MichiganCardinal

What do you think is the point of bail? These are people who have NOT been convicted of a crime. The purpose is not to prevent crime while awaiting trial, it’s to hold a deposit to ensure people return to court for their trial. If Brooks could have been predicted to commit more violent crimes while out, he should have been denied bond. No one can predict that 100% though. If you give him (and the 10000s of people like him who don’t commit violent acts while awaiting trial) a bond they cannot afford (like I don’t know… $500k), you’re just jailing 10000s of people who haven’t been convicted of anything, many of whom will be found not guilty at the end of the day. Meanwhile they are losing their job, their homes and cars, their relationships with their significant others and children, and everything they care about. And what do you think happens when you build more prisons and jail more people, even for just those who are convicted and sentenced to harsh penalties? You get more people exiting jail without jobs, homes, cars, or relationships, who the state then has to either support or be just STUNNED (/s) when they reoffend. The US already holds something like 20-25% of the world’s prisoners…. Maybe another thing we should look to other countries for models in fixing.

I’ll stop beating around the bush about my disdain for prosecutors, yesterday and this morning’s search, and the juvenile justice system generally, because I can’t lie, it is personal for me. I’m going to change some minor details to preserve what little internet anonymity I have left. I’m the adoptive parent to an older teenage boy. When he was 13, he went on the run from the foster care system after he was physically abused at a residential facility. While on the run for almost a year, NO ONE (and I mean absolutely no one) was looking for him. When I would come home from California, I would perform my due diligence because I cared about him, and actually located him on one occasion. Police did a drive-by when I called, nothing more. While on the run, homeless, no family, nothing to speak of, he turned to crime. With two adult men, he committed a robbery. It was poorly done, no one was hurt, they got nothing out of it. Fast forward a year and a half, he’s doing better and has turned himself in (and was placed BACK INTO the very same abusive residential - another soapbox for another time)…. The prosecutor charged him as an adult with Armed Robbery, while pleading out the two other men to testify against him. Mind you, he was not the ringleader by any stretch of the imagination. They tried really freaking hard to put a homeless 13yo foster youth away for a substantial portion of his life, at least 8 years. Thanks to my character testimony on his behalf that I flew back to give, as well as a phenomenal public defender, he was sentenced as a juvenile and served 18 months in juvenile detention (which was also abusive and neglectful, but that’s yet another soap box). Mind you, 18 months is more than either of the other two served (both of whom have reoffended multiple times since). Upon release, he came directly to my home. It hasn’t been easy, but in the first loving home he’s ever been in, he’s done incredibly well under the circumstances. Almost every prosecutor I have come across has no real interest in the true sense of the word justice. They’re scummy and constantly pull the tactics McDonald has in the last week to look good to the politicians, the cameras, and the people who have no freaking idea what life is like for the people below them on the social ladder. They want to get rid of the poor kids, the black and brown kids, and the kids who landed in situations that their privileged lives couldn’t ever imagine. All the while appealing to those at their level and above, “aren’t you happy the world is a better/cleaner place now?” They want to look in the book and say “how do I lock this person up for as long as possible?”, without any mind that in the vast majority of crimes, that person WILL be released eventually, and become a member of society again, just like you and me. Right now, those two parents (who deserve their day in court, as heinous an act as their son committed and as negligent as they appear to be) have been absolutely vilified by the court of public opinion, because that’s the way McDonald wanted it to be. Never mind whether they are actually guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter (which I think will be an interesting question for a jury to answer if they can find a fair one). The answers to societal problems of inequity and criminality cannot be to just sit on our hands and wait for individuals to do what everyone knew (or should have known) they were going to do, throw them in a cell and lose the key when they do, and then pat each other on the back while they rot years away. Yet people fall hook-line-sinker into that line of thinking.

I’ll entertain this discussion, but not as an imaginary either/or with discussions about gun control that should have been enacted decades ago.

I understand that this case is high profile, and that these are significant charges, but this entire “manhunt” was outrageous. It is not unusual for someone to take a day or two to turn themselves in when a warrant is issued. What is unusual is for a prosecutor to refuse contact with a defense attorney, hold a press conference as the day ends on a Friday, and then basically turn off the podium and claim “we can’t find them! They’re running!” McDonald is playing games. She wants public perception to be that these parents were making some break for it, when I think they fully intended to turn themselves in on Monday. If they wanted to go to Florida or Canada, they’d have been there by now. They were hiding from the media circus, as any reasonable person would have. Since every agency under the sun wants to stick their nose in though, I’m sure the FBI and US Marshals won’t have any problem now that they’re in custody devoting these kinds of resources to finding the 100s of children who go missing from the Michigan foster care system ever year right? Right? No? Hmm.

Certain high-profile defense attorneys require at least a portion of their retainer be paid in cash, because it can’t bounce, and it guarantees some payment as the case opens (and assets are seized by various entities).

My understanding is that their phones were taken in the search warrant. The cash very well could partially have been as a retainer for their attorneys (the attorneys they retained are very expensive).

