: MS-13 actually started in the United States, right?
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I don't doubt that MS-13 is a horrible cancer on America, given the way they operate, and I also don't doubt that many of these kids are using plausible deniability when caught sending the wrong signals (if they aren't MS-13 why aren't they killed for wearing the colors or tagging when they have no right to according to the gang?)
Schools have been crime magnets since the 1970s and before. It's long overdue that the police are active there because children are required to attend. The policing should be responsible and smarter than this but it is certainly necessary to protect our schoolchildren, to the extent people think we still need school to begin with.
I'd rather see schooling abolished. The socialization people claim it offers is barely a level above prison in what it teaches children about dealing with others or the rules of the street.
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Re: Re: Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and unlim
The article doesn't actually mention that, but... yeah, that's a good point. Is deportation even something that can happen to immigrants who are here because they followed the rules? Because if he was here illegally, then I'm sorry, but nothing else matters and the rest of this is all a big smoke screen.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs&quo
Well, that and his illegally entering the US -- or to be accurate, so I assume you left out after quick review just now of what you wrote above. You don't state that he's here legally, and it'd be a big plus for your story, so I think that's reasonable for me to assume.
But if let in legally and then involved, it's still just hard luck of one person out of million you could weep over. I'm sorry and so on, BUT, YOU have a pro-unlimited immigration AGENDA which this piece is VEHICLE for, and that's the point I raised.
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If you had bothered to read the original article…
…you would know he was not here illegally. But why let facts get in the way of Trumpian xenophobia vis-á-vis brown people?
Please provide a breakdown of how anything said in this article advocates for “unlimited immigration”.
[citation needed]
(Also: It is possible to believe “we should have border security” and “ICE needs to be abolished” at the same time; we had border security without ICE for a long damn time, after all.)
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2018/11/08/does-more-policing-make-midd le-schools-safer/
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In other words, no. Not a single one.
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How does it feel to be as racist towards people of color who immigrate into the U.S. as the current POTUS?
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An adult would be willing to answer two simple questions asked of them.
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Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and unlimited immigration.
You're just circularly using Masnick's tactic of "don't EVER worry about MS-13, you horrible xenophobic racists, because this one kid was mistreated".
Immigrant GANGS have always been a problem. They form in and prey on migrants. Or have you never heard of Sicily?
To prove the dangers of MS-13 to yourself, go up to some likely tattooed Hispanic specimen and start trash talking El Salvador.
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"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Where do I remember seeing that, something that basically enshrines unlimited legal immigration.......
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Re: Yet Another School Shooting
What can they do to mitigate the situation that school administrators and teachers can't also do?
Other than to militarize and criminalize childhood?
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BBQWB
WWB
ABNBWB
NWB
All simple things that have a dangerous connotation when you add While Black.
Everything they know about MS13 is that the bad guys are brown.
So every single brown person needs to be looked at sideways because they aren't being white enough to make us feel safe.
Everything they know about terrorists is they are middle eastern.
So every single muslim person needs to be looked at sideways if they haven't decided to give up their identity to be more white.
We slap a label on something & never look back.
We have people terrified that MS13 will rape their puppy while the nearest brown person to them is on the tv. Then one happens to pass through town & suddenly everyone is reporting the MS13 is casing the town & all of its puppies (or calling ICE because all brown people are illegals).
We're "past" the outright racism we decry in others, but there are people who are nervous around anyone not white. They default to the worst possible stereotypes being promoted in the media & by talking heads who make more money by telling you who to fear.
I wonder if we presented a photo array to the SRO of various students wearing blue, devil horns, etc with their race hidden how many reports they would file... until they figured out they were targeting a white kid.
But we cling to the stereotypes despite seeing with our own eyes that they are false.
Police are there to help... you watched a video of him shooting a man running away in the back, who presented no threat, & planted a weapon afterwards to justify the shooting... and somehow the Grand Jury manages to find a way to overlook this because cops are the thin blue line protecting us from so much worse...
I'll play the sociopathic immortal card here and point out how many times you hairless apes have done this exact same thing. It is nothing new, you promise to do better & then repeat the same pattern over and over.
