Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

Don't make threats if you don't intend to follow up on them.

Also, from his lawyer: "They didn't find pentagrams and candles. He wasn't listening to Judas Priest."

WTF does that have to do with anything? Do only Judas Priest fans shoot up kindergartens? Is there something wrong with liking pentagrams and candles? I think that lawyer is the real creep here, and that kind of defense deserves to be ineffective.

In any case, if you threaten to shoot up a kindergarten, of course the police is going to look into you. Imagine the outrage if they got a tip like that, ignored it, and then the guy shot up a kindergarten? They have no option but to detain him, and the lack of candles in his home is utterly irrelevant to that.

And of course they then need to gather complete evidence, which includes the facebook conversation, details of his past, his mental health, etc. And maybe they messed up there. They clearly messed up some other stuff, in particular the jail where someone can get sexually molested, and the fact that they conned him out of a lawyer. The article does list a number of worrying aspects of US law enforcement injustice that seems way too common lately. But that doesn't change the fact that if you make a death threat, you should expect to get arrested.

> Don't make threats if you don't intend to follow up on them.

Hello, Thought Police.

It wasn't a threat. It was a series of tasteless jokes.

The consequences aren't even remotely proportional. You know what would be proportional? Someone calling him out for being tasteless, or perhaps even unfriend him, or report the abuse to Facebook so he had to tone it down.

It's scary that people think this kind of "justice" is remotely ok. It's not. This is on par of a witch burning for someone not adapting to social norms.

> It wasn't a threat. It was a series of tasteless jokes.

It's a joke that looks a lot like a threat. And threats aren't funny.

The arrest was not disproportional. The corruption that happened after the arrest was of course totally crazy and wrong, but the police investigating threats is not wrong. The problem here is that they didn't really investigate it; they just tried to get him convicted by any means possible. But when someone says he's going to shoot up a kindergarten, the police absolutely should investigate.

By your logic, all of the following statements should lead to an arrest:

I'm gonna have to kill someone if I don't get to sleep soon.

You make me so mad I want to kill you!

If these kids don't calm down you'll have to restrain me so I don't kill one.

A: If they don't budge on this soon we'll have to consider some other options. B: What about kidnapping?

Plus a bunch of comedian, talk-show hosts and other free-spoken people. A joke is a joke; it's not an action and it's not a plan to action. It's irrelevant whether you personally find it funny or not.

If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged. - Cardinal Richelieu

Please reconsider the consequences of what you are proposing.

It's a reference to the daycare satanism hysteria in the 80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_care_sex_abuse_hysteria

It's not discriminatory against fans of hair metal, just bringing in some period-specific music.

The point is that this is a stupid moral panic, which is why he was referencing past stupid moral panics. He's not trying to imply that Judas Priest is staging a comeback.

But you should not expect to be put in jail, that's nonsense.

People say "I'm gonna kill you" every day to their friends as the way of saying "I don't like what you just did", does not mean they are violent in any way.

The society where it's OK to go to jail for saying something without being any real threat is not healthy at all. Stupid jokes are non-violent.

In my country there is a death threat law that says that person can be charged in court with a death threat if and only if there is a strong reason to believe that the threat was real. It's not enough to say "I will kill you", you must have had a real conflict or hold a knife to have legal consequences.

Serious threats and "joke" threats are not always easy to tell apart. And dismissing serious threats as "it's probably a joke" can be very dangerous. Of course you shouldn't be imprisoned for a stupid joke, but any threat that looks serious has to be investigated.

And people shouldn't assume they can do stupid things with impunity just because they _meant_ it as a joke. Some stupid jokes are far more stupid than people realize, and can really hurt people, directly or indirectly.

This wasn't a specifically targeted threat, but some "joke" threats are targeted, and the target can't always tell whether it's serious or a stupid joke. And assuming all threats are jokes means that the serious ones get ignored. And sometimes some real bastards hide behind "it's just a joke. Can't you take a joke?" while they're threatening and intimidating people.

And considering how easy it is to simply not make "joke" threats, I'd rather see threats taken too seriously than ignored.

Yes, the corruption and travesty of justice after the arrest is horrible, and (yet another) sign that something is really rotten in US law enforcement. But in principle, detaining someone who says he's going to shoot up a school is a sensible precaution. Don't want to be detained? Easy: don't say you're going to shoot people.

Look into != jail for several months.

There are (supposedly) fairly well-defined use cases for probable cause and sufficient evidence to prosecute, and it seems these were all trampled over in this case.

In regards to the Judas Priest comments, I think that may have been some unintentional hyperbole/satire, pointing at the widely disproved profiling of school shooters. The Harris/Klebold case had a lot of cultural baggage of that type, most of which was fabricated by journalists. Citing them as fans of Marilyn Manson is one example; they possessed no Manson albums or memorabilia.

> Look into != jail for several months.

Oh, absolutely. The utter travesty and corruption after the arrest is atrocious. And that sort of stuff seems to happen way too often in the US. I'm not defending that at all.

The only thing I'm saying is that treating threats as a joke is stupid and dangerous, and the police should investigate threats, and not assume they're merely a joke without investigating.

Apparently that makes me a minority on HN, and most people here seem to think joke threats are okay. I don't.

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