Parents love their precious little snowflakes and will do anything for them. It doesn’t matter if they are completely guilty of a crime. Case in point — the mother of one Corey Miller, aged 18, who was arrested for pointing a laser pointer at a police officer’s car and then at the police officer’s face when he went over to investigate why this was the case.
The mother jumped to her son’s defense, saying that he was only playing around in his car with the laser and that the arresting officer was overreacting when he arrested her son. She further argued that he is a future member of the Air Force and that he really wasn’t guilty of any offense.
This is all well and nice however it is completely divorced of anything resembling reality. I think it would be best if we took a look at what happened and perhaps consider if the arrest was deserved or not. It is unfortunately a rather simple case.
Did Corey Miller point a laser at the police officer’s car? Indeed he did. Did he then proceed to point the laser at the officer’s face? He did. Where is the argument? Is it a crime to point a laser at a police officer? Let us not forget that laser pointers are also mounted on rifles, representing a very real threat.
From here, we should also ask about the relevance of the mother’s argument that her son will be a member of the Air Force. If a person is going to be a member of the Air Force, shouldn’t they be that much more responsible and not play around with a laser in their car, point it at a police car, and especially not point it at a police officer’s face?
I would also like to know why an 18 year old man needs to have his mother stand up for him when he is arrested. I hope that the future of the Air Force is not candidates that need to have their mothers defending them from the crimes they knowingly committed.
20 years or so ago, I was visiting a pet store in NYC and they had just released those handheld laser scanners for reading barcodes at the register. The young girl behind the counter was angling my cat food cans in front of her face so she could “scan” them. I thought it was strange until I figured though, through a sharp, bright pain in my left eye, that she was actually aiming her handheld laser scanner, not at the cat food can, but at my eye!
I had no idea what she was doing — or why — I only know for a moment I couldn’t see. It took me a day or two to realize what she was trying to do — HURT ME! — and I became furious because my eye was, and still quite isn’t, the same.
Then, months later, we started hearing reports of kids in backyards pointing lasers at airplanes, and at performer’s eyes on stage — that’s one reason why Bono started wearing sunglasses in concert because he got shot in the eye with a laser from the audience — and the whole nasty laser meme has becomes a living reality of damage and danger.
Strange that a person would target you like that. I’m also glad to finally know why Bono wears those glasses!
Yah! She was trying to blind me! What a sweetheart, right? NOT! I wanted to blind her back, but I never saw her in that store again — it was a Petland store in the East Village. I never brought it up with the manager because, at that time, that sort of thing was not known to be happening in a mainstream way and it was so incredible, who would believe it? “What do you mean she was trying to blind you with the barcode laser scanner?”
In concerts today they use a lot of smoke on purpose — that smoke helps the techs pinpoint where the lasers are coming from in the audience. The big acts also have techs who wear special glasses that can pinpoint where the lasers are coming from so they can go and punish the jerks ASAP! It’s a real problem!
…and promptly eject them, I hope! Yikes!