The Irish
The Italians
The Chinese
The Japanese
The Mexicans
The Middle Easterns
All of them have been pointed to as the cause of problems in society, been treated as less than human, seen as bad actors before they have done anything...
Stop treating 1 example as the monolithic identity for an entire group. How can you hairless apes keep making this same mistake over and over & never learn?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and u
That's why its a trope in many movies where the crooked LEO/DA tells the poor immigrant they better do as they are told or they will get them accused of something and get them deported.
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Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and unlimited immigration
I allowed that missed it. But the whole "asylum" claim is just another ploy taught to take advantage of us.
WHY? Because his claim was weak assertions.
And again, he came to notice and his "tenuous" claim was rejected.
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Re: a school shooting every day
There were 23 school shooting incidents in the USA last year (ref: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46507514).
Given 365 days in the year, that means the probability of a school shooting in your school is 23/(100,000 * 365).
That's less than 1 in a million. (1 in 1.59 million)
Moral panic.
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Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and unlimited immigration.
Good. I don't believe that Trump is racist. Nor am I.
Now, I'd ask how it feels to be slippery, sneaking, and conniving with deliberate malicious smears as Joseph Goebbels, but it's so nearly your entire personality that you don't have any standard to compare with.
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I never once said “don’t ever worry about MS-13”. Do not shove words down my throat that did not first come from it. And if anything, the overconcern about MS-13 as an existential threat to the United States — overconcern that was bolstered by Donald Trump talking about the gang in exactly that way — is the real issue here. That overconcern led to Alex being suspected of being in the gang, and ultimately being deported, without any actual evidence that he was in any gang, much less MS-13.
And considering how you’ve shit-talked immigration and immigrants, you care about migrant-on-migrant violence because…?
You assume all members of MS-13 are Hispanic, you assume Hispanic people are “likely tattooed”, you assume any given Hispanic person would have an issue with someone shit-talking El Salvador, you refer to a Hispanic person as a specimen[!], and on top of all that, you imply that “some likely tattooed Hispanic [person]” is a member of MS-13. That single sentence is one of the most racist statements I have ever seen in this site’s comments sections. It is Trumpian in just how racist it is.
I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
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(sorry, just had to)
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LOL Godwinned. Good day, you MAGA-loving shitheel.
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Hell, the LEO/DA doesn’t even need to be crooked. Law & Order proved that much.
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Re: Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and unlimited immigrati
Every single comments thread is taken over by this guy's low-effort trolling and people arguing with him. He needs to get banned.
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Re: Godwined the thread and you expect to be taken seriously
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Re: Re: a school shooting every day
Now if they were to say, "it seems like you hear about a school shooting every day", that's probably way more true. One almost every 2 weeks across the entirety of the nation would probably work into the standard news cycle where just as the last one was starting to taper off a new one occurs.
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But that's exactly Masnick's hook and ploy here: don't worry about violent MS-13 gang, weep for this ONE immigrant -- who wheedled his way with an asylum claim -- that connects him to MS-13 in a neatly circular way. He could have been an MS-13 gang member already, some of them must appear clean cut.
Anyhoo, bottom line is that Masnick is just substituting his re-writing opinion for the on-scene, non-hasty, evaluation of ICE. Talk about CHUTZPAH.
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Re: We are laughing AT you not with you
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I suppose I should forget, then, about all the people who are fleeing violence taking place in their home countries, sometimes targeted against those people personally (e.g., gay Chechnyans fleeing their home country due to the government literally trying to eradicate gay Chechnyans by any means necessary). I suppose I should also forget about how many countries have so many people seeking asylum because of actions taken by the U.S. that directly led to shitty conditions — something that Central America knows about all to well. If I do that? Yeah, all asylum claims are bullshit, and they should all be treated as such~.
His claim was that he was not a member of MS-13, and it is nigh impossible to prove a negative. The school, the police, and immigration officials had no real evidence to prove their claim that he was a member, but their feelings about his being one trumped that lack of evidence…
…and he was ultimately deported because the courts decided that those feelings mattered more than the lack of evidence that he was in MS-13.
You really are a dumbass.
