The New Assault Weapon: McDonald's Fries

From the source:

According to police, police received a report of the alleged assault at 7:43 p.m. on Friday. Police allege Hackett, his wife and stepdaughter had just left the McDonald's on Plain Street when Hackett and his wife, who was driving, began to argue. The 11-year-old stepdaughter, who was in the back seat, chimed in and Hackett allegedly threw the hot french fries in her face, police said.

Ok, while its not ok to throw the fries in the stepdaughters face, lets look at this.
So they left McDonalds shortly before and there was nothing about drive in written.
So the fries were 2 minutes old when arriving the car. If they were fresh out of oil when they got it (I say they were not directly out of the oil)
Drive on + 30seconds
Argument until stepdaughter intervenes at least 30 seconds.

3 minute old fries from mcdonalds are 90% cold. The only dangerous would be salt in the eye, but ever bath in the sea would do more harm.

Originally posted by yeahright

Originally posted by Jean Paul Zodeaux
If this man is guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, why in the hell was he released without any bail?

The following is my opinion as a member participating in this discussion.

At the time bail is determined, the individual is still presumed innocent, no?

As an ATS Staff Member, I will not moderate in threads such as this where I have participated as a member.

Whether bail is set or no bail is set the presumption of innocence is the rule of law. That no bail was set only makes the charge of assault with a deadly weapon look suspect.

Originally posted by Jean Paul Zodeaux
reply to post by AidanFoy

 

I have long endeavored to teach that legislation is not law, at best is merely evidence of law, and at worst is unlawful. Those that endeavor to use legislation to act in unlawful ways are simply being unlawful, not using the law in ways that defy common sense.

Some of us, Jean Paul, don't even believe in the psychopathic farce that the American government euphemestically refers to as law, at all.

Individual Sovereignty 101.

Mary Croft - HOW I CLOBBERED
EVERY BUREAUCRATIC CASH-CONFISCATORY AGENCY KNOWN TO MAN

reply to post by newcovenant

Still, there should be a place to take these "not quite court cases" so they don't cost money and tie up the judicial system. Civil matters should go to a Civil Court. The people found guilty probably end up paying court costs anyway so it looks like these are going to be some expensive fries.

This is a good point, that is more a civil matter than a criminal offense. Of course the man has been charged with a crime so it is not a civil matter as the cops have forced it.

A good defense attorney will first challenge the jurisdiction forcing the police to prove on record that french fries are a "dangerous" weapon, which means even before the trial begins the police would have to prove on record and with credible evidence that the fries were hot and greasy enough at the time they were thrown to constitute a "dangerous" weapon.

Of course, the attorney this guy was stuck with marched him right in and had him plead not guilty, and while jurisdiction can be challenged at any time, it is unlikely the attorney this guy has will go down that road, so it is up to the defense to prove the fries were limp and not hot.

No matter how you slice this, it is indeed a waste of tax dollars, and "peace" officers could have and should have kept the peace rather than perpetuate an incident that was a family dispute.

Originally posted by Jean Paul Zodeaux
reply to post by newcovenant

 

No matter how you slice this, it is indeed a waste of tax dollars, and "peace" officers could have and should have kept the peace rather than perpetuate an incident that was a family dispute.

They're not peace officers. They're enforcers of government statutes, and collectors of government revenue. As far as I'm concerned, the police have no legitimate reason to exist. They are nothing other than one of the two elements (the other being the military) of the government's monopoly on violence.

Al Capone might have been a murderer, but I subscribe 100% to his opinion of both police and the government. They are nothing other than the largest racket.

The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg. This is another book on the subject which gives a very good explanation of the governmental monopoly on violence. It's also one of the few books associated with the Right that I consider worth reading.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

The potato is highly underestimated. Especially the ones prepared at McDonalds!

Originally posted by Infi8nity
They are a deadly weapon, the man did not use them right. Your supposed to feed them to people not throw them.

You're supposed to use your and you're correctly, which is probably about as severe a crime as throwing frnech fries at someone and I don't see you having to fight the system to stay out of jail????

Jaden

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


Hold on... How hot were the french fries when he received them from McDonalds? If they were too hot then a lawsuit should be filed against McDonalds for serving these dangerous scalding weapons without being cooled down enough???

Originally posted by Infi8nity
They are a deadly weapon, the man did not use them right. Your supposed to feed them to people not throw them.

who dictates the right way to use a french fry? i find it silly to charge him with battery and assault over this, it will only lead to making people criminals over stupid petty things.

I could understand if it were a frozen chicken or something that actually caused harm to more than just a persons dignity. I can see arrests of people who were assaulted by paper airplanes because they didn't use the paper for what it was made for if things go down this route of pettiness.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

If this man is guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, why in the hell was he released without any bail?

