The extra-curricular activities kids have these days…
A teenager has been charged with a felony after bringing a cache of weapons to his Saluda, Virginia high school on Friday.
Police arrested Middlesex High School student Austin Martin after a K9 unit detected something in his car. Inside, officers found four loaded guns, several knives and more than 600 rounds of ammunition, some of which did not fit any of the weapons found in the car.
Martin, 18, was charged with possessing firearms on school property and released on a $1,500 bond.
Good thing he wasn’t a 12-year old black kid, or someone might have gotten killed. Of course, he gets a $1,500 bond. I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding, and he’s not a danger to anyone. Certainly not like Tamir Rice and his plastic toy gun was, right?
Look, in all seriousness the police did their jobs in this case. Nobody was hurt and Austin Martin will face a court of law over these weapons. Police officers by and large discharge their duties daily without having to resort to violence.
But bad cops kill, and they get away with it. And you’ll have a hard time convincing me that the entire system is anything but stacked against young black kids when you have police union reps on TV explaining that yes, that 12-year old child had to die and his death was justified when Austin Martin will most likely be home for the holidays out on bond, and Tamir is going to be in a box in the cold Ohio ground.
So yeah, maybe it’s not fair to equate the two situations in a sense, but I don’t care. Level your criticisms at me, whatever. I’m sick of seeing this happen where armed white guys get arrested, and unarmed black guys get shot or choked to death or beaten to death.
I’m far from the only one too.
greennotGreen
I still think John Crawford is the best example of bad police getting away with murder. Dude was doing absolutely nothing illegal or even menacing when the cops rushed in and shot him twice. They may have (or may not have) yelled, “Drop it!” but there’s no way he had time to even process the request, much less act upon it, before he was hit.
How anyone with two brain cells to rub together could see the security camera footage and decide that the cops did the right or even excusable thing, I don’t understand.
srv
K9’s smell guns? I don’t think so.
Someone he’d been showing it off to called it in, trainer had the dog do a false hit, and all smooth.
If he’d not been white, there would have been a SWAT team around the car and the call in would have been enough to go Bonnie & Clyde on him.
c u n d gulag
I’m with you, Zandar!
greennotGreen
If you look at the slo-mo play of the Crawford security footage, you see that after he was shot, he sort of gets up and heads back toward the gun, and they shoot him again, the fatal bullet. But we know he wasn’t going for the gun because it was, as he said, “a toy.” So he got killed because his behavior, after he was shot didn’t comport with what the cops though it should be? (Actually, I don’t think the cops had time to process it either – it was just bam, bam!)
Same deal with Mike Brown. Shoot the guy, then shoot him a bunch more times because he doesn’t act the way you think he should after he’s been shot? How are people supposed to act after they’re shot? No, let me restate that. How are black guys supposed to act after they’ve been shot? Because obviously the rules are different for them.
Villago Delenda Est
I’m with you too, Zandar.
The police union reps need to be….
Well, dealt with in a severe manner.
Southern Beale
A 19-year-old Greeneville TN kid shot a 6-month-old cat named Grandpa in the back of the head at point-blank range for no reason other than he’s a sadistic fuck. Donations to the cat’s veterinary care are currently being sought.
Kids today. Small town values, Real America, let’s talk about black-on-black crime, etc. etc.
RSR
Yeah, a bit curious about the K9 situation. Is there normally a K9 unit at the school? If not, then there was information that led to K9 being brought to the scene.
trollhattan
@Southern Beale:
“Flyover country.” Yup, flying way the hell over.
catclub
@Southern Beale: One of the reasons Huckabee will probably not run for president. His son apparently did this kind of thing. Small town values indeed.