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Re: why you still here bro
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Then where was the undisputed factual evidence that proved he was in MS-13? Where was photographic/video evidence of his interacting with gang members, or a record of phone calls/emails that showed him keeping in touch with gang members, or any record whatsoever of his committing any kind of illegal act that would directly connect him to MS-13? What proof did anyone have, other than their gut feelings about him based on the color of his clothes and a drawing of a school mascot, that Alex was a member of any gang, let alone MS-13?
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Okay, let me rephrase them for you:
How many school shootings in the United States have demonstrable ties to gangs such as, but not limited to, MS-13?
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Re: Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and unlimited immigrati
Good thing you don't have to admit you're a racist to be recognized as a racist.
Guess what bro: You're a racist.
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Re: What about the white kids
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Wait a sec... there, fixed it!
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Good old 'zero tolerance/thinking'...
... where engaging your brain and/or spine isn't necessary, just follow along with whatever the rules are, and it's always someone else's fault because 'you were just following the rules'.
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Rather, it's just one point of data. For the rest of the evidence, as an example:
"But the whole "asylum" claim is just another ploy taught to take advantage of us."
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FTFY
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Someone 19 in high school in the US is some one who has failed at least one grade. So why is he there?
So what is being discussed is a adult potential kill craze gang member passing himself off as a high school kid for devious reasons.
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... I honestly can't tell if you're a poe pretending to be crazy and spinning wild conspiracy theories, or the real deal doubling-down on a laughably bad initial 'argument' with said wild conspiracy theory.
Have a funny vote either way I guess.
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Re: Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and unlimited
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Re: Good old 'zero tolerance/thinking'...
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---
Funny, in the rest of the country you're no longer a minor when you turn 18.
I didn't notice what his official immigration status was supposed to be. But he was a 19 year old adult, still going to high school, and apparently not real bright; with all the "gang" warnings, he should have known better than to vandalize school property with "the Honduras area code."
At 19 I'd been on my own for a year, a job, a car, and my own residence. I'm not feeling a whole lot of sympathy here.
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Re: turned 19
Let me emphasize that again:
"just turned 19"
Meaning, when all this originally happened, he WASN'T 19 yet
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Re: Re: a school shooting every day
On average in 2013 most school districts required the equivalent of 180 days of instruction.
So taking your above calculation
23/(100,000×180)=
1 in 1.27778 million chance it happens when at school.
Still a really low percent chance of it happening.
Now comes the completely subjective part. How much are the potential lost lives worth if a shooting does occur. Just like any risk you have to account for the value of the thing at risk, the cost of recovery, and the cost to protect the asset.
The risk a shooting occurs is very low but still non-zero. The cost of each life and the cost of property damage, hospital bills, doctor's bills, and therapy sessions will vary depending on who is on the hook for the expense and how badly the damage is. Which depending on the outcome of the shooting makes this calculation very unpredictable.
Risk management also states we can handle the situation in one of several ways. First we can accept the risk could happen and do nothing (hope nothing happens and incur no expenses until an incident occurs), we can prevent the risk (spend lots of money and step on peoples right preventing something that will probably never happen), mitigate the consequences of the risk (buy insurance and keep classes small, students separated, locked doors. Just lots of barriers so that a gunman can't target many people), or transfer the risk (its not the district's job but up to someone else like police to prevent the shooting).
You may even use a combo of the above risk mitigation strategies but in the end how much are you willing to pay vs how much are lives worth vs the actual chance of a shooting happening. Its a big issue and I think it should depend on each district to analyze each school independently.
A cop in the school (transferring the risk) doesn't seem to be working well enough.
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Re: Re: turned 19
And, yes, I know that 18 is "legally" an adult here in the US. But you have to remember that this guy had to go through immigration and all it's BS just to get here under asylum, then enroll into school. That takes time and, usually, lots of it. So it doesn't surprise me that he'd be 18 in high school.
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Re: Re: MS-13
Man, this article has kicked a few beehives.
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"You don't state that he's here legally, and it'd be a big plus for your story, so I think that's reasonable for me to assume."
How exactly is it reasonable to incorrectly assume something that is clearly stated in the article that you obviously didn't read?
