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Mask rage: Man charged with assault and battery with a dangerous cup of hot coffee in Brookline
By adamg on Thu, 01/20/2022 - 9:27pm
WBZ reports a Boston man waiting in line at a Dunk's on Harvard Street in Brookline showed his disgust for the maskless person behind him by throwing a cup of hot coffee at him. And that was good enough for a charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
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Comments
It’s a tough guess
To assume the man not wearing a mask vaccine status. But it’s safe to say the assailant is probably boostered.
Cloth masks are a joke and the CDC has said as much.
Buddy, you vaccine works, trust the science and stop acting like an @ss.
Cloth masks are not a joke
Cloth masks show a basic level of decency and respect for others, which means a lot to a vast majority of Bostonians who are doing our best to avoid getting infected and infecting others.
(Please forgive me for being such an insufferable and self-righteous scold.)
Cloth masks, alone, are not that affective.
Cloth masks, by themselves, are really not that affective. On the other hand, wearing either a KN-95 mask or an N-95 mask underneath cloth masks will offer more affective protection.
Which ones?
There are cloth masks, and there are cloth masks. Also, it's pretty obvious that wearing two of any kind of mask will be more effective than one.
Couldn't fine the word "joke"
anywhere on this page: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/types-of-...
I did find
A higher quality respirator that's actually counterfeit and substandard, or is poorly fit for the individual wearer could offer less protection than a disposable surgical mask, or a disposable surgical mask with a tight fitting cloth mask on top of it.
simplistic interpretation
Cloth masks do work if they're 3 ply and better if they have a filter. The CDC has recently amended that to suggest people wear N95 or similar due to how contagious Omicron is. A 3 ply cloth mask is 80% efficient but needs to be 95% efficient (the 95 in the label) to filter out the virus. So the cloth masks are better than nothing.
He also faces charges of
He also faces charges of carrying a concealed cruller.
Sigh. Humans are worse than
Sigh. Humans are worse than Covid itself. I want to go befriend and gain the trust of coyotes and spend all my money living in the woods.
Not sure Adam’s snarky tone is appropriate
Although I think Adam’s just being pithy, his tone makes it seem like he’s sympathetic to Henchy’s ridiculous claim - “dangerous cup of coffee” and “that was good enough” sounds like Adam agrees the charges are perhaps exaggerated or overblown.
But throwing hot liquids on someone is in fact extremely dangerous. It could easily blind a person, or even kill them due to complications from scalding on the face and throat. Assuming the facts as stated are accurate the dangerous weapon charge is entirely appropriate.
Snarky tone?
That's not a snarky tone,mate. This is a snarky tone.
Wait throwing hot liquids at people is dangerous?
Thanks for explaining that to us, I'm sure none of us were aware of that!
That's snark, call the Tone Police.
Just a brain-dead comment
It is possible you are 12 years old but “unscrupulous lawyers pretending hot coffee is dangerous, how ridiculous” was a punch line in America culture for decades, and led millions of Americans to ignorantly dismiss a woman who suffered third degree burns.
And the assailant’s defense attorney is trying the same trick - pretending this is disorderly conduct, that nobody could seriously call this assault, it’s just a cup of coffee.
I didn’t think Adam’s tone was appropriate because of that - it’s irresponsible to emphasize the silliness of this case over its severity.
It's winter
Why didn't he have an iced Dunkins?
The best you can say about this is
that it's an extremely rare example of a citizen resorting to violence after unsuccessfully encouraging a science-ignorant, socially-irresponsible maskhole to do the right thing.
In the vast majority of public mask disputes, it's the plague rats that are throwing punches, forcing airplanes to turn around, shitting on already-beleaguered restaurant workers, or otherwise exhibiting Neanderthal behavior in their quest to demonstrate what blockheaded, selfish fuckwads they are.
With the details we have so far
I'm not willing to agree with your first statement.
What was the comment made, and then what happened before the alleged coffee throwing? There's a gap here, and I can't imagine the defendant went from a polite suggestion that the victim should be wearing a mask to attacking him with hot coffee in an instant.
Anyways, let's maybe not assault each other for any reason. Violence isn't going to help us come out of this pandemic any better than we were before it, it will likely only make us come out worse.
Sigh…
That guy was out of line with the coffee. However, the person you’re replying is equally ignorant.
