Though there has not been a single instance in the United States of a package left in a public place exploding and wreaking death and destruction following 9/11, our government has been fostering fear of the legendary “suspicious package” long enough for it to have found its way into the criminal law. It’s a mainstay of posters on the New York City subway system, and has made its way to the halls of Purdue.
Via Radley Balko at Reason,
Last month, Purdue University student Roy Sun was arrested and charged with “terroristic mischief.” He could face up to eight years in prison. His crime? He got a little too pissed off about a parking ticket.
Sun got the ticket and had a boot put on his car after local parking officials discovered he was using a permit that didn’t belong to him. So Sun removed the boot, put it in a box with $20 (the amount of the fine) and the ticket, and put the box in the school’s Visitor’s Center, which also happens to be where students go to pay parking fines.
Mind you, Sun could have taken it all to the clerk who accepted fine payments, and who happened to be working when all this occurred, but chose instead to leave it in a wrapped box, tempting fate. And fate bit him in the butt. Sun’s stunt bought him a charge of terroristic mischief.
It’s not that Sun’s move was a smart one. It wasn’t, under the circumstances. But since when are college student pranks limited by being smart moves? They weren’t when I was in college, but it got us a chewing out by the Dean of Student Misbehavior, not a criminal charge. The worst that would happen is that we would be put on double secret probation.
It takes little effort to stick the word “terrorism” in front of any other word in the language of crime, but that doesn’t make it real. Nor does the fact that some unduly sensitive receiver of congressional terrorism funding finally finds a use for its anti-terrorism weaponry give rise to an offense that somehow makes it an actual threat. The problem is mathematical, with two competing equations:
Box + Unknown Contents = Bomb
Terrorist Funding + No Real Threat = Creating Threat Where None Exists
There was no threat here. Whether there was even a purpose close to suggesting a threat is unclear, since Sun could just as well have decided that leaving his package in the hallway to be found by the clerk, rather than confronting the clerk, was the better choice.
But using fear of terrorism as the wedge to take any claimed offense and turn it into a potential terrorist threat is almost as goofy as making a billion people remove their shoes in airports because one nutjob tried (and failed) to put an explosive in his heel. Not everything that potentially scares someone turns an act of mischief (at most) into an act of terrorism. Let’s save the accusations for something real, and let’s remember that college kids do dumb stuff because they’re, well, college kids.
Police said terroristic mischief is when a person knowingly or intentionally places a device with the intent to cause a reasonable person to believe that it is a weapon of mass destruction.Imagine, a college student who’s pissed off about a boot being placed on his car pulled a prank. Of course, 9/11 changed everything, unless one considers a boot to fail the “device . . . [that] a reasonable person [would] believe is a weapon of mass destruction.”
It’s not that Sun’s move was a smart one. It wasn’t, under the circumstances. But since when are college student pranks limited by being smart moves? They weren’t when I was in college, but it got us a chewing out by the Dean of Student Misbehavior, not a criminal charge. The worst that would happen is that we would be put on double secret probation.
It takes little effort to stick the word “terrorism” in front of any other word in the language of crime, but that doesn’t make it real. Nor does the fact that some unduly sensitive receiver of congressional terrorism funding finally finds a use for its anti-terrorism weaponry give rise to an offense that somehow makes it an actual threat. The problem is mathematical, with two competing equations:
Box + Unknown Contents = Bomb
Terrorist Funding + No Real Threat = Creating Threat Where None Exists
There was no threat here. Whether there was even a purpose close to suggesting a threat is unclear, since Sun could just as well have decided that leaving his package in the hallway to be found by the clerk, rather than confronting the clerk, was the better choice.
But using fear of terrorism as the wedge to take any claimed offense and turn it into a potential terrorist threat is almost as goofy as making a billion people remove their shoes in airports because one nutjob tried (and failed) to put an explosive in his heel. Not everything that potentially scares someone turns an act of mischief (at most) into an act of terrorism. Let’s save the accusations for something real, and let’s remember that college kids do dumb stuff because they’re, well, college kids.
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Though there has not been a single instance in the United States of a package left in a public place exploding and wreaking death and destruction
Well, not exactly…we can use the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing as one example, but there are plenty more…
You are correct. I meant to write post 9/11, but it never made it from brain to fingers. I’ve corrected it now. While there have been a variety of attacks since, none falls into this category. And bear in mind that this is tangential to the point of the post, so let’s not continue down this side path.
Didn’t the Unibomber leave packages in public places which caused death and destruction?
I don’t disagree that the ‘suspicious package’ hysteria is silly, but still…
Nope. The Unabomber sent packages by mail to his targets, and that ended in 1995. Do you think it might be easier for you to look it up before asking?
I recommend the book Trapped in the War on Terror. I have no financial stake in its sale.
[Ed. Note: Even so, link deleted.]
I skimmed the Wikipedia article–does that count?
According to the article (which may be wrong or incomplete) some of his early bombs were simply left in parking lots and not mailed.
Sure. But even the Unabomber didn’t, as far as I can tell, leave packages with bombs in them in plain sight. (That has happened, in other countries — Israelis have spotted packages left out in public that have turned out to be bombs — but in the US it is, at most, a vanishingly rare occurrance.)
Hysteria over the possibility, though, isn’t. Remember the great Mooninite Scare? (For those who came in late: some promoters left glowing cartoon light thingees around Boston, to promote a cartoon show. The authorities, having concluded that, naturally, those were likely to be bombs — as we all know, terrorists tend to put flashing lights on bombs to draw attention to them — went all panicky.)
In this case, it seems to me that the most likely explanation is that the guy was ticked off, wanted to show that he had the mad skilz to remove the wheel lock but didn’t want to leave himself accused of stealing it, so just threw it, the ticket, and the payment in a box and left it, trying to avoid a discussion of how he was able to get the lock off.
Orthogonally . . . from this vantage point, it looks like, having decided to treat this as a bomb scare, the authorities have to either say, hey, maybe we acted out of an excess of caution, but no big deal, eh? or make somebody a serious villian. Each to his own, but I’d think a lot more highly of them if they went for the first.
Sir, who’d guess that utilizing a system / technique to deliver an item where the contents is hidden from plain sight then knowingly and willingly forgetting and/or declining to include a sender’s address is now illegal. This would be considered a joke/prank, if I didn’t trust the source (SJ).
The real terrorist win when packages from unknowns, Santa and Elvis scare the shit out of people. The frigin jails will runneth over with Santas & cities will have to turn stadiums in to jails / courts.
Whom do we have to thank for this boom to our economy, the kid, alqueda, darn packages / box companies or homeland security? Somebody’s going to get rich off this niche. Thanks.
911 didn’t change anything, Bush & his thugs did.
Our politicians have changed our whole way of life, over this.
300 million Americans against this 5th rate outfit and the Americans panic?!?!? LoL
OMG it’s the TERRORISTS!!!!
Here hide under the bed….
NO No Hide here in the closet….
Wait wait hide in the basement…..
How will we EVER survive this network of TERRORISTS!??!?!?!
And when did Americans become such yellow cowards to put up with laws like this, just to feel “safe”?
We don’t need to make these people out to be any more than they are. And we certainly didn’t need to destroy our Bill of Rights for a panic attack.
I’m a lot more worried about changing the whole ‘Law of the Land’ for everyone permanently, and coming up with stupid charges like these, than I am with the chance than some foreign fanatics might try another attack.
But if we have some people that need to feel safe, maybe we can put THEM in a compound. They can have razor wire around the perimeter and have armed guards to keep them safe from these awful terrorists.
At least until some scientist comes up with a serum to grow people a backbone.
A very cutting commentary. Thanks John.