State Legislator Says 11-Year-Old Tased By Cop Deserved It And Her Parents Probably Suck

from the christ-what-an-asshole dept

TODAY IN GARBAGE HUMAN BEINGS:

Cincinnati police officer Kevin Brown’s decision to fire a Taser at an 11-year-old girl suspected of shoplifting from a grocery store in August immediately drew criticism from city officials and advocates.

But Ohio state Representative John Becker had a different take. Had it been his daughter, he announced in an August newsletter, “I’d be ashamed and embarrassed that she did something stupid enough to get herself tased.”

This is even worse than the police union's take on the incident, which referred to the completely expected backlash as "kneejerk." But, hey, I guess deciding to tase an 11-year-old in the back -- one who reportedly was all of 4'11'' and 90 pounds -- couldn't possibly be portrayed as a kneejerk reaction by a law enforcement officer. When force isn't truly needed, we can be sure some cops will deploy it anyway.

But Rep. John Becker's take is the hottest take of all. Anyone tased by a cop -- even an 11-year-old -- is a person who brought that crackling, barbed punishment down on themselves. There's no reason to question the wisdom or necessity of the Taser deployment. Rather, we should question ourselves. And perhaps society. But mostly ourselves.

Becker also addressed police shootings in his newsletter. If his child were shot by police, he wrote, “rather than blaming the cop, I’d be blaming myself and endlessly soul searching to figure out how I failed as a parent and why my kid grew up to be a punk.” He added, “Based on the evidence of what I see on television, it often times appears to me that justice was delivered to the dead punk.”

"Based on the evidence of what I see on television…" Holy shit. This is an elected representative. And he thinks the TV is giving him the "evidence" he needs to make snap judgments on tased kids. Blame the victim. And blame the victim's parents.

The police chief -- in a surprisingly reasonable statement -- said the Taser deployment was "unnecessary."

Back to Becker:

Becker also told The Appeal that if police tase a child, “it could be an indication of a parenting problem.” He added, “If I were to do research, I would expect to find that kids that come from two parent in-tact [sic] supportive families are less likely to get in trouble with the authorities than kids that came from tougher environments.”

"If I were to do the research…" Would this be research beyond the television watching that's given Becker such keen insight into officer-involved shootings? Who knows? Becker's certainly not going to do the research. He's just going to stick by his electro-guns and blame victims of cop violence for being raised badly or otherwise being harmed by the disintegration of the nuclear family unit -- the 2.5 children born to married heterosexuals who have managed to weather an escalating divorce rate, porn, video games, movies, television, the internet, social media, Satanism, multiple pagan-based holidays, postal rate hikes, alternate sexual orientations, public school indoctrination, Daylight Savings Time, mandatory vaccinations, HAARP projects (known and unknown), President Obama, Brown v. Board of Education, morning-after pills, weird Twitter, the removal of prayer from schools, the Simpsons, artistic expression in general, and whatever else has reduced the American way of life to a hideous nightmare where punk kids manage to live their whole lives without being deservedly tased by blameless, saintly police officers.

Becker is an idiot, but let's pretend the research he didn't do actually says what he thinks it will say. Even if a majority of kids tased/killed by cops are raised by single and/or inattentive parents, that doesn't justify force deployments that far exceed the danger presented by the developing situation. This 11-year-old was tased in the back by an officer who was taller, weighed more, and had the ability to summon any number of additional officers if it appeared this preteen was going to, I don't know, grow a foot, add 100 pounds of weight, and produce an arsenal of weapons before the officer got the mild shoplifting situation under control.

If you agree with John Becker, you're probably John Becker. Or a cop who hates using force reasonably or responsibly. But you're definitely not the sort of person who can be trusted with government power.

Filed Under: children, cincinnati, john becker, kevin brown, police brutality, tasers, victim blaming

Kid Bullied For My Little Pony Backpack Told Not To Bring It To School Anymore

from the blaming-the-victim dept

In the ongoing idiocy that is schools employing zero tolerance policies, the admittedly misguided overbearing results at least tend to have some pretend logic behind them. The school is afraid of guns, so ban everything that remotely looks like a gun, even if we're just talking about some kid's fingers. The school wants to curtail bullying, so they go nuclear at anything even remotely resembling bullying. Yes, it's misguided, yes, it's stupid, but you can at least follow along the logical path they walked before jumping off the cliff.

But where one California North Carolina grade school got the stones to blame Grayson Bruce and his backpack for the bullying he's endured is beyond me.

A mother and her 9-year-old son say school officials won't let him bring a My Little Pony bag to school. The boy and his mother say he's getting shoved around because bullies think his pick of a favorite toy is for girls.

My Little Pony, which has enjoyed something of a resurgence lately, is a show about friendship. One would have to work extremely hard after being hit in the head with a hammer in order to find anything offensive within it. The only explanation anyone has offered for banning Grayson from bringing his damned backpack to school has been that it sets off the bullies to go about their bullying ways. This, in case you're dense, is about as pure a form of blaming the victim as one can find. Fortunately, while the school in question decided to paint a damned backpack as the culprit in this scenario, the power of social media has risen to support Grayson.

Since it aired, the story has been picked up by websites, blogs and television stations across the nation. Tuesday it was one of the top stories trending on social media. The Facebook page 9-year-old Grayson Bruce's parents have set up for him now has more than 3,700 "Likes". Grayson has developed a following on Facebook after a friend made a support page for him. Grayson stands by his favorite cartoon and the message he says it sends. His mother says, why not?

But Noreen says Thursday the school asked him to leave the bag at home because it had become a distraction and was a "trigger for bullying."

This is absurd. In a world where too many schools are embracing too many zero tolerance policies, this one is actually going down the road of removing the subject of the bullying instead. What fun! What if the young man was gay? Or black? Mexican? What if he liked a certain kind of music, or was a huge fan of the wrong sports team? What if he had a medical condition? Sorry, sport, but you have to leave your crutches at home, 'cuz the kids just ain't down with them.

No, the proper response to is to pull those bullying Grayson aside and explain to them in stark terms why their actions aren't acceptable. Banning MLP backpacks can't be the answer, lest we allow all those children to learn the exact wrong lesson in their place of learning.

Filed Under: bullying, my little pony, victim blaming, zero tolerance