I think we're in solid agreement that
violence isn't ever the answer. Maybe the defendant was provoked by some aggressive action by the maskhole that has yet to be reported. You'd think his lawyer might have used that rather than just "these charges are overblown" line, if that's the case. (I wonder if there's video somewhere.)
Either way, my point stands: it's almost always (like 99% of the time) the Disease-Vector Dougies that resort to violence in these confrontations.
Polarization
"Either way, my point stands: it's almost always (like 99% of the time) the Disease-Vector Dougies that resort to violence in these confrontations."
And this time it wasn't. Get over it. The madness comes from all sides these days. Stop the polarization please.
Reality doesn't have a polarity. Facts
are facts. It's the idiot anti-mask right-wingers that are far likelier to resort to violence in these situations, not the people acting responsibly on public health.
It is intellectually dishonest or moronically simplistic to say, "But both sides do it" when one side does it vastly more often than the other. If you punch me 99 times and I hit back once, we're not equally guilty merely because we've both hit each other. Amplitude matters.
Sorry-not-sorry if that simple truth hurts your feelings.
This is gaslighting.
Just because you don't see the opposite in your twitter echo chamber, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Who gets their news from Twitter?
You go right ahead and both-sides the issue all you want, and chuck around terms like gaslighting when reality doesn't suit you.
You should know
You seem to huff ONAN and Faux Snuz on the regular, given your comments.
As a consumer of gaslighting, I guess you have become a connoisseur now?
Aggressive action?
Some aggressive action such as, for example, deliberately getting close to a stranger in an indoor setting during a respiratory pandemic, while not wearing the mask that science, decency, common sense, and the law all require?
I was conceding another poster's point that
there might be more to the story that we don't know, like maybe the maskhole threw a punch or something. But I also wondered why, if that was the case, that the coffee-thrower's attorney mentioned no such thing.
Judging from the police report, the maskhole tried to de-escalate the situation by pulling his shirt over his face, and the coffee-thrower started getting testy and abusive to everyone, including the Dunks workers. It looks like his attempted assault was cowardly and half-hearted, tossing a coffee as he was on his way out the door, barely hitting his target, thank goodness.
I agree that not wearing a mask is assaultive in its own way, but still think it's wrong to respond with violence in kind. That's what the rightie fuckheads do, and we should shun that behavior as barbaric and civically unconscionable.
It has been their pattern ever since the Orange Turd's first presidential run: when you can't win the argument or the election, or are merely confronted about your health-threatening and illegal behavior, respond with fists and blunt instruments, like psychopathic toddlers.
It's criminal behavior as well as anti-social and anti-democratic, and we should not stoop to that level.
Who's the real maskhole here?
My opinion certainly differs from yours.
The guy not wearing a mask into a public
establishment that clearly requires masks is a maskhole. It's a science-ignorant, socially-irresponsible defiance of longstanding recommendations by public health experts.
Anyone throwing hot coffee is engaging in criminal assault. Ninety-nine times out of 100, that's the kind of move perpetrated by the fuckheads that refuse to wear masks in indoor public spaces. This is a rare case of an otherwise-responsible citizen on the mask issue doing the wrong thing.
Ah, OK.
Then the defendant was just an asshole who can't handle himself in public spaces.
https://www.facebook.com/brooklinemapd
Let's also hope this scientifically knowledgable asshole was wearing an N95 since those cloth ones everyone wears, like, don't work much better than wearing nothing.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cloth-face-mask-omicron-11640984082
Not quite
and it's not that simple. Not only is there a huge variation between all sorts of different cloth masks, there are also options that exist between those two. An N95 with a poor fit (hey you with the beard, you won't pass any respirator fit test) is likely not better than a well made, tight fitting cloth mask; the false sense of security can also increase individual risk.
Some light reading from one of our local institutions:
https://news.northeastern.edu/2021/12/23/best-covid-mask/
https://news.northeastern.edu/2022/01/19/most-popular-face-mask/
Yes, quite.
We can post opposing links all day, but it should be pretty common knowledge at this point that single ply cloth masks are essentially useless with Omicron.
Obviously an ill-fitting N95 isn't going to offer the best protection and that wasn't even my point. The point is that cloth masks aren't effective, not much better than wearing nothing and if you're going to throw coffee at somebody for not wearing mask, make sure your mask is one that actually works.