SatanicPanic
I agree
Matt McIrvin
@Southern Beale: I’m pretty sure that in The Good Old Days, a teenager casually murdering someone’s cat wouldn’t even have been news, it’d have been “boys will be boys”.
greennotGreen
@Southern Beale: I believe research has shown that 1) people who hurt people for pleasure have usually started with animals, and 2) people who hurt animals for pleasure either have neurological defects resulting in sociopathy or they’ve been abused themselves.
ruemara
At this point, I’m fearing that black people will need a white minder to vouch that we’re going about legal business.
catclub
@catclub: On the other hand Jeb is in, at least in his own mind.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_12/jeb_makes_a_move053333.php
Tim F.
That’s not fair. Sometimes the armed, drunk, belligerent white guy gets a polite talking to and their weapons back the next day.
Shakezula
See also the cop killer who was taken alive.
Anyone who has a problem with what you said should just shove their heads a bit further up their ass. If they push far enough it should protect their beautiful minds from uncomfortable thoughts.
Citizen Alan
@catclub:
Dubya supposedly tortured animals to death to, and it didn’t slow down his presidential ambitions.
Shakezula
@greennotGreen:
Back up. What was this black guy doing? Why was he outside at all? Was he doing anything a police officer might interpret as threatening, such as being black and a man? If he was in his home, was he laying face down on the floor with his hands stretched out in front of him? Was he breathing? Were there at least two white witnesses who could vouch for the fact that he wasn’t violent or they’d already killed him so the officer didn’t need to waste bullets?
NCSteve
@greennotGreen: Yup. I still wonder which one GWB was.
sophronia
One question I always have when watching the footage of cops shooting: Why are the police trained to go into a situation screaming commands at people? I can’t imagine that does anything other than panic people and make it more likely that they will make sudden unexplained moves and less likely they will be able to comply. So why do they do it?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@srv: They do. Shit, I can if it’s been fired in the last few hours. It’s a stink that lingers and clings.
Armed white guys are getting arrested? THAT is news I was not aware of.
Keith G
@srv:
@RSR:
I have worked in school district where dogs are regularly used for both cars and lockers. Such pups can alert to ammo. In the early days of this, sometimes students and teachers popped for having hunting gear stashed in the trunk so they could make a quick get-a-way on Friday after school to their out of town hunting spot. Needless to say, they stayed in town those days.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Think it would depend on the community, whose cat it was, and who the POS shooter was.
Glad they have charged him, he should get a year or 2 in jail & be working for the owners to pay all vet bills (at a minimum).
Paul in KY
@NCSteve: Probably both. How much hazing do you think went on in the Deke house, when he was pledge beater (or whatever).
Mike in NC
They named this kid after James Bond’s car? No wonder he was a walking time bomb.
Mandalay
Speaking of black guys getting choked to death, this happened today in Britain:
His dying words to his fellow passengers on the plane are worth noting:
He was right. They did.
Kay
I think that the way white school shooters are treated (“what went wrong? were they bullied?”) compared to how black children who are shot are treated (“let’s sue to get the thugs juvenile record!”) is absolutely STARK.
Watch the PBS documentary on the Connecticut shooter sometime. It is thoughtful and nuanced and FULL of how we all share responsibility for this tragedy. “What was he thinking? Did someone miss A SIGN? Could we, all of us, have prevented this?”
I don’t know how anyone denies there’s bias there. It hit me right in the face when it was raised. It had never occurred to me. I don’t need any more evidence of bias. They can rest their case right there :)
Mandalay
You’re correct that it’s not fair, but you should care, because posts like this impact your credibility. Here are more details on the story that you chose to omit:
IOW, it’s complete non-story that you chose to distort. Jesus Fucking Christ there are a gazillion examples of white privilege and black oppression out there, and this is the best you can come up with? OPs like this are counterproductive.
chopper
i’m sure all the talking heads on TV will be pointing to this and lecturing white america on how white parents need to do a better job with their kids and their ‘culture of violence’, right? right?
gvg
Most of the time the white guys are treated fairly, it’s just a problem that the black guys aren’t. Justice for all means the black guys (and gals) get the same respect and fairness that the white guys do. It’s not taking anything away from us whites and I tend to think whites should see this behavior as a threat to them too, because corruption and incompetance spread.