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Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and unlimited immigration.
"You're really downplaying real ORGANIZED dangers to fit this into your advocacy of unlimited immigration."
Literally nobody here is advocating for unlimited immigration. That is just a huge strawman.
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How's that saying go?
'It is better to be suspected of being a terrible person, at best one lacking in basic empathy, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt'?
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Was that after you fled from your native country to seek asylum in a much safer one? His age is irrelevant; he was a high school because he needed a high school education.
Nobody's going to be all that impressed that you were lucky enough to be born into much better circumstances. It's a pity that privilege didn't come with even a tiny smidge of compassion.
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Now I see the light...
To say that the police would never stoop this low would be overlooking everything they have done up to this point and just accepting "blind faith" that they have your best interests at heart...
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I didn't notice what his official immigration status was supposed to be. But he was a 19 year old adult, still going to high school, and apparently not real bright; with all the "gang" warnings, he should have known better than to vandalize school property with "the Honduras area code."
As noted elsewhere, he was here legally. The reason he was 19 and still in high school was because by the time he got to the US he was farther behind other students (being threatened with possible assassination in your home country maybe makes you miss some school) not to mention not being fluent in English when he first arrived. Nothing in the article suggests he's "not real bright." Indeed, it suggested the opposite: that he was actually working hard to build a life for himself under incredibly difficult experiences -- ones you've likely never experienced.
Finally, while you might be write that he shouldn't have doodled on a calculator that was not his, are you honestly suggesting that he deserves to have his life destroyed over it? To be ripped from his entire family and stripped of any likelihood of making a better life for himself... because he absent-mindedly doodled?
Because if so, fuck off, you're an awful person who needs to seriously re-evaluate your life choices.
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He is an adult in a teenage world. He is not a child.
Free education is not the issue as one person noted.
In New York he would be in a program to help those who are over age for some reason be that language or what have you.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" and u
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs&quo
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Unfortunately, I must say yes here. There was an instance last March where the SRO killed a school shooter before he could continue shooting people. While I can't say for sure if there have been more cases, I'd remembered this one specifically so I was able to search for it easily enough.
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Re: Re: Re: a school shooting every day
The statistic people are quoting is incorrect. It's not a school shooting per day, it's (approximately) one mass shooting per day. By some measures, there have been more mass shootings than days last year. By others, we fell short by over 40. Wikipedia counts it at only 323 but, by all counts, we were on track for one per day at the end of October which is what all the news shows were talking about at the time.
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Re:
See my earlier posts:
#c1245
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Re: For shame, Mike.
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How my High School destroyed an innocent kid’s life .
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Asking "Is there any evidence" is clearly not asking to prove a negative. It's asking to prove a positive to contradict a negative default position.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The panic over MS-13 and "g
frontier:
/ˈfrʌntɪə,frʌnˈtɪə?
noun
a line or border separating two countries.
"international crime knows no frontiers"
synonyms: border, boundary, partition, borderline, dividing line, bounding line, demarcation line; More
the extreme limit of settled land beyond which lies wilderness, especially in reference to the western US before Pacific settlement.
"his novel of the American frontier"
the extreme limit of understanding or achievement in a particular area.
"the success of science in extending the frontiers of knowledge"
Assuming it means: while the West was still wild, or before there were 50 states in the union, who did it make sense to?
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Trump is a damned racist.
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President Trump is no more bigoted than You are :)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The panic over MS-13 and "gangs" a
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Re: Re: For shame, Mike.
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Re: Re: Re: For shame, Mike.
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Re: How's that saying go?
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And anyone wearing one of those hats is a moron too.
I don't know if those white kids are racist or not but they did choose to do a stupid thing because they thought it would be funny to stand on a corner wearing the moron hats.
Were their lives destroyed because of it, no. They may have some unintended consequences from that incident but I'm sure they will recover from it because they are still at home and have family support.
Now if they had been deported, or even just jailed, because they wore the hats that would be a problem and that type of overreaction would be more aligned with what happened to Alex.
Just like a symbol or color is associated with gang membership, the MAGA hats are associated with racists as a result of what the creator of the hat has done and said.
