Schools in Beaver County, Pennsylvania were shutdown on the basis for a voicemail greeting in which a student sings the theme air of “Fresh Prince of Bel Air.” That’s right, there appears little inquiry that is made between a call of a receptionists who misheard the lyrics of a song and a total police shutdown of a county.
This lunacy began after a receptionist at an eye doctor’s office called Travis Clawson, 19, to confirm his appointment and got his voice mail. Clawson’s voice mail has him singing the theme song which includes a line “shooting some b-ball outside of the school.” The receptionist heard “shooting people outside the school.” So she called the police.
Now that this point that someone might have wanted to wonder about the likelihood of a mass murderer recording his plan to shoot people in a recorded voice mail tune. Then there is the rest of the song that seem a bit consistent with a homicidal student.
Now this is the story all about how
My life got flipped, turned upside down
And I’d like to take a minute just sit right there
I’ll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-airIn west Philadelphia born and raised
On the playground where I spent most of my days
Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool
And all shooting some b-ball outside of the school
When a couple of guys, they were up to no good
Started making trouble in my neighbourhood
I got in one little fight and my mom got scared
And said “You’re moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-air”I whistled for a cab and when it came near the
License plate said “fresh” and had a dice in the mirror
If anything I could say that this cab was rare
But I thought nah, forget it, yo homes to Bel-air!I pulled up to a house about seven or eight
And I yelled to the cabby “Yo, homes smell you later!”
Looked at my kingdom I was finally there
To sit on my throne as the prince of Bel-air
It is not clear if anyone bothered to call the number and hear the theme song and either recognize it as the song from The Prince of Bel-Air or actually listen to the line. Instead, schools across the county were forced into lockdown for about 30 minutes as police searched for Clawson. He was found in his class at Ambridge High School and detained for three hours. Three hours. Again, why wouldn’t a ten second call to the voice mail put this to rest? It appears that they spent three hours confirming the location of Will Smith as a potential co-conspirator.
Now many of this see this story as a case of sheer lunacy, but Ambridge Area School District Superintendent Erv Weischedel felt it was a positive experience in showing that “”[w]hile this situation can be considered to be a false alarm, it was an excellent opportunity to test our emergency procedures. The procedures in place were efficient and quickly implemented and proved to be successful.” First, I would go a little further than saying that “this situation can be considered to be a false alarm.” It was a false alarm. It was the song of The Prince of Bel-Air. Second, if I were a parent, I would be more concerned that my children were under the supervision of people with little judgment or deductive reasoning.
Source: CBS
Blouise,
Right on the mark — no quarrel from me.
ap,
The problem is that those idiots had authority over that young man’s life. They could hold him for 3 hours for absolutely no reason other than their own base stupidity.
He’s 19 years old so they no longer have the cover “juvenile” behind which they may hide. I hope he spends the next 3 years of his life watching them squirm in court.
http://www.aclu.org/militarization
(Thanks for the Balko link, Dredd.)
The world laughs at some of our paranoia generated Keystone Kops episodes like this.
The ACLU takes these symptoms a bit more seriously, and is doing a national scan of it.
rafflaw,
To be clear, I didn’t know either expression, so you’re way ahead of me, but “Holy Snickies” made me laugh! Thanks.
Frankly
In “Not Another Teen Movie”, a send up of crappy teen movies, a guy decides to woo a girl by showing up with a boom box at school
How dare you, sir. “Say Anything” is not a “crappy teen movie”, and John Cusack is a personal friend of Jonathan Turley.
The young man must have felt that he’d entered the Twilight Zone. -Blouise
I know that feeling, Blouise. 😉
And you’re right about the rest of it. What a bunch of idiots.
The world has gone nuts. Play the dumb song and the case is closed. Holy Snickies! -rafflaw
lol, rafflaw. Yep, “the world has gone nuts.”
And…
http://youtu.be/ig4jbcU9db0
The young man must have felt that he’d entered the Twilight Zone.
Once in their custody it probably took him 3 seconds to set the record straight. The additional 3 hours was how long it took the police and school officials to come up with the “test our emergency procedures” explanation.
I can just see them pacing in their offices, conferencing on the phone, trading e-mails realizing that the only real emergency was how not to look like complete fools. They failed that test.
Until we get the partisanship issues under control…. What do you expect….
Kid’s lucky. If the President had heard about it he might have been the target of a drone attack.
Guess he was going to do the shooting with the poptart the kid in the earlier post today ate into the shape of a gun.
The world has gone nuts. Play the dumb song and the case is closed. Holy Snickies!
Fools, arrogant fools.
No investigator worth their salt would have even contacted the boy without having first listened to the voice mail greeting. You cannot even detain someone under reasonable suspicion without having evidence that a crime was committed or about to be committed. Just because an uncorroborated witness statement is made there is no reasonable suspicion to detain. Maybe things are different in my state than everywhere else but that is what we had to follow here. Even if the witness statement was highly credible, you would want to verify the recording to have some weight behind you when you interview the “suspect”.
In three hours of detention, it was never thought to verify the voice greeting?
Then to me the arrogant part comes out in the double speak the school official bragging about how successful the experience was. What it really did was highlight how paranoid they were and also how little concerned they were that a citizen was falsely imprisoned based upon false information the result of shoddy investigative practices.
Nobody is safe in that kind of environment. Where a citizen can be detained based upon these kind of standards.
The hysteria continues; along with a non-healthy dose of ignorance and complete lack of common sense or critical thinking skills.
And these are our “educators.” So we should continue to give them ever-increasing amounts of money to get this crap? I think not.
“…detained for three hours.”
I don’t believe that the SCOTUS has defined a “reasonable” period for detention, but anything over 20 minutes constitutes a de facto arrest – with all the attendant protections that accrue to the arrested person.
Police routinely abuse the detention priviledge
In “Not Another Teen Movie”, a send up of crappy teen movies, a guy decides to woo a girl by showing up with a boom box at school and player a song for her. He chooses “Jamie Got A Gun”
Hilarity ensues
Another example of why our schools are in worse shape today than in years past. In far too many schools people with little to no common sense are in charge.
It’s a good thing his VM recording wasn’t . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmP8EoQ2XwU
Also, it has been my experience that anyone singing is unlikely to be looking to shoot someone although the Sharks and the Jets have been known to use a knife on occasion.
Imbeciles.
A lot of things should have been shut down after that song but school is not one of them!