A teenager on a field trip to see a Detroit court ended up in jail clothes and handcuffs because a judge said he didn’t like her attitude.

A teenager on a field trip to see a Detroit court ended up in jail clothes and handcuffs because a judge said he didn’t like her attitude.

Judge Kenneth King even asked other kids in the courtroom Tuesday whether the 16-year-old girl should be taken to juvenile detention, WXYZ-TV reported.

  • snooggums@midwest.socialEnglish
    2751·
    4 months ago

    Judge Aliyah Sabree, who has the No. 2 leadership post at the court, released a statement Wednesday night, saying King’s conduct “does not reflect the standards we uphold at 36th District Court.”

    If someone does a thing and isn’t stopped or reprimanded then their actions do reflect the standards because those things happened. If your court lets a judge treat a child like a criminal for falling asleep, that is who you are as a court.

    Fuck anyone who says “this isn’t who we are” and doesn’t actually do anything to prove that is the case.

    • Frozyre@kbin.melroy.org
      411·
      4 months ago

      I know right?

      It’s just PR to protect themselves, not about actually doing fuck all about what just transpired. Many people like this show such cowardice to make a difference.

    • JigglySackles@lemmy.world
      26·
      4 months ago

      I want to say that the issue in this case with stopping him is that the other judge wasn’t present to alter it. But then you are still right because presumably that other judge is never there to stop this kind of thing.

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
        3·
        4 months ago

        As if it’s just “one bad apple” and if someone else had been there this person would’ve been reprimanded for this arbitrary scared straight bullshit.

        Nah, even if there had been a second judge and they had been there and thought it crazy, they probably still would’ve defended their judge friend’s decision.

        You know, like cops do.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
      2·
      4 months ago

      Michigan district Court judges are elected. You can’t just fire an elected official. His term ends January 1, 2027.

        • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
          3·
          4 months ago

          Fortunately this particular judicial position does require the officeholder to be a licensed attorney in good standing and answerable to the bar, which gives extra disciplinary and training options.

          Amazingly, most judges do not have that requirement. In fact, even SCOTUS justices don’t have to be attorneys. They all are, but there’s not actually a requirement for it.

  • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
    226·
    4 months ago

    If I got arrested for every time I fell asleep on a boring field trip, I’d have been arrested 0 times. Because Texas doesn’t fund education.

  • haunte@leminal.spaceEnglish
    222·
    4 months ago

    King told WXYZ that he spoke to the girl’s parents and offered to be a mentor.

    This guy is a psychopath. He just traumatized this girl and now he wants to have influence in her life? Yikes. It sounds like he wants to finish the job of making her life hell.

  • sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1331·
    4 months ago

    Don’t worry guys, the judge offered to be that girl’s mentor. Asked her parents and all, so he sees no problem with this usage of power. You can absolutely trust him to be alone with a child and “teach her right”

  • thesmokingman@programming.dev
    1261·
    4 months ago

    Teens are constantly sleepy because that’s how teens work. School start times especially make it impossible to for them to get proper sleep. I’d say it’s ridiculous that someone who has authority over teens doesn’t understand the fucking basics of teens but it’s the Us criminal justice system where authority is made up and the credentials don’t matter.

        • NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth
          17·
          4 months ago

          Explains why my elementary school started at 8 but high school started at 9.

          I always figured it was just because parents didn’t want to have to fight with us at that age

          • DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works
            34·
            4 months ago

            Wow, 9? That must have been nice. I had to get up at 6:30 every day. It was awful and I was always tired until college where I could schedule when classes started.

          • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
            22·
            4 months ago

            For us it was 7:20 high school, 8:20 elementary, 9:20 middle school. Reason was using the same busses and high schoolers were more likely to need time after school for work or sports/band/after school groups.

            In practice it meant that I could pull 40 hour work weeks starting at 16, then by 18 be working some nights till 1-3am and getting up for school in the morning. Stupid decisions were made.

            They made laws to further limit the hours kids could work after to try to make healthier opportunities for kids. Unfortunately a certain governor is trying to carve those laws up now. (Desantis)

          • polle@feddit.org
            161·
            4 months ago

            I would argue that school starting time has nothing to do with the kids needs, and more like that the parents can be in time for work.

            • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
              14·
              4 months ago

              That’s the reason against starting late. Parents want older siblings to be available to babysit after school and employers want a 16 year old’s shift to start at 14:30, not 16:30. Extracurricular activities (which should be supported, as long as the children themselves want to do them and as long as they’re not actively harmful to children) can often run 90-150 minutes with changing time and warmups, which makes a later start time logistically difficult for families with children of various ages who want to eat dinner together.

              It’s a complicated issue and a solution which involves shorter school hours seems to me to be the best one, but that’s obviously even harder to implement without cutting things that are important, so I don’t know how to actually solve this problem.

              I live in Germany now, which has tracking. This seems both hella classist and better for ensuring kids can get sufficient sleep. I would love to know if any country/school system has figured out how to do it in a way that doesn’t deprive some kids of future opportunities.

              • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                4 months ago

                Probably could swing the shorter hours by reducing summer vacation.

                Take classes to double blocks with an alternating cycle in case classes get too short.

                This would anger sports coaches that want to use summer for torturing their kids training camp, and farmers that like the cheaper-than-illegal-immigrants that need summer jobs.

                • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
                  1·
                  4 months ago

                  You’re right. I feel like that takes a fundamental part of my childhood away from other kids, but with the child labor laws in some states, that was no longer safe anyway.

            • bitwaba@lemmy.world
              11·
              4 months ago

              And limiting the number of busses on the road at the same time for those other parents stuck in rush hour traffic.

          • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
            2·
            4 months ago

            I don’t understand why school has to be a full day either. I’m sure teachers could use an extra hour every morning to do their prep, planning, and grading.

      • JigglySackles@lemmy.world
        9·
        4 months ago

        Middle school kids in my neighborhood catch the bus at 630am., so you know most of them are up 30-45 mins prior.

    • JigglySackles@lemmy.world
      58·
      4 months ago

      Just not the lesson he intended. Always good to learn that the justice system is against you and will abuse it’s power to “make an example” of you.

    • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
      243·
      4 months ago

      Separation of powers. Executive has the DOJ and friends, Congress has the Sgt at arms and Judiciary has contempt. All three are, in theory, immune to interference from the other branches, to allow said branches to defend themselves. Stupid, stupid idea.

  • don@lemm.ee
    41·
    4 months ago

    Put that shitty excuse of a judge in prison so he can reflect on his crimes.

  • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.worldEnglish
    37·
    4 months ago

    “I wanted this to look and feel very real to her, even though there’s probably no real chance of me putting her in jail. That was my own version of ‘Scared Straight,’” King said, referring to a documentary about teen offenders in New Jersey.

    For those unfamiliar, Scared Straight! was roundly debunked after the fact as a stupid fucking thing to do which did the opposite of what it was supposed to, and attendees of the program ended up more likely to reoffend.

    • rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee
      18·
      4 months ago

      They even had a “where are they now” at the end of each program that showed it didn’t work.

  • Scrungo@lemmy.mlEnglish
    312·
    4 months ago

    I got put in silent lunch one time because I fell asleep during a guy describing his time in Japan as a teacher by my asshole homeroom teacher (she thought I was acting up because another teacher woke me up and she only saw that). That was unfair and I absolutely hated middle school, but this is a whole new level of fucked.