Comments on: Didn’t Get the Lickins That the Other Ones Had

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:16:54 +0000

I can’t believe the things that kids are doing these days. Anyways, There is more to the case, I guess one of the kids got caught with hydrocodone and has been arrested. Gives you an Idea of what kind of people we are dealing with. The Buffalo Blog.

By: hank

hank — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:40:13 +0000

Oh, and I don’t condone lynching, but a couple of nights in Attica might teach the offenders something. Virginia started some “Shock Imprisonment” back in the 90’s, before being granted probation (supervision instead of prison, which is different from Parole), and when some of these young offenders found out prison isn’t county jail, they decided that perhaps they didn’t want to end up there.

By: hank

hank — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:34:06 +0000

Mike I guess you never took Criminal Justice 101
Punishment has 3 facets.
Celerity–the punishment must fit the crime
Severity–an amount equal to the offense
Swiftness—a problem with many criminal cases, by the time punishment is meted out, the offender has already committed more crimes.

By: Bill Altreuter

Bill Altreuter — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:41:24 +0000

Here’s the part that surprises me whenever I hear about a hazing incident: essentially any hazing is illegal in New York State. NY Penal Law § 120.17 provides, “A person is guilty of hazing in the second degree when, in the course of another person’s initiation or affiliation with any organization, he intentionally or recklessly engages in conduct which creates a substantial risk of physical injury to such other person or a third person.” It’s “only” a violation (and “only” a misdemeanor if it causes injury), but it opens the school up to civil liability. You would think that before the start of every school year every principal would lay it out for the teachers: we have a zero tolerance policy as regards hazing– of any sort.

In fact, mild hazing takes place in just about every school. Every time it is brought to my attention I bring the provisions of Penal § 120.17 to the attention of the principal, and I have yet to be told, “You’re right. It will never happen again.” So I say, bring on the lawyers. Wilson had prior notice. The only thing that is going to keep the district out of bankruptcy is the bar on punitive damages against municipalities. The teachers and coaches do not enjoy that same immunity, and I hope they end up living in boxes for allowing the worst “Lord of the Flies” impulses of their students free reign.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:12:00 +0000

Hank do you now condone lynching? And steve you are correct, the reporter are kind of like us.

By: steve

steve — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:43:22 +0000

Only tangentially related, but why do I suspect that the NF Reporter’s take was based on reporting done from the comfort of Hudson’s living room? The Reporter is not widely known in Niagara County for actually going to the meetings they sometimes write about. More like offering an opinion after having watched or read about it in some other media.

By: hank

hank — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:04:06 +0000

Mike–Your inane comment aside, Something is rotten in Wilson. Not Wilson, North Carolina–where if this happened, the perpetrators would be dealt with severity,celerity (look that one up Mike) and Swiftness.

Frankly, after reading Pundit’s post and the links he included, I was appalled. I’m not unfamiliar with Wilson, and if someone told me they wanted to move there, I would have told them nothing but good about it, as up to this week I’d never heard anyone say anything bad about the place.

All the public has done apparently is to enable and condone aggravated sodomy. The Why of this escapes me totally.

By: Ben Franklin

Ben Franklin — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:29:54 +0000

BP,

How about:

The bus came by and I got on, that’s where it all began?

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:14:53 +0000

We now have a new expression “bend over and take it like a Wilson baseball player”, life is great here in western new york.

By: Terry

Terry — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:49:36 +0000

Sherlock Holmes always comes to mind when dealing with crime, and he had his thoughts on rural communities: “Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.”

“Good heavens!” I cried. “Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?”

“They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”

“You horrify me!”

“But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard’s blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.”