Every once in awhile I read about a white guy getting away with something they shouldn’t and wonder what the authorities were thinking. Well no system by mere humans will ever be perfect, but sometimes……somebody is an idiot.
First they came for the black men and I wasn’t a black man……..I guess modern media is getting the word around better than in the past but it sure seems like things have esculated the last few years, especially this year. I will vote, but not sure what else I should do right now. Maybe try not to escape jury duty? Last time I got selected my sister/housemate was just getting over leg surgery and I was taking care of her son, getting him to school, it wasn’t impossible but it would have been very challanging to drop him off, get to jury maybe several days in a row, then get out and pick him up before daycare closed down. Juries though seem to be pretty important if you think things are unjustly racist. It is never convient.
danielx
Or white guys who don’t get arrested, like Cliven Bundy (still healthy and at large), or this guy.
trollhattan
@Mandalay:
Where the fvck does dad live? If Aleppo I can kind of understand…kind of…but that you feel “four loaded guns, several knives and more than 600 rounds of ammunition, some of which did not fit any of the weapons found in the car” to be a “non-story” may be more self-revelatory than you think.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@trollhattan: Shit, I live in California and that, minus the knives, is what goes out with me for a half-day at the range. Including ammo for guns not in my vehicle, because it all lives in one box and I don’t remove stuff I’m not going to use that day.
Only real difference is that I NEVER carry loaded weapons in the car. It’s somewhat dangerous and in CA it’s illegal.
But I bet it’s mandatory in VA, buncha backwards-ass gun laws in that state.
ETA: Well, even though there has been some selective…erm…editing of the original story, the takeaway is the same. Had Mr. James Bond Car been a black man instead of a white man, he’d certainly be in jail and probably grateful to be there instead of stretched on a slab at the ME’s office.
Mandalay
@trollhattan:
I think he was dumb thoughtless kid who had a ton of weapons in his car last Friday because he was going to spend the weekend away with his dad. So do the cops. So does the Schools Superintendent. Apparently you don’t find that credible. Time will tell.
But my bigger concern is that a highly fucking relevant and plausible explanation for the guns being in the car was deliberately omitted from the OP, and the incident was framed in racial terms.
brent
@Mandalay: I think the point is more the disparity between how a white suspect is treated versus a black suspect. In other words, the issue Zandar is raising is not that the white suspect should have been treated more harshly but that black suspects should be treated less harshly in that it seems it is possible to resolve these sorts of issues with less than the use of deadly force.
Now I think there are obvious problems with this comparison (a better comparison would be to white individuals that were armed at the time of confrontation and left essentially unmolested by LEO of which there are quite a few examples) but I would argue that your response missed the point entirely.
trollhattan
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Yup, or at the very least they’d have accused him of dealing guns at school, which probably gets into interesting legal territory even in Virginia.
geg6
You keep on slammin’ away at this, Zandar. I’m behind you 100%. I’m sick of it, too.
gratuitous
The point I think Zandar is making and that some folks insist on missing is “Imagine a black kid doing what young Austin did.” Anyone want to take bets on whether that would turn out the same way? Anyone want to take bets on whether the cops would believe a black kid who said he was just taking all this ordnance out for a weekend visit to dear old dad? Anyone want to take bets on whether the felony charges young Austin is facing will actually be prosecuted to conviction? Anyone want to take best on whether a young black kid in a similar situation – assuming he survived the encounter with the local law enforcement officers – would be entitled to believe that the charges against him would be dropped?
In this instance, law enforcement acted in a measured and reasonable manner, and good on them. I can’t help believing, though, that a black teen-ager could not expect the same measured response.
geg6
@Mandalay:
So, you think a black student in the exact same situation would be treated in the same way? Really?
geg6
@Mandalay:
Funny, but you could say the exact same thing about a certain 12-year-old from Cleveland who was being dumb and thoughtless because he was bored, but who never had an actual deadly weapon in his possession but ended up dead instead of just being arrested and getting out on bond. Or about a certain young man who was shopping, peacefully, in Walmart and never actually touched a deadly weapon but who certainly isn’t going to get out of his coffin on bond. But precious white boy Astin will be just fine and his story about going hunting with dad is never going to be questioned. Until they go through his computer after he’s shot up the school library a few years from now, that is. And, chances are, even then they’ll catch him alive.
