So even though the world didn't come to an end due to the earlier daylight-savings time changeover this year, one 15-year resident of Hempfield, PA certainly got burned by the supposed energy-conserving maneuver, as his school's inability or failure to change all of their clocks earned him 12 days in juvenile detention on charges of making a bomb threat. The story goes like this: For some reason sophomore Cody Webb decided to call the Hempfield Area High School delay hotline in the early morning hours of March 11 -- very close to the time we "sprang ahead" -- and claims to have hung up immediately after listening to the obvious "no delay" message. Well unfortunately for him, someone else called Hempfield that morning with a bomb threat, and because the phone system erroneously time-stamped that call as coming just minutes after Cody's, school and local law enforcement geniuses decided that they must have been made by the same person (despite one call showing up on caller ID while the other was blocked). Long story short, it took Cody's parents and their lawyer 12 days to get the honors student out of juvie; and while you would expect a public apology from everyone involved in this blunder after the facts came out, school officials are trying to pass the blame along to the state, which seems more concerned with covering its proverbial legal ass than making things right for the now-home-schooled Cody. Lessons learned? 1. Our schools need to devote more resources to teaching the nuances of telling time, and 2. Teenagers are clearly better off partying and causing mischief on a Saturday night than sitting at home on the phone.
[Via
Slashdot, photo courtesy of
S.C. Spangler/Tribune-Review]
posted April 17th 2007 9:22PM
Just another classic example of how our corrupt covernmetns are turning this beautiful world into a freekin prison planet.... http://www.prisonplanet.com
No tech here but already generating a lot of buzz. Clever. I gotta try those keywords: "stint in juvie". With some luck we benefit from the tidal hype.
A-hole schools. They always try to blame someone else.
The school I was at sucked so now I home school. The principal of my old school yelled at my mom for taking me out because they don't get as much money now.
P.S. Their clocks took forever to get set even remotely right too.
At my School, Athens High School, Alabama. Me and 30 or so others have sat school this weekend, because the after DST the schools clocks changed on a daily basis, i came in 10 min early monday, and was 5 min late for school, tuesday i got there 10 min before i did on manday and classes didnt start for another 30 min, i ended the week with 3 tardies. I along with the 30 ro so others tried arguing our case to the "administration", a.k.a. "the dumbest mother fuckers to ever walk the earth" they said the clock only changed on monday, BULLSHIT!!!!!
maybe not,
but pedophilia is nothing to laugh at :-P
(kids only 15)
i'll concede the point when we cut the line to b-rad's internet trunk, count the rings, and find out how old he is.
Heh. Billions of dollars extracted at gunpoint + total lack of accountability + litigious society = honor student in jail. Priceless.
There seems to be a general loss of the constitutional right of do process -
Weather or not he'd been in trouble prior to this incident should even be considered. The mere fact that the ones teaching cant read a clock is enough to make you sick
The stupidity here is beyond belief. "Hmm, we had a bomb threat? Check the caller ID of all the calls last night!"
(Never mind that caller ID is easily spoofed.)
"You've got a number? It's a high school kid? That's our man, we've got him. Bring him in."
"What's your cell phone number? We've got him, we've got him! Admit you did it! You say you didn't do it? Well, you're a criminal, obviously criminals lie! Call the cops, Marcia!"
If you look at the Wikipedia for this school, it's a large school with a planetarium even. The principal doesn't know her students, didn't know this was an honors kid with no record, and served as judge and jury to convict him just so she'd have someone to blame for someone threatening to blow up her crappy school.
Read This:
http://www.passablynews.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1175830780
Boy jailed over clock change mix-up
A fifteen-year old boy in America was incarcerated for twelve days, wrongly accused of making a hoax bomb threat - because his school had forgotten that the clocks had gone forward.
Cody Webb was arrested last month, after Hempfield Area High School received a bomb threat on their student hotline – which provides a range of information to students about the school - at 3.17am on March 11th. They believed they'd found the culprit when they traced the phone number they thought was responsible to Webb.
Unfortunately, the school forgot that the clocks had switched to Daylight Saving Time that morning. The time stamps left on the hotline were adjusted by an hour after Day Light Savings causing Webb's call to logged as the same time the bomb threat was placed. Webb, who's never even had a detention in his life, had actually made his call an hour before the bomb threat was placed.
Despite the fact that the recording of the call featured a voice that sounded nothing like Webb's, the police arrested Webb and he spent 12 days in a juvenile detention facility before the school eventually realised their mistake.
Webb gave an insight into the school's impressive investigative techniques, saying that he was ushered in to see the principal, Kathy Charlton. She asked him what his phone number was, and , according to Webb, when he replied 'she started waving her hands in the air and saying “we got him, we got him.”'
'They just started flipping out, saying I made a bomb threat to the school,' he told local television station KDKA. After he protested his innocence, Webb says that the principal said: 'Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.'
All charges against Webb have now been dropped.
As per popular demand:
View Kathy Charlton's personal website / contact information.
Principal: Kathy Charlton
E-mail: k.charlton@hempfieldarea.k12.pa.us
School: Hempfield High School
School Phone: 724-834-9000
Voice Mail: 724-850-2058
I agree with b-rad. he's hot. and yes, i'm an 18 year old guy.
Bullshit. this kid KNEW there was a bombthreat. There would be no other reason to call up the delay/cancellation number at 2:00 AM on a Sunday! It don't care if the city was expecting 3 feet of snow. They would not cancel school 28 hours early. Either HE called in the threat or he knew the one who did.
This notion that one call had his caller ID and hte other was blocked is somehow proof that it was not him is ridiculous. For a site called engadget to not realize how easy and well known to kids *67 is is pretty sad.