Since we’ve been talking about the snow, here’s a story about city that must have no real crime. At least, that’s the only sensible thing to conclude after reading that cops in Harrisonburg, VA, arrested (on felony charges!) two college kids for the horrific offense of tossing snowballs (technically they were charged with “throwing a missile at an occupied vehicle”). This would be understandable if the kids embedded rocks in the snowballs, or even if they compacted slush to make ice balls, which also can be dangerous. But the city’s press release offered no evidence of anything other than kids having fun. The Smoking Gun has the details:
Felony snowball throwing charges have been leveled against two Virginia college students for allegedly pelting a city plow and an undercover police car during Saturday’s blizzard. Charles Gill and Ryan Knight, both 21, were nabbed by cops in Harrisonburg, where they attend James Madison University. According to police, the pair first targeted a city plow last Saturday afternoon. …If convicted of the felonious snowball tossing, the men each face between one and five years in prison, and a maximum $2,500 fine.
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Ralph,
Today that good cop would be arrested for assaulting a minor!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher, Founding Director
Concerned Roman Catholics of America, Inc.
55 years ago in NYC, at age 13, I threw a snowball and hit the driver of a marked Police Car through an open window. The officer chased me a short distance, kicked me in the butt (not hard) and gave a stern warning. It was a glorious time to grow up.
Hard to make a realistic judgement without the full facts but I would incline to support the cops until I know what really happened. There are certainly a small percentage of officers wearing the uniform that are indisputedly on an ego trip, but without the full facts I must still support them.
By the way if you think of this as a joke, think of the person driving the snowplow loseing control of his twenty ton vehical and plowing into a crowd because a fool threw a snowball throug his window and hit him in the eyes.
Certainly colledge students SHOULD be mature enough to consider the consequences of their actions. I was a lot younger than that when I was made to understand the danger of throwing objects at cars and trucks.
There must be more to it. Did the kids hit some old ladies, or young ones, in the head, with snow balls? Or were they throwing them at the police? was the “occupied vehicle”, perchance, a police car?
We need a little more information here to make a judgement.
Next thing, the police will be under the near fatal threat of aggressive buttocks exposing.
[…] Busting two kids for throwing snowballs. […]
Felony snowball throwing? Sounds like Alice through the looking glass. I just read a book about mid-nineteenth century England where a child was thrown in prison for spinning a top in the way of decent citizens. Oliver Twist, here we come.
[…] Busting two kids for throwing snowballs. […]