Posted on 05/07/2003 4:13:42 AM PDT by .30Carbine
Vermont Cop Story: AP's Bias or America's?
May 6, 2003
I spent Tuesday's Hour One discussing this story about Vermont police officer John Mott. While off duty at 1:30 AM, Mott entered a high school through an open service door. He then asked a janitor to unlock a classroom so he could take pictures of displays by "passionate pacifist" teacher Tom Treece to present to an attorney.
The Associated Press headlines this story: "Vt. Cop Photographed Class Projects," pointing a finger at the cop as the villain. We had to go to a local paper, the Barre Montpelier Times Argus, to find the classroom details. But this is not a media bias story. I held off giving my opinion on these events just to see what my audience's reaction would be, as you'll see below. More:
The officer reports taking pictures of "a poster of President Bush with duct tape over his mouth and a large papier-mâché combat boot with the American flag stuffed inside stepping on a doll, along with pictures of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and his co-thug reactionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. They aren't "pacifists"! Besides, the whole so-called peace movement was organized around defending and protecting Saddam Hussein! The slogan: "All hail the idiot boy king" was posted next to a picture of President Bush as, Treece claimed, "a reason to reject the high school budget."
If Mr. Treece posted pictures of me and Ronald Reagan on the wall, this cop would be a hero and the teacher would be on his way out. Apparently there were "rumors" about this teacher's curriculum, so this officer investigated. It's reported that there's a "backlash" against Officer Mott, but not that there was any sort of backlash against the class content. Why does it take a cop, taking pictures at 1:30 AM on his own time, to find out what's going on in this class? Where are the parents?
Is this not a public school? Our legal division doesn't see any constitutional issue on the officer entering the classroom in his private or public capacity; there's no expectation of privacy in a public school. We had a police officer call us up and say that Mott was off duty and out of his jurisdiction, so he shouldn't have entered the school or asked to be let into the locked classroom. You can hear such calls below along with my lengthily reporting of the details. I dedicated more than an hour to this story, and here's why:
After 70 minutes of discussion, all my e-mails and calls similarly focused on the cop - just like AP did. "So what, Rush?" So we hear education this and education that all the time in this country. Everybody claims to care about teaching "the children." But if we really cared about education, 90% of the garbage going on inside classrooms wouldn't be permitted. We would have parents involved in their children's education that know every word on the chalkboard and in the books. A police officer - who from this story doesn't seem to have any kids in the school much less in Treece's class - wouldn't have to enter through a service door and then ask a janitor to unlock the classroom for him. The parents would have expressed their outrage; instead, there wasn't a peep.
”In the first 250 posts on this issue at least 159 were not about the so-called “pacifist” teacher promoting some of the worst mass killers of the 20th century, but about the so-called “errors” of the cop who, as a concerned citizen, decided to document the results of this Radical Leftist teacher.
There is a sub-set of lunatic loons who appear to wish the end of American society as we know it. Like the Nazis and the communists in Weimar Germany, they have a great deal in common as potential destroyers of the social fabric.
I have engaged in several debates in the last few days, and I admire FreeRepublic as a forum for the free expression of ideas, but the overwhelming presence of this bunch of loons is very off-putting.
Lenin is supposed to have said that capitalists would sell him the rope by which they were to be hung. The “anarcho-loons” on this forum would not bother to sell the rope but provide it as a public service.
I see they have already appeared on this thread to make my point again.
I apologize, but somebody had to post this story, and no one else had.
I'll be back.
Really? I can’t go into a public building for any reason? Are your nuts?
If you aren't there for a purpose that has to do with the purpose of the school, then you're trespassing.
I can go into a school to vote, to hang out with the principal, to talk with one of the students, to just observe, or for no reason at all. You are talking gibberish and don’t even realize it. I can also go into the school to determine what a teacher is doing to indoctrinate his students to hate America. That, my deluded friend, is a school purpose.
If, as you say, the cop was there in his capacity as a private citizen, he was trespassing. He broke the law.
See my previous comment. And since the cop has not been prosecuted, I can safely assume that the prosecuting attorney of Barre does not agree with your legal “wisdom.”
He should be prosecuted and thrown off the police force.
You should be hung out to dry.
And if you walk around inside a government building after it's closed, snooping, I hope the same thing happens to you.
I am at a loss to explain your reverence for government building. But I won’t try. That is your personal pathology.
Don’t bother with a reply, I am not debating your kind.
So, you think even government-funded buildings should have such a privacy factor that some scumball commie who is trying to brainwash our kids against the government (being paid by government funds) will be protected while he does it? I'm sure your political leanings also say it's OK for PETA or Greenpeace to trash buildings and destroy public/private property because their mission is "just"...
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He had to get the janitor's permission to get in... that's not a trespasser, that's an invitee (basically, a person invited onto your property for your benefit, like a customer or friend) or a licensee (a person invited onto your land for their own benefit, like a mail carrier or contractor). The cop is mostly likely a licensee for legal liability analysis, not a trespasser (someone on your land without an invitation).
Not true.
Exactly who do you think does, if not the janitor? Are you under the typical cute student delusion that the faculty never goes home at night? ;^) (It's always a hoot to see how surprised some kids are to see a teacher at the store!)
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It's a chill wind that blows through America when a leftist ideologue can't shove his political opinions down the throats of developing minds.