TheAgitator.com
Isn’t “Terroristic Mischief” a Contradiction in Terms?
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009Last month, Purdue University student Roy Sun was arrested and charged with “terroristic mischief.” He could face up to eight years in prison. His crime? He got a little too pissed off about a parking ticket.
Sun got the ticket and had a boot put on his car after local parking officials discovered he was using a permit that didn’t belong to him. So Sun removed the boot, put it in a box with $20 (the amount of the fine) and the ticket, and put the box in the school’s Visitor’s Center, which also happens to be where students go to pay parking fines.
The school evacuated the center after finding the unattended box, then came to arrest Sun.
According to a local TV station…
Police said terroristic mischief is when a person knowingly or intentionally places a device with the intent to cause a reasonable person to believe that it is a weapon of mass destruction.
Sun’s probably guilty of being a bit too cute, here. But terrorism? Given that he left a parking ticket that included his name and address in the box, it seems unlikely that he intended the package to be mistaken for a dirty bomb.
We are effed. We = USA
So are we at the point now where a “reasonable person” would believe any unattended box left anywhere is a weapon of mass destruction?
Because you know there’s been so many weapons of mass destruction left in boxes around our country and all.
Holy crap! There are a shitload of unattended boxes under a big tree down at the mall.
Looks like Osama won to me.
Well, I sure am glad to see that institutions of higher learning are trying to protect its students from everything, including unidentified wheel boots. Of course, they have been trying for years to protect students from serious thought, instead subjecting them to Political Correctness run amok.
I don’t think we should jump the gun and prematurely accuse the prosecutor or cops of being a bunch of empty-headed moronic dingbats. It could turn out that thus guy is “linked” to al qaeda, has over-stayed a student visa, and that he really meant to plant a dirty bomb, but just happened to plant the wrong box at the Visitor Information Center. Maybe he’s a secret “home grown” terrorist and he just had everyone convinced he was a “nice” student. The possibilities are endless.
We should thank our lucky stars that law enforcement authorities are on the job protecting us from weapons of mass destruction. After all, the WMDs that were originally supposed to be in Iraq didn’t just evaporate. They very well could be right here in our own back yard. What better place for Saddam to high his WMDs than someplace he knows we’d never look?
Sounds like the school’s police are having delusions of grandeur. Maybe they are trying to get federal anti-terrorism funding.
I’d kill for a parking ticket to only be $20.
Uh, I mean, I’d uh…
#4: “Looks like Osama won to me.”
He won when airport screwity became the theatrical performance it has become. He won when we’ve reached a point where virtually everyone feels entitled to demand your government dossier number to conduct any kind of business anywhere.
Etc.
The problem is we are prone to insane delusions.
The solution is you spend eight years in a cage.
Next time take the boot and chuck it in a lake somewhere so it can’t be used on other cars.
Unfortunately the legal definition of WMD basically includes bullets. Otherwise the size of the device would make it obvious that it wasn’t a weapon of mass destruction in the eyes of anyone except a tweaked out panic monger.
And you know if I were Osama, the Purdue University Visitor’s Center would be at the top of my list of terrorist targets too. In fact it’s #3, right behind the sewage treatment plant in Des Moines and the soup kitchen in Peoria.
/sarc
I think the two real “reasons” for the “terroristic mischief” charge. First is the notion that police/public officials can never admit that the were wrong or that a mistake may have been made. Second is that whenever there is a panic, someone must be punished. So when they evacuated a building based on something that wasn’t a bomb or even a fake bomb, their natural next step is to punish whoever left it there, that person’s intentions being irrelevant. Once Sun was charged with a crime, the evaction was “right”. What’s sad is that the idea that evacuating the building due to a suspicious package, then letting the whole thing go when said package is determine not be neither bomb nor prank never occurs to these people.
The whole thing is more evidence of the double standard for those work in government (be it bureaucracies, law enforcement, etc.) and those who don’t. The general public is not allowed to make innocent mistakes anymore.
Should I call to report the USPS, UPS and FedEx? They keep leaving packages at my door covered in strange numerical codes.
Being serious though, these kinds of events can only lead us eventually to a situation not unlike ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’. With our perception of law enforcement as the boy. That’s scary.
They’re probably most pissed by the fact that he was able to remove the boot on his own. The worst cop thrashing I ever received when doing civil disobedience was the time I managed to slip out the handcuffs they slapped on me.
yeah peckerwood, that was my favorite part of the story too. I can only imagine the feeling of triumph when he finally got that thing off and could drive his car around again.