So the lesson is: if you dont want to be considered a racist, dont wear the moron hat. If you dont want to be considered a gang member dont use their symbols. But just because you are seen with such things doesn't prove in a court of law that you are racist or a gang member.
Regardless of what you wear, say, or do. Before any police action should be taken more evidence must be gathered as is written in the constitution and the laws of the land. In the case of Alex it appears that last part wasnt followed.
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Re: Re: Yet Another School Shooting
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How many cops have stopped school shootings. So, mike, when did you stop beating your wife? (see, anyone can do that)
These... are not equivalent. One is asking for evidence of something people are claiming. The other is a logical fallacy assuming a situation that may not have happened at all. Don't be an idiot.
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He wore a symbol of hate speech, he deserved it. Oh that only applies to WHITE kids right? My goodness you people are fucked up. This is no different but your faux outrage is funny
Um. You seem to have a way with idiotically stupid false equivalencies, topped off with making assumptions about things we never said. We never said that anyone deserved anything for wearing a red hat, so why make that up? And, even if we had (which we didn't), we never would have said that anyone deserves to have their lives absolutely ruined for wearing anything.
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I stopped reading when you wrote "Through an interpreter, Cusack asked Alex if he had drawn the number 504 on the case"
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Re: response in this instance was proportional and justified
I think the word you are looking for is “ineffective”. Yes, bringing more guns into schools in response to school shootings can be seen to be “proportional”; even if it is counterproductive (i.e. “proprtional” in the wrong direction), it is at least of a similar order of seriousness to the situation.
The term “moral panic” would seem to be playing down this seriousness. That’s the point that I thought Mason Wheeler was making, and it is certainly my point too.
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Satanic Panic
Incidentally, during the Satanic panic it was taken very seriously, and wasn't regarded as a joke by anyone, up to and including Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan. (It got started probably around 1973 with the release of The Exorcist). The Human Trafficking experts that advise kids here in Vacaville in 2019 still believe SRA is a thing and that porn only involves sex slaves (contrast wage slaves?). And as recently as the 1990s kids were being expelled from school for -- I kid you not -- witchcraft.
Do not underestimate the naïvety of the fear-addicted public. They will take away our guns, video games, romance novels and bicycles given half a chance.
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Rate of "School Shootings" is not so useful...
Nor is one mass shooting a day Ours is a big nation, and it's difficult to have a big nation without something going on.
The homicide rate (as in per capita) is slightly less than that of Ukraine (in which guns are illegal). About half of Russia (where guns are also illegal.) It's three times or more than most of the EU nations. Most homicides in the US, including ones involving guns, are domestic conflicts. We are angry and do a lot of killing, but not shootouts-in-every-neighborhood killing.
Half of our gun deaths are suicides, the meat of our gun-death statistics. And half of our suicides involve a gun. And yet, our suicide rate is less than South Korea, Ukraine, Belgium, Japan, France, Switzerland, Poland, Finland and Austria. (Russia's suicide rate, twice that of the US, is second only to Lithuania.) In lot of these countries gun are illegal and difficult to access.
I don't think mass shootings are our problem. I don't think guns are our problem. I do think our people could do with being less miserable. I think we're angry and stressed out, and given the instability of our government and economics, this is not at all surprising.
If we wanted to do something, we'd save far more lives with some reforms to stabilize the state and economy, rather than trying to control our students and our schools or our guns.
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I want answers to these questions, too. Especially the second one. If the school violence is a problem, then it's just as much of a problem if a response that is taken toward it which is not executed in a manner consistent with the exercise of the faculty of discernment and the appreciation of nuance and complexity, that cuts around the contours of the problem also itself creates serious results for those who were not actually dangerous to begin with.
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So how should you phrase the questions so as to allow the "truth"? What is the "truth" of the matters referred to? Is this action something we should be okay with?
