Yet another hard hitting library expose! 2 in one week is a new record I think. This Time it’s from Los Angeles where the Channel 2 undercover cameras caught a man using the library computer to view pornography – right out in the open! “And that’s just the first chapter in a long list of crimes we found – along with a warning from this library security officer who wants to remain anonymous.”
They found a threat to kill a 13-year-old student. People carrying concealed weapons, which were confiscated at the library. Stabbings. Syringes. And librarians being attacked.
“I think it’s gonna take somebody getting killed before management really pays attention. That’s how bad it has gotten.”
what are these people thinking
They certain have a problem and it’s one that can be fixed.
But what public building in LA can you send a kid to unsupervised for several hours?
Maybe it’s not the library. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s in LA.
Re:Maybe it’s not the library. Maybe it’s the fact
Nope, not even close. I see these stories all the time now. I don’t post most of them because they don’t even seem noteworthy here. It’s nothing to due with LA, it’s like that all over.
I can’t decide whether it’s this, or Google that’ll be the final nail in the coffin for public libraries.
overreacting?
“Final” nail? I wasn’t aware of the first nail. Or the coffin.
I don’t think there is a large or pervasive image problem created by these incidents. They don’t seem to here in my area and there have been a few of them recently.
Everyone is freaked out by online predators and the spectre of molesters wandering around out there.
The truth is a kid’s diet is way more danger to him than online sex predators, knife-weilding junkies in library bathrooms or most anything else. But you don’t see grainy video of kids eating Doritos and playing XBox on the local news.
It will pass.
Re:overreacting?
Doritos are more dangerous than child predators. Do you really want to stick with that?
Re: It will pass.
I hope so, I keep saying I hope I’m wrong.
Re:overreacting?
I’ll agree with that. A child predator’s lethality is quicker, but a crappy diet will do a person in as well.
Re:overreacting?
The DOJ and the CDC numbers indicate that 4 to 6 times more people die each year from obesity related illnesses than are victims of sex crimes.
Been there done that…
Too bad these Minneapolis Librarians settled
out of court…L.A. Librarians should sue
and see it through to legal precedent…
http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=10 63212018621
Re:overreacting?
None of them are kids when they croak. What an adult does to themsleves is mostly a non-story, what someone does to a child is something else entirely. The librarian or library director who tries to make that comparison to their patrons won’t have their job long and that librarians even think it is a nail in the coffin that Blake talks about.
Re:overreacting?
The point was people always overestimate the probability and danger of unlikely events and underestimate the likely ones. I’m sure parents feel trepedation about giving kids computers and cell phones. But more kids are killed or injured for life by obesity, neglect, car wrecks and all sorts of other things that do not provoke as emotional response as child molesters do.
Case in point: people are far more afraid of a serial killers or leering oversexed negro rapists when they are more likely to be victims of violent crimes at the hands of their own families.
And as for the PR problems that would come of saying this — well, no shit. People don’t like it when you call them stupid? Christ on a cracker, that’s what I’ve been doing wrong.
There are things you don’t tell the public, though you desperately want to, Greg. You must have had the urge to have a chat with the patron trying to put a 5 1/4″ disk into a CD drive and then write on the monitor with a Sharpie, or the person who can’t use the Internet at all applying for a job online that requires computer skills.
That’s when we say the quiet part quiet and the loud part loud.
Re:overreacting?
It amazes me how often some on this board inject race in order to imply racism of others. For the record most of the losers caught looking at porn, both in these stories and in my own experience, have been white.
And the point of all this is that yes, people are actually caught on a pretty regular basis looking at porn in a public building. This isn’t about some boogeyman in the shadows but about the lowering of a public standard which creates a more dangerous environment for everyone.
What is wrong?
What is wrong with carrying a concealed weapon in the libray. I often do and I did when I worked there.
Perhaps if LA have more people lawfully carrying concealed weapons they would have less to worry about at the library.
An armed society is a polite society.
Re:What is wrong?
Quoting Heinlein?! Heinlein?!
Good God! I don’t know about libraries but the world must definitely be coming to an end.
Re:What is wrong?
Well he was an Annapolis man after all.