‘His crime? He got a little too pissed off about a parking ticket.’
I’m doomed.
I do believe I would be willing to risk doing time before caving to any charge the threw at me over something like this.
“Police said terroristic mischief is when a person knowingly or intentionally places a device with the intent to cause a reasonable person to believe that it is a weapon of mass destruction.”
They will have to prove Sun intended to cause a reasonable person to believe the package was a WMD. This they will not be able to prove. This they know they will not be able to prove. The arrest and prosecution IS the punishment. Sun will spend the next year or two of his life and gobs of money defending himself. Possibly he will be expelled from the university. Sun is being punished for his insolence in removing the boot.
joe b – They’ll also probably offer him a plea deal somewhere down the line. It’s classic cop strategy –
1. Go for the overkill in the initial charge with a ridiculous misapplication of the law resulting in the threat of lengthy jail time, even if you know you can’t prove it.
2. Offer to reduce the charges to something lesser if he pleads guilty. It doesn’t matter if the lesser charge is also something you can’t prove because the guilty plea makes it where proof is no longer necessary.
3. Leave him with the choice of either paying thousands of dollars to defend himself against the original charge, or paying thousands of dollars in fines for the reduced charge.
It’s a no-win situation. Which is why if you remove a boot (and I’m not at all adverse to his decision to do so) the best thing you can do is go chuck it in a lake.
Dealing with the government on these things is just like returning a gun to a disarmed bankrobber – it may technically belong to him, but it’s likely to get you shot.
Yeah they really don’t like it when you mess with the cuffs. Didn’t manage to get out of mine but I got my hands in front of me by passing them under my feet. The pigs didn’t notice for a bit but when they did they took ‘em off, threw me into a wall, and then made a serious point to twist my arms as painfully as possible back behind my back to cuff me again. They locked them so tightly that my hands turned blue from the circulation being cut off.
This is a “respect my authority” prosecution.
*facepalm*
Unbelievable. This is honestly one of the most ridiculous charges I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen my fair share.
I just want to know how he got the boot off.
20+ years ago, a columnist at the Arkansas Gazette (or possibly Democrat-Gazette, after the merger) wrote about looking out his office window and seeing a boot applied down in the parking lot. He was intrigued, walked down to study it, and successfully removed it in three minutes without damaging the boot or the car.
And then he refused to tell how he did it, the bastard.
Nice to see only 2-3 comments like this… but it shows how ignorant some people are:
The parking office at my alma mater is in the parking garage next to the football stadium. If someone left a box like that in the garage, near the door of the parking office, it would be easy for a keystone kop to say “dey was tryun ta blooowwww up teh football fanz!”
Being at ground zero (pun intended) gives a little more perspective.. this is even more ridiculous than it seems. Having lived here for years, met a few officers and even worked with one, I can tell you ours are great.. but one name comes up from time to time, one detective has a name so bad in the legal arena that the only two attorneys and one judge anyone in my circle of life has had raport with used curse words upon hearing his name.. the detective in charge of this case. He’s known to make patsies, coerce confessions from innocents, trespass through properties without warrant in hopes of a lucky find, one attorney told of how he stacked the court with friends and family in a particular case to make background noise to sway a case and the judge called him on it, his wife and children left him and he was unresponsive to court demands so as a matter of public record the court ordered his checks garnished to pay his ex wife and children (though the large percentages (regular and overtime) are public, the exact details as to why were left out probably for their sensitivity), and in one case where he tried to make a patsy the evidence actually proved the suspect innocent and if anything him of being guilty of refusing a court order to produce a record, contempt for producing a cd that was other than was ordered two weeks after the deadline, not pursuing the real suspects.. the victim was offered two options.. jury trial that would prove her innocence and cost a lot, or criminal diversion by admitting guilt to providing the false confession (after 3 hours no rights read unrecorded harsh coersion alone in a windowless room with him) for half the cost an no record but waiving 4th amendment rights for a year. Unfortunately this poor person chose the latter as the emotional strain had already been too much, and half-cost with similar end result and no more emotional torture seemed appealing. It’s one thing when corruption is rampant, it’s entirely another when there’s on bad egg that gets no attention where it counts.. so many people know the bad egg and how bad it smells, but the local news ignores and unfortunately the rest that are good and respectable for the most part say and do nothing against their own.
The Visitor Information Center (VIC) at the University is the name of a small building that is part of a parking garage. Inside this small building serve two main functions, PARKING FACILITIES where people PAY TICKETS and purchase passes, and an information booth for visitors.
There’s no such thing as a “dirty bomb”, this is urban myth.