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Because Revere kids are pure as the driven snow, that's why

By adamg on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 3:47pm

Revere Beach was inundated with class-skipping Boston teens on that wicked-hot day last week. One terrified Revere city councilor wants metal detectors at Revere Beach station because "every other teenager who got off the train had a knife or a weapon." How does he know?

Neighborhoods: 
Revere
Topics: 
The T
Crime
Free tagging: 
Blue Line
Revere Beach


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Comments

By Ron Newman on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 3:58pm.

If the kids have to pass through them to get from the street INTO Revere Beach station, it's too late.

If the kids have to pass through them to get OUT OF Revere Beach station and onto the street, what are you going to do, send the kids back to Eastie?

Also, it's not an especially long walk to Wonderland station for any kid who is determined to avoid the detectors.

By operator on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 4:13pm.

Not that I am for kids carrying knives, but there is no Massachusetts General Law making it illegal to carry a knife. Yes, it is against Boston Public School rules but not against the law. The ACLU would have a field day on this issue. But, why not make it against the law for a juvenile to carry a knife? What is a kid doing with a knife anyway?

By adamg on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 4:16pm.

Because I seem to recall more than one blotter item about people getting charged with possession of a knife above a certain length (so Crocodile Dundee should stay the hell out of Dorchester).

By Kaz on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 4:26pm.

There's a Boston city ordinance against blades longer than 2.5" (unless you're a chef, hunter, fisherman, etc...). Revere is its own town and there is no rule on fixed blade knifes in the MGL. Switchblades, etc. longer than 1.5" are outlawed, but not if the blade is fixed.

By adamg on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 4:31pm.

Thanks, didn't realize it was a city-specific law.

By Kaz on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 5:00pm.

Found Revere's city ordinances online (their city website with the <blink> announcement that they were "up to date for April 2007!" was very quaint...hehe.

They enacted an equivalent ordinance to Boston's: no blade longer than 2.5".

By operator on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 4:32pm.

(I was just editing my post to say that as you wrote yours) That is the type of knife that these kids are carrying nowadays. Under the possession of a dangerous weapon law there are certain kinds of knives prohibited (dirks, double-edged, etc.) but I am talking about your regular run-of-the-mill folding knife. Please lets not make this post about the semantics of what I was saying. Let's just keep it to "kids" and "knives" please? Thanks.

By adamg on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 4:32pm.

I wasn't spoiling for a fight, just looking for clarification (honest!).

By operator on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 4:33pm.

Well, what do you think? Should it be illegal for kids to carry?

By ShadyMilkMan on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 4:27pm.

Slippery slope time... what constitutes a knife? Will Boy Scouts be stopped on the trail and asked to throw out their knives? What about kids in shop class who carry knives for any number of reasons? I understand the knee jerk reaction but you have to be careful not to create mass hysteria.

By my_left_foot on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 5:07pm.

+1

In the U.K. you need to be 18+ just to buy a butterknife.

Say no to the nanny state

By SwirlyGrrl on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 5:28pm.

In the US you have to be 21 to buy a beer!

That's way more nanny state.

By operator on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 5:43pm.

A kid can buy a knife but not a beer?

By neilv on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 6:04pm.

A pocketknife is a great tool for kids to have, as soon as they're taught to be responsible with it.

Alcohol, they also have to be taught to be responsible about, but that one's a lot harder to do (due to progressive judgment impairment and peer pressure, I think), with less benefit than a pocketknife.

Teach them responsibility about both, but one being allowed to buy a pocketknife before one is allowed to buy a beer does not seem ironic to me.

By my_left_foot on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 8:01pm.

+2

and they can have pot (although I'm not sure of the details of underage kids w/ pot)

Beer, pot and knives. Sounds like a party to me

By anon on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 4:20pm.

A Boston politician? Racist? NAAAAAHHHHH!!!

By Neal on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 4:39pm.

It was not a Boston politician. It was a Revere politician.

By SwirlyGrrl on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 5:26pm.

I think it would be a tad difficult to distinguish between Revere youth and Boston youth with regard to race.

I think this is townyism: the belief that anybody from "outside" your small rural town town lines must be evile and bent on doing bad things to the very good people that live in your particular lake woebegone town, isolated as it may be from the bad rest of the world by thin borders and the occasional marshland.

By ShadyMilkMan on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 5:30pm.

With all due respect if the kids did truely cause as much chaos as they did then it would impossible for the Revere youths to have done it on their own. Revere is a city of less then 50,000 so to get that many kids to skip school and head to Revere Beach would require 100 percent participation rates, plus the admins would be suspicious when the students were missing.

I would disagree on distinguishing between Revere and Boston on race. Revere is a majority Italian/Cambodian city a mix of spanish and other european influences for the most part. Its a different racial set up then Boston, or even East Boston... not that that means anything, it just is true that the racial makeup is not at all similar.

By anon on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 10:01pm.

Meh, same difference, effectively speaking.

By zbert on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 5:57pm.

Speaking of the crapfest of righteous indignation this has triggered, I love this line:

“I walk the beach every morning and afternoon, and I see a lot of the garbage that’s left behind late at night - the whiskey bottles and hypodermic needles in the sand,” Cuoco said.

... cuz I do no believe it... unless those needles washed up from some clandestine hospital disposal operation. I mean, for starters, needles need people. People, being pretty large, are not so hard to spot, even at night, and should be even easier to spot since Cuoco probably walks the same route every day. Now, I'd expect that people who'd just shot up with (whatever injectable drug) would be pretty slow-moving if not just collapsed in the sand.

So, we've got a target that is large, slow-moving if moving at all, and in the same place every single night.

Yo, Joseph Cuoco, you alarmist storyteller... call that beacon of devoted Community Service, the Revere PD, eh? or.... were you making it all up, because you once picked up a beer bottle from the sand and then, over time, the story grew out of even you control?

By adamg on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 6:39pm.

They only occasionally punch Revere city councilors in the head.

By independentminded on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 7:38pm.

n/t

By Spatch on Tue, 05/05/2009 - 8:18am.

One terrified Revere city councilor wants metal detectors at Revere Beach station because "every other teenager who got off the train had a knife or a weapon." How does he know?

They're actually very well organized and line up that way, so the councilor can tick them off as they go by: armed, unarmed, armed, unarmed, armed, unarmed, has an LED sign...