Not true. Stories about the Secret Service visiting kids who threaten the President have been commonplace since at least the 70s; not sure how this kid failed to get the message, but now she knows. As for the legitimacy of the threat, a growing number of teenaged school shooters (the Columbine kids, the one on an Indian reservation a few years back. one or two others) have posted their intentions on websites that no one took seriously. The bar for “knew damn well” was been irrevocably lowered.
I don’t believe for a second that they thought she was a credible threat but either way, they shouldn’t have questioned her without telling her parents.
It was perfectly legal for them to question her without parents present. The best way to handle it, probably not, but then they aren’t interested in making their investigations comfortable. She’s not a little child, and I do think she’s probably old enough to answer a few questions.
What I liked was her protest, something along the lines of “You can see I’m a peaceful person, look, I have a heart on my backpack!”
And the kid was perfectly free to invoke her right to counsel. A kid has the same rights as anyone else regarding counsel: you get it if you ask for it; it’s not provided to you automatically in any instance of police questioning.
And I find this standard amazing, Diogenes, not that you will ever, ever, ever acknowledge your own double standards. This is a kid old enough to get an abortion without parental consent or even notification, but if she’s merely asked questions by police officers, her parents MUST be there?
What’s the contradiction? Even adults are allowed to have an attorney present during questioning. In both cases, I’m concerned about the minor’s rights, not the parents’ rights.
By the way. I didn’t say the parents MUST be there, I just think it was sleazy for the SS to snatch her without telling the parents. I’m not syaing it was illegal.
Do you think a 14 year old really understands her rights and isn’t going to feel too intimidated to assert them?
Yes, and as I explained above, she was treated precisely as an adult was. An adult is not required to have her parents notified before being questioned. If an adult is questioned and wishes to have an attorney present, she may ask for one, and the police must cease questioning immediately. But the police are not required to provide an attorney automatically. You have a right to an attorney is you ask for one, not a right to an attorney at all times.
I really think it depends on the 14 year old. I also think there are some 22-year olds about whom the same question can be asked.
I certainly got a strong sense from your post that you felt it SHOULD have been illegal. Was I mistaken?
Exactly what ‘snatching’ went on here? She was questioned at school, they didn’t take her anywhere except out of class.
Slee
They snatched her out of her classroom. It was thuggish and unnecessary. I don’t care if it was legal. They knew she wasn’t a legitimate threat. They could have waited until she got home.
Actually, the purpose of questioning her face to face was to determine if she was a legitimate threat. On what basis you you contend that they “knew” this already? And if they did know it, why would you believe they should have talked to her at home? After all, they knew she wasn’t a threat – why waste the time?
So what? She’s NOT an adult. Are you saying children should always be treated exactly like adults in the criminal justice system? Should they go to adult prisons? What’s your point?
Therefore all children should be treated like 22 year olds?
Yes. There is such a thing as discretion, not to mention basic decency.
Because no reasonable person would think that a child’s silly comment on a MySpace page represented any kind of genuine threat.
I don’t necessarily think they had to investigate at all, but if they had to go through the motions, they should have done it as painlessly as possible.
Did the Secret Service detain/question the parents in any way? It seems like they would more likely represent the real threat, if there is any. If, hypothetically, she did pick up the “stab Bush” stuff from her dad, she’d be unlikely to say so with him in the room. Aside from that angle, I’m inclined to agree with Diogenes that taking her out of class and questioning her alone seems like overkill.
Here’s where I find your double standard. You believe that she’s not an adult, and she shouldn’t be trated like one, when the issue is being interviewed by police officers. When the issue is obtaining an abortion, you believe she should be treated exactly like an adult.
I find these two stances inconsistent.
No Dio, they didn’t. Not unless the SS has replaced their field agents with psychics.
You are confusing an assumption with knowledge. Their job is to investigate threats, not dismiss them out of hand if it’s a young teen making 'em.
And, simply for the record, no ‘reasonable’ person would speak to the specifics of an individual case based on a somewhat shaky generalization. That’s a fallacy of division, and as such, hardly an act of high reason.
Authorities were criticized after the Columbine shooting for not taking web comments from the shooters seriously, were they not? What is the distinction between those web comments and this one?
I don’t see why anyone should have to be an adult or require parental permission to receive an emergency medical procedure. You’re comparing apples and oranges (not mention engaging in the very contradiction you think you’ve spotted in me, only in reverse). Anyway, I didn’t say it should have been illegal to pull her out of the classroom.
[QUOTE=FinnAgain]
No Dio, they didn’t. Not unless the SS has replaced their field agents with psychics.[q/uote]
All they needed was an IQ over 14.
I would argue that the girl didn’t even make a threat. wrote “Kill Bush” in an obviously hyperbolic way on a MySpace board (a message which she had already taken down before the SS showed up, by the way). She didn’t express any specific intention to actally do anything, nor would she have the ability to even if she wanted to. I think in order for a threat to be credible, there has to actually be some realistic possibility that an individual to carry it out. A little girl is no threat to GWB, no matter what she prattles about on the internet.
If the SS has nothing better to do than investigate obvious false alarms, then let them do it. I just think they could have better used their discretion and waited until the kid got home from school.