Meanwhile “A Georgia man openly carried a fully loaded AR-15 semiautomatic rifle into Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the busiest in the world.”
No arrests were made.
Those stormtroopers… they’re all the same…
Fucking Pigs. They can have my E-11b when they force-grip it from my cold, dead, hands.
Prejudging and arresting someone based on the color of their armor? Why that’s racis… it’s, it’s EMPERIALISM I tell you!
Why did they arrest him? Even if he went on a shooting spree, no one would have been hurt.
It’s absolutely a legitimate safety concern - what if he had started shooting at something at least 100 yards away from the school?
Loitering: remain (ing) in any one place with no apparent purpose
George Cross, 40, said he “was walking through the neighborhood showing friends”
Sound like a purpose to me and walking kind of precludes remaining.
I’m really interested to know how walking past a school dressed in a costume is a crime. It seems to me to be protected activity under the 1st amendment.
And from the files of “we’ll arrest you first, and figure out what to charge you with second…”
Isn’t he a little short for a stormtrooper?
Something about the story doesn’t add up. Based on the context, I’m going to say the “walking through the neighborhood showing friends” sounds like a bit of an exaggeration compared to what he was charged with. If you pull up a map of the area, it is clear he was arrested in front of the school. Now maybe this town has a crazy-instantaneous police dispatch, but this isn’t a massive school either. It looks to be on a block about 150 feet long, so walking that is about a 30 second experience.
On a complete side note, I’ve never quite understood the whole draw to this kind of thing (going around town dressed in a movie costume for a couple hours).
1000 feet? Is that really an appropriate size no-loiter zone? That includes the park, making it useless.
I remember police telling my brother they’d give him a ticket if he remained outside the Giant Eagle where his friend worked (he was waiting for him to get off work.)
“You can’t do that here.”
“What? I’m not doing anything.”
“Exactly. You can’t do that here.”
[“Who’s on first”-like routine ensues.]
My brother had never heard of loitering. To him, it felt like he had stepped into unreality.
That attitude is pretty much what got him arrested.
Spend money earned from work. Work to earn money to spend. Prepare for work. Travel to and from any of the previous three activities. There is no other legitimate purpose. (What a nightmare world we’ve created – but hey look at the new Xbox everybody!)
Huh? That’s quite a leap.
Hundreds of people “loiter” outside of the schools around here every morning and afternoon as they open and close. Family, friends, students from other local schools. And there is no dress code.
I find this distressing. He was basically arrested because his gun might have been a real gun. But it wasn’t actually a real gun. So he was arrested for the thoughts he caused other people to have, not for his actions. This is not unlike the kids who put an alarm clock in a locker the other day. The alarm clock wasn’t a bomb, but because someone thought it might have been a bomb, they are charged with a felony. It seems a very short step from here to being arrested and charged for merely being present when someone experiences fear.
What’s cool is that guy could have tried to go through security screening and not been arrested. HB-60 insures there are no penalties for a terrorist attempting to smuggle a gun into a restricted area, provided they leave if caught.