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A MAGA hat is not a coincidence. Given its clear message, its wearing is far more likely to be deliberate. A reasonable official would have noted the identity between the drawing and the mascot and would have at the very least explored this possibility instead of just coming down ham-handed. The action taken by the officers involved here was wrong, very wrong, and indeed, a "panic" is a good way to describe it. It's a panic when it causes you to not exercise due diligence and discretion. Moreover, I see too many getting here hung up on debating the merit or demerit of the wording in the article instead of the general point, which is, is this response and the result it caused justifiable or not? Even if the wording is wrong, the underlying point - that the reasonableness of actions taken in this particular situation is seriously questionable and something that needs to be examined and problematized - is logically unaffected.
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Perhaps you should go back and re-read the article. It wasn't just this one kid that got caught up in bullshit profiling from stupid policies driven by moral panic. ICE and law enforcement in general have plenty of actual crime and dangerous persons to keep them busy without being inundated with demands to check under the beds of racist and foolish white people for monsters because they stayed up too late watching Fox news. All of our immigration policies come from racist, xenophobic, moral panic (as well as our drug laws). Given the misery, and violence,and infringement of rights, geez and the financial cost from these laws we should actually stop trying to control everyone. Throw out all those laws and focus on facilitating peaceful interactions where needed and protecting private property rights.
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I'm married to a man, and am a Bible-believing Christian.
Bigoted against whom?
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I don't know if those white kids are racist or not but they did choose to do a stupid thing because they thought it would be funny to stand on a corner wearing the moron hats.
I concur.
Were their lives destroyed because of it, no. They may have some unintended consequences from that incident but I'm sure they will recover from it because they are still at home and have family support.
It's not okay to unleash a hate mob against anyone for acting like a jerk. Ever. No doxxing, etc., is acceptable.
Now if they had been deported, or even just jailed, because they wore the hats that would be a problem and that type of overreaction would be more aligned with what happened to Alex.
And it wouldn't be okay. There's no law against being a jerk, nor should there be.
Just like a symbol or color is associated with gang membership, the MAGA hats are associated with racists as a result of what the creator of the hat has done and said.
Yep.
So the lesson is: if you dont want to be considered a racist, dont wear the moron hat. If you dont want to be considered a gang member dont use their symbols. But just because you are seen with such things doesn't prove in a court of law that you are racist or a gang member.
Agreed.
Regardless of what you wear, say, or do. Before any police action should be taken more evidence must be gathered as is written in the constitution and the laws of the land. In the case of Alex it appears that last part wasnt followed.
Agreed.
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What Mike said.
I understand a group called Black Hebrews were involved and that they behaved badly. Not okay. Utterly deplorable.
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Becuz dey is forriners.
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It seems to me that the truth is over shadowed by the perceived need to justify the paychecks of people in charge of unnecessary government interference into the lives of residents of the USA
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Re: size of MS-13
Only large and important gangs are capable of shooting up a house down the street from stine.
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Yes, in LA.
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"Better things to do"
I'm not so sure of that. ICE is known for disregarding orders to favor migrants with criminal records, and is happy to deport low hanging fruit such as grandmothers and children. They they go about extra-judicially seizing web domains, stopping repair shops that are not illegal and even going to New Zealand to arrest someone on copyright-infringement charges even though it's not clear what actual laws were broken. (Also turning Kim Dotcom from another internet-age new-money reprobate into an international hero fighting against imperial overreach)
It really sounds to me like ICE has way too much time on its hands, and a dearth of legitimate reasons to continue existing.
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"The school admitted MS-13 has no presence at the school."
Was this said before or after the kid was deported?
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Re: "Better things to do"
You're absolutely right, law enforcement of all kinds spends way too much time on low hanging fruit, victimless crimes, and worst of all, entrapment or framing schemes. But there are real crimes with victims that deserve justice and dangerous people that need to be removed from society. Murders go unsolved, rape kits get thrown in closets and forgotten about. When my mom's car was found after being stolen, we asked the cops if they were done collecting evidence, like finger prints or would we need to wait to pick up the car, and from behind the safety of bullet proof glass they informed us that they were"not Columbo". Let's get rid of prohibition of drugs and prostitution, and let people freely immigrate pending a background check for violence/theft/fraud, a health screening and vaccinations, give them a work permit and connect them to private charities and organizations for any social services they may need like temporary housing or means to travel to reunite with family. Now this is a bit over simplified, there are other issues that need addressed at the same time. But I think these are some of the primary steps to ultimately reduce violent crimes and violent enforcement.