Karen in GA
@gratuitous: Exactly.
Paul in KY
@geg6: Good points all.
Carl Nyberg
Does any state make it a crime to allow minors unsupervised access to firearms?
Carl Nyberg
How would corporate media have handled a minor from a Muslim family bringing a bunch of loaded weapons to school?
trollhattan
@Carl Nyberg:
Doubt it. In “liberal” Washington state a hiker was killed by a 14 YO bear hunter who was “supervised” by a 16 YO. All legal (right up to the woman being perforated, which must be considered “unsporting”).
trollhattan
@Carl Nyberg:
Would any of us have heard of the Sydney event had the hostage-taker been Bruce McBruce?
phoebes-in-santa fe
@Mike in NC: That was my first thought, too, though the car was an “Astin” Martin. Still too close…
By the way, here’s an Onion article from 1999 on cops and black guys…
http://www.theonion.com/articles/nypd-apologizes-for-accidental-shootingclubbingsta,739/
Shakezula
@geg6: Yes, but it is unfair to suggest race plays a role in who gets to keep breathing because the police who kill African-American men and boys don’t shout “I’m shooting you because you’re a n*gger!” or similar.
(However, I don’t think Tamir was being dumb or thoughtless. I think he was being a kid.)
Mandalay
@geg6:
He’s white so he’s automatically a serial killer? Nice going – you managed to make yourself a part of the problem in discussions like this with your own special flavor of racist bile. Fuck off racist.
trollhattan
@Mandalay:
Keep fvcking that chicken.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Mandalay: Name one black kid who has shot up his school. I’ll wait.
trollhattan
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Hope you have a lottttt of time.
brent
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I disagreed with Mandalay before, pointing out that I thought he/she was missing the point: @brent. However, I think his/her point that we shouldn’t be making unwarranted assumptions about this kid BECAUSE he is white, also holds true. It certainly doesn’t follow that because most school shooters tend to be white (and for the moment I am ignoring the question of whether or not that is true) that this particular kid should be held accountable for that profile. After all, that is exactly the argument that LEO often make when discussing why they think it was plainly logical to open fire on the black suspect or just to stop and frisk them for that matter. After all, in their experience “they” commit most of the crimes. Its not a very helpful argument in my opinion.
Tree With Water
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Gun nut laws that allow open carry, stand your ground, etc, will sooner or later serve to drive business investors away from the states where they’re on the books. I mean, bail? That kid should be in a psychiatric unit somewhere.
jayjaybear
I keep seeing this happen, that some disparity in the treatment of a white person and a black person by police is pointed out, and an awful lot of (my fellow) white people lose their shit because they think the person who pointed this out is saying they think the white person in the example should have been handled more harshly.
I really have no idea why THE EXACT OPPOSITE VIEWPOINT is so often taken in these discussions. The point isn’t that a white person in a situation like this should be treated like a black person would. The point is that the black person in a situation like this SHOULD BE BEING TREATED LIKE THE WHITE PERSON IS.
Jeebus Christmas…
Arclite
Don’t forget that black men, if they get blood on the officer’s uniforms while being beaten, can also be charged with vandalizing government property.
Jado
@greennotGreen:
snark/
Mike Brown was “bulking up”. I am sure John Crawford III was as well
It’s a well-known fact that black males have mutant super powers that make them bullet-proof if you shoot them once and then don’t shoot them again for 60 seconds. So it’s best for the cops to just unload and fire ALL the bullets, to kill the black guys before they can fully transform.
CAUSE WE LIVE IN A COMIC BOOK.
/end snark