They couldn’t be there while the search warrant was being executed anyway

Couple things… 1. Bouchard is full of it. To have a judge sign the warrant, the officer-in-charge has to testify. It was televised in the kid’s case. If he wasn’t told there was a warrant, that’s on his OIC, not the prosecutor’s office. 2. The prosecutor’s office is also full of it. By the defense attorney’s statement, it sounds like the OCPO knew exactly what they were doing to try to make it look like these parents were running (when they were not), to ultimately request bond be denied (which in any other case it would not be). It’s going to be very hard to find a jury of peers for these parents, and the prosecutor is playing games to make them look even worse than they already do.

Don't you remember? Gun = knife = car = airplane They're all the same in that universe.

“Because we can’t eradicate all murders we shouldn’t eradicate any”

Personally, I think the arrangement he was sent to today should be unconstitutional. Putting a 15yo in the adult jail secluded to an area by himself is nothing short of a three-year sentence to solitary confinement. If the kid is 15, it should be on the juvenile detention facility to ensure his and others' safety in the facility. One-on-one if needed.

The 16yo boy killed was a rising star on the Oxford varsity football team. He had been named to the 1st Team All-Region squad and had been visiting schools, with the possibility of receiving offers.

By the sounds of the most recent press conference, the number of fatalities may increase. At least one victim is on a ventilator after surgery and others remain in critical condition.

There is also empirical evidence indicating that while they are a fancy and expensive visual, metal detectors are largely ineffective at preventing school shootings. I don't doubt your anecdotal evidence, but I also think those results may be more attributable to who is often attending school in the first place. If the shooter or shooters are not stepping into the school to begin with (presumably they're not if shootings are happening en route to/from the school but not within), they are not the target of this prevention effort.

The media's fascination with the lack of metal detectors at Oxford HS is getting on my nerves. If a kid wants to bring a gun into school, they are going to find a way to do so (if - AND ONLY IF - they have access to a gun in the first place). Could Oxford (and the vast majority of Oakland County schools that do not have them) spend the tens of thousands of dollars it would cost to install metal detectors and then staff them 16+ hours daily for every school day and the following events within the school? Sure, in theory. It would take away from educational funding elsewhere, but it could be done... To be foiled in an instant by a kid who then shows up 30 minutes late and texts their unsuspecting friend "hey can you let me in the side door I don't want to be marked tardy"...... or who throws their backpack next to that side door..... or who gets it past the metal detector anyway because they know that as the 1000th kid passing through on the 100th day of school, the overwhelmed and exhausted staff standing by the metal detector as 5-10 kids pass through at once isn't going to think twice about it going off and them continuing through (see TSA success rates, see nearly every time the shoplifting alarm goes off in a store)..... or, or, or.... The answer is not arming teachers, and the answer is also not turning schools into prisons. The answer is two-fold. One, go back in that kid's life and find the points where intervention was still possible. Not some "marks of a school shooter" BS that sells in the headlines, but the tangible signs that he was maladaptive, mentally ill, or otherwise not forming appropriate attachments with others. There was a point - maybe yesterday, maybe a month ago, maybe five years ago - where this tragedy was preventable. With the right people involved in this child's life, four lives (including his own, about to spend his life behind bars) would not have ended today. Second, and objectively easier, take away the fucking guns. If that gun is not accessible to him, four lives are spared today. Easy as that. I'm done being cute about this, I'm done toeing some line for people who are so damned passionate about a grammatically ambiguous sentence written 230 years ago. People do not need to own machines whose sole purpose is to kill other people. Period. But thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers, see y'all next time after nothing changes.

Just for clarity, you quoted @Archie, but it tagged me for some reason.

An SRO and a responding officer were both there within five minutes.

I used to work at a facility for children in Oxford. Most of it was shut down a few years ago, but I am still friends with many staff employed through the district. Worried for them.

Hitting close to home today.

Trades in the later 1st round and beyond don't typically happen until draft day, and with good reason. If the second pick is at 24, the board falls such that you have 3 WRs available who you like, and the Ravens or Titans at 30 call you, or even the Texans or Jaguars at 34, you'll probably entertain that a lot more than you would if you're sitting at 24 with only one WR left who you like.

Brian Kelly and scum are synonymous. If ND didn’t want this as his ending they should have fired him when a kid died on his watch.

I feel bad for him, reports are that he’s hurting bad and trying to toughen through it. His line is doing him no favors. That said, he can go 7-10 and I won’t lose any sleep.

I thought he was a bit over the top at times (the “OH - JAH - BO” at the end comes to mind), and that the FOX broadcast was dreadful (I still don’t know if the late 4th and 4 completed pass by Ohio State was correctly ruled). But because M won I also don’t care.

That's a lot of points. I don't bet but I would take Iowa +10.5

I think it’s likely that Michigan is slow out the gates. I think they’ll win in the end but I would take Iowa plus the points.