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Not a strawman. If one kind of asylum claim is a “ploy” to “take advantage of” the U.S., as that commenter implied was the case with Alex and his family, what makes other kinds of asylum claims — such as a gay Chechnyan seeking asylum out of the fear that their provably anti-LGBT government will at least imprison them for being gay — any less of a “ploy”?
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Well it’s a bit late for that!
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Not for nothin’, man, but sarcasm and insults are not going to make me apologize for what I said on that issue, change my mind about that issue, or make me think you’re worth listening to about that issue.
If what I said about that issue upsets you so much that you apparently take it as a personal attack against you, that is your problem, not mine. I cannot, and will not, deal with it for you.
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^ This.
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"Even trying not to wear anything that looked like a gang member was interpreted... as being a gang member"
Ah yes, the fact that they don't look like criminals just shows how cunning they are, right?
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ICE vs. Law Enforcement
I wasn't actually talking about the entire United State Department of Justice (which includes all law enforcement) but specifically Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which was a special division created by the DHS in 2002 to hunt terrorists and get in the way of the CBP the latter of which its agents do swimmingly. ICE doesn't find much terror, so they have expanded their jurisdiction and their own definition of terror. Mind you, the Kim Dotcom affair is still in court.
As for our local precincts, so long as there's plenty of low-hanging fruit, they're going to do that in lieu of the stuff that is more dangerous or unpleasant. And we seem eager to let them justify all sorts of activities as low hanging fruit.
This is commonly how gangs form. When there is too much injustice (sheer hatred of strange factions will substitute in a pinch) then the community will posse up to administer justice (or, commonly, grisly revenge on a scapegoat). The whole point of having law enforcement is to make sure justice is administered in accordance to some standards of conduct, e.g. once guilt is determined by evidence, with respect for human rights, in proportion to the crime, without prejudice.
So as communities lose faith that the police will actually do their job (e.g. because they're not Columbo ) eventually individuals within that community will tire of the neglect and start administering justice outside the law, say, torturing people to death for what they or their kin did as far as we can tell. (That's typical of how gang wars or family feuds get started.)
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Alex...
I live in Huntington. The NY Times article really disturbed me, but not for the reason most seem to be. There is actually a problem at this school, it has started in the past three years and it is getting worse. This article hurts the effort the school is making to have our kids safe there. First of all, we need a strong police force in the school. Which is crazy, but is true. And to the author, seeing a hand gun in a friends locker is not normal and does not happen in normal situations. After reading the article, I talked to many different high school students in town. They all knew Alex to be a gang member. They thought it was funny that anyone wouldn't have known that. And I would also like to know why there was no follow up New York Times article about the Huntington high school students (confirmed MS13) that chased a group of kids out of Burger King after school and stabbed one of them. The district needs to build another High School where they can address the specific needs of immigrant children that deserve a good education, but in a smaller school that can be properly secured and at the same time, allow children whose parents pay high taxes not be forced to send their children to private school. Which they have no choice in doing right now unfortunately. I did not vote for Trump. I think he is the devil. But at the same time, there is a problem at Huntington and a new school district needs to be formed. They already split the district in several places with Cold Spring, Greenlawn, Harbor Fields and a few others, now they need to separate Huntington/Huntington Bay from Huntington Station. The numbers of students are too large and it isn't fair to just be ok with tax payers to have to send their children to private school. Many many many parents are getting fed up around us.
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FTR, Masnick does explicitly say that he came here legally.
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I’m shocked they would do this, a drawing of the school mascot. Wow People Wow.
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Exactly. To diverge from this comment slightly, I can say that, no matter which side of the rather large argument that took up most of the page you were on, you can agree that this child's life was ruined. That's it. His life will not be exactly like it was before this happened.
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If I remember correctly didn't it turn out that the shooter shot himself after?
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Yup, found it https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-great-mills-shooting-update-20180326-story.ht ml
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"Real crimes"
Can we disband ICE now?
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