Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
"Just kidding."
I'm fighting some kind of summer bug, and ache all over. So I'm a little grumpy. That may explain why I think that this is the stupidest thing I've read all week:
OCEANSIDE, Calif. - On a Monday morning last month, highway patrol officers visited 20 classrooms at El Camino High School to announce some horrible news: Several students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend.
Classmates wept. Some became hysterical.
A few hours and many tears later, though, the pain turned to fury when the teenagers learned that it was all a hoax — a scared-straight exercise designed by school officials to dramatize the consequences of drinking and driving.
What an incredibly bone-headed stunt for the school administrators and HP officers to pull. Toying with the emotions of high school kids. Teaching them that they cannot trust those who are supposed to be trustworthy. Demonstrating that it is OK to lie & cheat if your 'intentions are good' and you have the authority to get away with it.
Dipshits.
Here's what the school guidance counselor said:
"They were traumatized, but we wanted them to be traumatized," said guidance counselor Lori Tauber, who helped organize the shocking exercise and got dozens of students to participate. "That's how they get the message."
You bet, Lori. Traumatizing people is always good strategy to get them to believe you. That's why it is completely defensible to call in bomb threats to schools and rattle the administrators and police over whatever cause you believe in, right?
Dipshits.
Jim Downey
Via MeFi. Cross posted to Communion of Dreams.
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Police and school officials
There are some police and school officials who need to be unemployed. Even if you accept that the goal was good, this has the moral standing of phoning in a fake bomb threat.
And people wonder why
nobody trusts cops anymore.
Of course, using police to lie to children isn't anything new. This isn't really much different than DARE programs, which I have been against from the start. Instead of reducing bloated police budgets and using money honestly and wisely, we take unnecessary officers and pay them good money to waste valuable class time scaring kids with lies and demonizing drugs and drug users. Of course many kids eventually figure out that they have been lied to, and the
end result is that more kids try more dangerous drugs, and the ones who don't try any often end up wildly prejudiced against those who do.
I suspect that is actually the goal. They know that many will try drugs and alcohol no matter what, so the goal is to scare the others into submission. And then we get public support for more mandatory minimum sentences, more totally unnecessary police funding, seizure laws that allow the police to steal your house or car for simple possession, and a few million more dollars for the DEA.
By the numbers, scare tactics like this are a complete failure, but it keeps the gravy train rolling, and soon every police department can afford an urban assault vehicle, a swat team, drug dogs, and neat new weapons! Just to keep you safe, of course.
Encouraging paranoia has been a growing trend in law enforcement over the last two decades. Just when I think
that they can't sink any lower with their pathetic, ham-handed scare tactics...
Common tactic?
There was some outrage when this was done over email last year for some (I believe) Navy folks. A bigwig Navy chief sent out a missive almost exactly along the lines the patrol officers used...and at the end of the email, when people were already distraught there was a disclaimer in the "just kidding" vein.
It's a crappy thing to do to people.
On the plus side...
Look at it this way, Jim: inevitably one of these schools will suffer a real loss due to drinking and driving. When the news is broken to the school kids, they'll be better prepared, and less hysterical.
In fact, I think the schools should pull this stunt once or twice a week until they kids get to the point where they just roll their eyes at the news. Then they'll actually be a little relieved when it turns out that some students really did get killed, just to break up the monotony.
I call that "win/win"!
Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.
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