Category: School Violence

Still blind to swastikas in school:

I’m going to commit an act of lazy blogging here because I really don’t have anything else to add. Anyway, this is from an op-ed piece from The Boston Globe…

As happy as everyone should be that the plot at Marshfield was stopped, the Globe’s profile of one of the two accused youths was deeply troubling. “This was a boy unafraid of a fight, a boy who once smirked as he wore a swastika-adorned shirt through the halls of Marshfield High School,” the Globe wrote. The boy was also known to have worn a T-shirt that had the date of Columbine and “Remember the Heroes” in German.

Other students, the Globe wrote, thought the youth was “just posturing.” There was no further information about the wearing of the swastika, which leads to obvious questions. Did his parents know about the swastika, and did it not make them wonder what was in their kid’s head? Did teachers see the swastika and ignore it as a passing adolescent stupidity? Did the students who saw it feel so intimidated that they shrank into a self-defeating code of silence?

In schools across the nation, principals and superintendents are banning gang colors, which are usually associated with violent African-American and Latino boys. Yet somehow, glorification of Columbine is “just posturing.” Though Columbine and Oklahoma City demonstrated how antiblack and Jewish hate can take out lots of white, non-Jewish folks, perhaps white Americans are still tempted to look the other way at such garb because deep down, they feel the swastika is not meant for them.

If that double standard is true, then no lesson has been learned. Columbine was scary enough to result in stopping actual violence. It was not scary enough for America to make the fight against racism and anti-Semitism as mandatory as mandatory tests. With so many incidents that echo Klebold and Harris and so little done to stop the reverberation, we dare kids to go from posturing in swastikas to cooking up a massacre.

Emphasis mine.

Now here is where I insert the lazy blogger’s credo…Indeed

Cops detail Marshfield school plot at hearing:

This is real responsible journalism by the Boston Herald, isn’t it? I can imagine that editorial meeting. “Hey, I got an idea. Let’s print their plans to blow up and shoot up the school in great detail so someone else can come along and improve on their plans.”

Another thing that’s bothering me, Tobin Kerns is being held without bail but Joseph Nee, son of a Boston cop, is being held for 90 days. Is there some legal argument that I’m missing here? What happens after 90 days? Will Nee be released into his father’s custody?

Speaking of Nee’s father and his attorney…

Nee’s attorney, Tom Dreschler, punched holes in the prosecution’s argument, calling Nee the hero for revealing the plot to unsuspecting police. “A young man comes forward and the thanks he gets is the government using his words against him,” Dreschler said, adding, “They say thanks for the memories. ‘We want to lock you up.’”

Nee’s father, Tom Nee, said he was appalled.

“I don’t even want to hold a shield given what I saw today,” said the 25-year veteran.

If you come forward to the police about a murder plot, that doesn’t make you automatically innocent, especially when you’re involved in the plot. Why don’t you want to hold a shield anymore? Is it because the Marshfield police are actually doing their job? Or is it because they won’t turn a blind eye for a fellow police officer? I have the utmost respect for law enforcement, but when they start demanding special treatment for family members who are suspects, then the shield becomes a little more tarnished.

UPDATE: The Boston Globe is saying that Nee is also being held without bail.

UPDATE 2.0: From the Worcester Telegram & Gazette…

Nee has pleaded innocent to one count of conspiracy to commit mass murder and one count of promoting anarchy.

Kerns is being held without bail on eight counts of threatening to commit a crime, two counts of promoting anarchy and one count of attempt to commit a murder.

If they’re equally culpable, why are the charges so disproportional?

Second arrest was warranted:

Just a couple of more items out of Marshfield…

During Monday’s arraignment prosecutor John McLaughlin said Nee and Kerns developed a fascination about the incident at Columbine High School and Nee even did a school report on the tragedy. The two formed the group known as NBK – natural born killers in December 2003 to protect those at the high school picked on by popular kids, he said. They later came up with the plot to kill teachers and students, McLaughlin said, noting that a female student told police Nee showed a 40-caliber gun at school and said the school was going to be “shot up.”

Another student said during a meeting under a bridge in Humarock, Nee tried to recruit him to help lock doors during the planned attack to keep students and staff from escaping and showed the hit list, McLaughlin said. He also said Nee spoke of plans to have people on the roofs with rifles to keep police and fire department responders from getting into the building.

“The defendant (Nee) is just as dangerous as the individual already arrested,” McLaughlin said.

According to Kerns, Nee lived in a spare bedroom at his house for about three weeks last May after telling Toby he’d been kicked out of his house and had nowhere to go. Ben Kerns became troubled by the apparent influence Nee had over his own son, convincing him to shave his head, and putting a swastika on the spare bedroom wall. Kerns said that most of the evidence police found against Toby was discovered in the spare bedroom where Nee stayed and likely developed the plot last May.

Emphasis mine. Let me speculate here for a second. From what I’ve read so far, it sounds like that the Marshfield police went strictly on the word of a policeman’s son. By doing that, they may have possibly put the student’s lives in danger. The school and the police deny the students were ever in danger.

It’s also starting to sound like to me that Nee was the Eric Harris of the two, and Kerns was a reluctant Klebold. Then when Kerns started to turn his life around, Nee may have been afraid that Kerns would turn him in, so Nee went to the police first. Again, this is all speculation.

I’ll bring you more as it develops.

Second Teen Arrested In H.S. Massacre Case:

After receiving comments and e-mails from people close to the Kerns family, I asked the other day why aren’t police looking at Tobin Kerns’ friend, who is the son of the president of the Boston police union. I asked my readers to draw their own collusion…I mean conclusions.

That all changed today. Local police arrested Joseph Nee in his homeroom at 7:30 this morning. How does this bode for Kerns? Right now, not too good…

During the course of their investigation, officials said, they discovered that Nee, despite his status as informant was “just as dangerous” as Toby Kerns, 16, who was arrested last month in connection with the alleged massacre scheme.

So it looks like they’re holding Kerns and Nee equally responsible.

Nee’s father, Boston Police Patrolmen Association union president Thomas Nee, says that his son was the original “confidential informant” who went to police with information about the alleged plot.

As far as Nee’s status goes…

Assistant District Attorney John McLoughlin asked the court Monday to have Nee held for at least three days while prosecutors assemble their witness list and come up with a proposed bail or recommendation for a longer jail stay.

I guess we’ll know more in three days. It looks like this one won’t be over for a while.

Police union boss’s son arrested in Marshfield school plot:

Just some more pieces of information and quotes from another article…

Nee was arrested at Marshfield High around 7 a.m. and led away from the school in handcuffs.

He was ordered to return to court for a dangerousness hearing later this week. His attorney, Eric Goldman, said there is no evidence linking him to the plot.

“Mr. Nee is certainly guilty of being a distraught teenager … but he was the informant,” Goldman said.

Nee’s father, Thomas Nee, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, said his son lived with Kerns’ family for three weeks last spring after Nee and his son had a fight over Joseph coming home drunk.

Outside court, a tearful Thomas Nee said he was “embarrassed by the allegations,” but proud of his son for coming forward.

“I don’t care what kids talk about, as long as they don’t act it out,” he said. “I’m just thankful for one thing, that there’s been no tragedy, there’s been nobody hurt.”

Nee said he would stand by his son, one of nine children.

According to court documents, Nee had told Kerns he knew how to make a Napalm-like explosive. A search of the woods near Kerns’ home found evidence that an explosive had been detonated there, police said.