I was going to answer your question, but you beat me to it. This is so pathetic it's funny. It's very sad also a system that is suppose to be the best in the world (US law) is the worst.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


What next? Mass arrests at the local school's cafeteria because the class clown starts a "war" and food is being flung?

reply to post by ownbestenemy


they will be posting a new warning on fry box so they dont get sued

The woman who made Officer Bubbles famous is suing the Toronto police for $100,000 for false arrest and a violation of her Charter rights.

In one of the more comically ridiculous moments of last June’s G20 summit of world leaders in Toronto, police Const. Adam Josephs was recorded telling a young woman blowing soapy bubbles that if one of the bubbles touched him she would be charged with assault.
www.thestar.com...

Bubbles, french fries, slushies, margaritas... where will it all end?

Not that I think the authorities aren't "reaching" a bit in this case, felony charge and all, but I'm willing to bet that I could take a box of room temperature fries and chuck them at you in such a manner that you would agree you've been assaulted. (speaking to no particular "you" of course)

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


I think we're missing the bigger picture here. A grown man threw fries in anger at a thirteen year old child. Granted, no bodily harm could come from it but if this is what he does in public, what do you think goes on behind closed doors?

I know a bit about abuse, and this looks like it was meant to be more psychological abuse then anything else. I say that the courts need to look into the home. I'm typically against that as I love privacy, but I got a bad feeling about this.

reply to post by drwizardphd

Then don't complain why kids are so bad and turn into criminals these days. Kids are terrible these days and they are so rude and they cuss out their parents. They think they run the show and get away by it by threatening CPS on them. It is people like you who are turning this country into a cesspool full of undisciplined kids that turn into horrible adults. In the 50s, kids were well behaved because they would get a spanking if they act out.

reply to post by Auricom


Between you and I someone is missing the bigger picture here. Let's first clear up the "petitio principii" you employ. You are asking us all to concede that if a man does one thing in public that what he does in private is even worse, and this begs the question. Let's, however, keep our eyes on the big picture here and keep in mind that this man has been charged with a crime so your begging the question is inadmissible in a court of a law and here in the court of public opinion is a blatant logical fallacy posing as the "bigger picture".

In fact, let's reverse the logical fallacy you employed and apply it to the police who publicly stacked charges on this man. If the police are willing to publicly do such an abhorrent thing, imagine what they would do in private. Do you see the problem with your argument?

This whole "let's have the courts look into the home" has got to stop. Enough all ready. While childish in and of itself and certainly ill advised parenting skills, throwing french fries at a mouthy teenage daughter is not child abuse. Enough! You brought up the bigger picture, so let's take a hard look at that bigger picture:

Child Abuse Investigations Didn’t Reduce Risk, a Study Finds

Child Protective Services investigated more than three million cases of suspected child abuse in 2007, but a new study suggests that the investigations did little or nothing to improve the lives of those children.

........

One possible interpretation of this result would be that the investigated families were at greater risk to begin with, and that the investigation helped them to recover to the expected level of risk. But if this were so, the authors write, households with recent investigations would have greater risk than households with more distant investigations. Statistical analysis found no such association. They concluded that Child Protective Services investigations had little or no effect.

Kids gain more from family than foster care

"While much has been written about the trade-off between family preservation and child protection, little empirical work has been able to support a greater emphasis on either one," said Joseph Doyle Jr., assistant professor of applied economics at Sloan. "My research suggests that children on the margin of foster care placement have better employment, delinquency, and teen motherhood outcomes when they remain at home."

.......

"The child welfare system directly impacts millions of children at risk of poor life outcomes each year, yet much of the previous evidence on the effect of foster care on outcomes looked at correlations, not causal effects," he said. "But if you find that 28 percent of homeless people were once in foster care, it doesn't mean they are homeless because of foster care."

Next let's look at an example of what CPS does in their "investigations":

Brian Dickerson: Hard lemonade, hard price Dad's oversight at Tigers game lands son in foster care

If you watch much television, you've probably heard of a product called Mike's Hard Lemonade. And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television. The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.

Does your bad feeling tell you that this 13 year old should be removed from a french fry throwing step dad and placed in foster care?

One study by Johns Hopkins University found that the rate of sexual abuse within the foster-care system is more than four times as high as in the general population; in group homes, the rate of sexual abuse is more than 28 times that of the general population. An Indiana study found three times more physical abuse and twice the rate of sexual abuse in foster homes than in the general population.[98] A study of foster children in Oregon and Washington State found that nearly one third reported being abused by a foster parent or another adult in a foster home.

Consider what bigger pictures actually reveal.

Originally posted by tjack
Not that I think the authorities aren't "reaching" a bit in this case, felony charge and all, but I'm willing to bet that I could take a box of room temperature fries and chuck them at you in such a manner that you would agree you've been assaulted. (speaking to no particular "you" of course)

In terms of this particular "me", it has been conceded that this incident probably constitutes assault and even battery, but I linked and quoted the definition for Massachusetts on assault and battery and based upon that definition, spanking a child would fit within those parameters.