In the linked video, starting at 2:43, a retired chief of police says that these arrests don’t reduce drug use, but happen anyway because they are an easy way to get increased federal funding.
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I misread that, and thought they were offering the $10k to the suspects as a reward for torching the statue.
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You have undercover cops acting as students in schools in the US???!! How old was this “cop”?
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What I want to know is where were the teachers in all this? Assuming there is a teacher responsible for special needs students in the school, it sounds like they really dropped the ball here. If it were my classroom I would be doing all I can to keep children out of the justice system.
Maybe if they weren’t wasting all their time trying to increase their funding they wouldn’t need to increase it. They’re not a bloody corporation.
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Depending upon how conservative the area a truly private school is in, I could see some vindictive parents allowing such a sting if one of their Future Captains of Industry was dumb enough to get caught with a blunt.
Laugh all you like, that little guy logged hundreds of hours in an unconventional community care setting with Lenny before the… unfortunate incident… that ended his career. He used to be quite the expert on the social and legal frameworks in which developmentally-impaired adults, and their caregivers, can find themselves.
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Yeah. It’s the numbers game. To paraphrase David Simon: It takes months or even years of real, hard police work to arrest a kingpin, but only a few minutes to go to the corner and lock up some poor kids holding some dope. Yet on the statistics, both these arrests show up as a “1”.
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It’s worse that that. You’re also required to provide shelter for your kids, and feed them every once in a while, and get them medical care if they need it. You can go to jail if you don’t do this.
If you can’t afford to do it on your own, then you have to jump through whatever hoops are required in order to get private charity or government assistance or both. If “freedom” (in the Libertarian sense) is a priority for you then you should think twice before having kids.
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I agree.
Now all we have to do is to make sure that the people are paid well enough so that both parents don’t have to work. Wage increase?
Oh! We also have to make sure all parents are educated well enough to teach their children. Free college for everyone?
So, if we can enact a wage increase to make sure people are paid enough to support themselves, another adult, and 1-3 children in a 40 hour work week and give everyone enough college education to ensure they are capable of educating any child from 1st to 12th grade, your plan would be perfectly workable.
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I am hardly misinformed about mental health issues. My clients suffer from them, I am a frequent participant (as an attorney sheparding my clients into services) of the mental health court system, I solicit mental health evaluations from experts and I worked for a psychiatrist who was a mental health expert who delivered opinions / diagnoses on people’s mental health issues. He had interviewed and reviewed records of shooting victims of the Chicago Police Department, people mistreated by health care facilities, and childhood abuse victims. I have seen the children of violent / sexual assault become victimizers themselves. I am aware that my arm-chair diagnosis is poor, and it was probably said in haste. But, PTSD is triggered by a sufficiently terrifying event to cause recurrent and residual effects. An arrest can be traumatizing. It’s not that traumatizing. And this is not an ‘egg-shell plaintiff’ scenario either…where we judge the terrifying effects based on each individual person.
I believe this kid is mentally ill and affected deeply by his illness. I don’t doubt the veracity of that and the tactics of the police in this situation are deplorable. But you don’t get PTSD from an arrest. I’m basing that on what his parents said. If it turns out he had a gun pointed to his head and thrown on the ground and beaten, etc., I might re-evaluate.
You can get PTSD from a fender bender, divorce or being eaten by a Luck Dragon
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-easy-to-read/index.shtml
You are wrong. You are SO wrong it hurts. I pity your clients if this is the attitude you genuinely hold. PTSD is NOT the exclusive purview of combat veterans or rape survivors. Anyone who suffers a traumatic shock to their system or way of life can end up suffering.
When you look at this kid’s experience it’s entirely reasonable to consider it as a possibility. His entire world was shattered. He was arrested and held for 2 days, his only friend deceived him, he’s been kicked out of school, one of the major parts of his routine, went to court and faced a trial, all based on a lie. That would be traumatic to anyone, let alone someone who is on the autistic spectrum.
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Agree to disagree. I can show you plenty of mental health experts who find PTSD grossly over-diagnosed. I’m one who happens to agree with them. Please note…I don’t approve of what happened, nor think that the kid would suffer harm from the actions of the police, nor was he NOT traumatized. But PTSD is not “I was unhappy about this” or “I’m upset, in fact, quite upset from this event.” It has specific symptoms and the criteria to get them cannot be held to be as low as “I was arrested”. If that were true, 75% of America would have PTSD. It’s just not how it works.
Lies, deceit, going to court…please…these DO NOT and CANNOT constitute the type of traumatic event that triggers PTSD. It dangerously cheapens the diagnosis and renders the opinions of experts silly when you conflate these types of events.
Let’s say the kid was attacked in the juvenile detention (a distinct possibility as many juvenile detention centers are a Lord of the Flies hellscape). THAT might trigger PTSD. But this would be because of the distinct event. The whole, I got in trouble and now I have PTSD is a dangerously slippery slope. I can’t possibly disagree with you, CaptainPledge, more.
I hope to glob if you ever find yourself suffering from PTSD you meet someone who actually knows what it is and how it affects people, rather than someone who thinks like you.
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CaptainPledge, I hope I never have to go through an event that would cause it. But if I did, I would certainly seek treatment. Don’t make the fallacy of thinking that because I don’t think you can get PTSD from getting arrested and taken to court means that a) I don’t think PTSD exists, that b) it isn’t a serious mental health issue or that c) it COULD have occurred in this kid.
What I fear is that mental health diagnoses are thrown about willy nilly, cheapened by people who don’t actually know what the causes / symptoms of mental health diseases are and therefore actually harm those with the disease by lessening their seriousness. In all honesty, it hurts people who actually have PTSD to get lumped in with someone who doesn’t but it is hoping to collect on an emotional damages verdict in a civil suit.
I have seen mental health issues get thrown about by my clients all the time. “I have ADHD, I’m bi-polar, I’m depressed.” And they are a) undiagnosed b) not in treatment, or c) have no basis for the claim. And then I have clients who ARE diagnosed and in treatment and sometimes it appears to be bad parenting or drug seeking behavior on behalf of the person instead of true mental health issues. Both of those approaches HARM people with mental illness because it’s harder to identify people who actually have the issues when EVERYONE has them.
Diagnosis and treatment of mental health issues, hell, even ASKING for help, is a very difficult process. I just get angry when I see something that I just can’t jibe with the science and it gets thrown around flippantly. In my opinion, it harms those who really need the help and those with the actual diagnosis.
“I don’t think people can get PTSD from that kind of experience, but don’t make the fallacy of assuming I don’t think someone could get PTSD from that kind of experience.”
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Oh, beautiful Temecula, home of soccer moms in gigantic SUVs, cookie cutter semi-McMansions, and “Honey, I’m bored, let’s start a winery” tourist traps. My dad lives outside of Temecula so I pass through it now and then. Don’t get pulled over therere.
When you say eaten…
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