You seem to be under the impression
that someone here is defending the throwing of hot coffee in any circumstance. No one not made of straw is.
Single ply cloth masks?
I'm fairly certain those have been discouraged for a long time now.
Thanks for proving my point, Brian
that the majority of people I encounter are wearing ineffective masks.
So, does this mean you're wearing
N95 masks, or using the fact that some people are still wearing cloth masks as an excuse not to bother?
Methodology?
The only way my last statement could have supported you is if you've determined the exact type of mask everyone you encounter are wearing.
So what's your methodology for determining the number of layers in a cloth mask that someone else is wearing? Are you asking everyone you meet? Are you forcefully removing masks from stranger's faces and cutting them open to count the layers? Are you using a portable x-ray machine?
misread that post
[deleted my response]
My point has been that cloth
My point has been that cloth masks don't work. You just admitted as such. Do you always argue in circles? Try to keep up.
My methodology is that the majority of the time I see people, they're wearing cloth masks, usually with some stupid slogan or emblem embroidered on them. I can also understand that Omicron has been the dominant strain of COVID that has been infecting people who are in masked situations meaning that they are presumably wearing cloth masks, not N or KN95's.
You can be a douche all you want with your rhetorical questions, but this is really common sense.
Physician, heal thy
douchey self, and get back to uHub about common sense when your rhetorical arsenal expands beyond straw man and ad hominem attacks. That kind of lack of self-awareness can be richly comical, but most of the time, it's just the annoying buzzing of a flyweight thinker.
You have derailed.
I haven't used a single strawman, nor any ad hominem attacks.
I've literally provided data to support the fact that cloth masks are not much better than wearing nothing. I really don't know what you're so angry about. Maybe take a break from the internet today or something?
Who's angry?
I'm pointing and laughing at you. You're not even bright enough to recognize your own logical fallacies.
Huh?
"single layer cloth masks are insufficient" does not equal "all cloth masks are completely useless" and that's what you seem to be trying to state.
You are also seemingly asserting that all cloth masks are single layer cloth masks. I don't think that is an assertion based on fact.
I'm not advocating for people to opt for cloth masks over any mask that offers a higher level of protection and can be consistently worn.
You don't have to listen to me, just go see what the CDC says about this: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/types-of-...
You don't know
You don't know that those cloth masks are single-layer, unless they are the bandit-bandana type, which I haven't seen for a while. My cloth masks are 3-layer, with an insert for added filtration. I wash them regularly. I have KN95s for rare times I feel especially at risk, but the cloth ones have kept me from getting the virus for over a year and a half.
Your speculation about people getting COVID "in masked situations" is specious. You have no data, and are just guessing about whether those people kept their masks on the whole time, and about what type of masks they wore.
Whatever you wear, keep it on. That means not eating in restaurants or drinking in bars, because you've got to take off the mask to eat and drink. There are reports that service workers are going to work even after testing positive, because so many of them have no paid medical leave. So it doesn't have to be a suspended anti-vax BPS sergeant who's going to infect you; it could be your waiter.
Frankly, those regular surgical masks, alone, aren't affective.
Frankly, those regular surgical masks that lots of people wear aren't very affective, either unless one wears one of those surgical masks on top of a KN-95, or an N-95 mask.
citation needed
citation needed
Feel free to add your credentials on the subject, too.
youre being unsafe by not
youre being unsafe by not wearing a mask.
unsafely throws hot coffee into maskless persons face.
Leg
Didn't throw the coffee into the face. Did (allegedly) commit a crime.
Coffee not thrown in heat of argument
According to the Brookline PD account on their FB page:
Brookline Police
I saw this arrest happen, and make all the jokes you want about cops proximity to a Dunkin, but there were probably 6 or 7 Brookline PD cars in the area in the time it took the guy to go a block and a half.
I was with my young children, and am grateful for the Brookline PD was incredibly responsive to someone that was lashing out at everyone around him. There's a lot of news about select board member Raul Fernandez claiming most Brookline residents want an unarmed police force, but in this case, I was amazingly glad it wasn't some social workers trying to calm this man down. Count me in on the silent majority not agreeing with Mr. Fernandez.